Ingagi

Ingagi is a 1930 pre-Code pseudo-documentary exploitation film directed by William S. Campbell. It purports to be a documentary about "Sir Hubert Winstead" of London on an expedition to the Belgian Congo and depicts a tribe of gorilla-worshipping women encountered by the explorer. The film claims to show a ritual in which African women are given over to gorillas as sex slaves, but in actuality was mostly filmed in Los Angeles, using American actresses in place of natives. It was produced and distributed by Nat Spitzer's Congo Pictures, which had been formed expressly for this production. Although marketed under the pretense of being ethnographic, the premise was a fabrication, leading the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association to retract any involvement. The film trades heavily on its nudity and on the suggestion of bestiality between a woman and a gorilla. RKO owned several of the theatres where Ingagi was shown, including one of the first, the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco, where it opened April 5, 1930.

Ingagi is a 1930 pre-Code pseudo-documentary exploitation film directed by William S. Campbell. It purports to be a documentary about "Sir Hubert Winstead" of London on an expedition to the Belgian Congo and depicts a tribe of gorilla-worshipping women encountered by the explorer. The film claims to show a ritual in which African women are given over to gorillas as sex slaves, but in actuality was mostly filmed in Los Angeles, using American actresses in place of natives. It was produced and distributed by Nat Spitzer's Congo Pictures, which had been formed expressly for this production. Although marketed under the pretense of being ethnographic, the premise was a fabrication, leading the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association to retract any involvement. The film trades heavily on its nudity and on the suggestion of bestiality between a woman and a gorilla. RKO owned several of the theatres where Ingagi was shown, including one of the first, the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco, where it opened April 5, 1930. ==Plot== The film starts with a text introduction, explaining the purported documentary background, then shows life aboard ship before it docks at Mombasa. They then travel inland to Nairobi, seeing African wildlife such as wildebeest on the way. Along the journey, they mention the finding of a tortoise with an odd, wing-like shell and large scales that they christen a "tortorillo", just before one of the dogs they brought with was purportedly killed by its venomous bite. The expedition then finds a tribe who sacrifices virgin women to the "Ingagi" to reproduce with, and they speak of a half-human, half-gorilla hybrid offspring. It is at this point where the expedition kills one of the "Ingagi" and then return from the expedition. ==Cast== Sir Hubert Winstead as Explorer Charles Gemora as Ingagi - the Gorilla Arthur Clayton as Daniel Swayne Explorer Louis Nizor as Narrator Ed Joyce as Cameraman ==Critical reception== Film critic Mordaunt Hall wrote in The New York Times that the film "is a loose assemblage of the usual African travel scenes, many of which are spoiled by extraordinarily bad photography," that "the screen is a miserable blur for minutes at a time," that "the scenes with gorillas last about ten minutes and are not at all convincing," but noted that "the trapping of a leopard, the capture of a giant python and a hippopotamus hunt might be genuinely interesting." A contemporary review of the film in Variety reported that "photography is poor" and "the ape women are seen completely naked, but shadowed in a clearing [and] they are not as black as expected for the jungle" with "doubt concerning the naturalness of the gorilla," but noted that "there is a gripping scene when a lioness attacks a cameraman [with] no doubt of the authenticity of this frightful but vivid scene." A review from the Houston Chronicle called Ingagi “an effort to obtain money under false pretenses and a deliberate propagation of fabrications in the name of science. It is howlingly ridiculous, so obviously fake that one forgets to resent it.” From retrospective reviews, Michael Atkinson reviewed the home video release in Sight & Sound. Atkinson found the film "distinctive for portending to be something it absolutely is not", noting the film's litany of large animals killed and butchered and its "wall to wall" supremacist stereotypes, while finding the footage taken from other films uproarious. A review of the film on DVD Talk noted that it is "fascinating even if it's not entirely fun. There's definitely some interest in the classic wildlife footage, but the continued brutality of the hunters (which admittedly is not shown as explicitly as it could be) eventually becomes deadening. And the way the black characters are treated whether it's the actual African natives put down by the narration or the American actors put into demeaning situations is so offputting and infuriating that it would derail any self-respecting Bad Movie Night." ==See also== Congorilla, 1932 film Bring 'Em Back Alive,1932 film ==References== ==Notes== ==Sources== Berenstein, Rhona J. "White Heroines and Hearts of Darkness: Race, Gender and Disguise in 1930s Jungle Films", in Film History Vol. 6 No. 3 (Autumn 1994), Exploitation Films, pp. 314–339 (Published by Indiana University Press); ==External links== Alt URL

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