MOVIE OF THE DAY: "INGAGI" (1930)

Ingagi chronicles the thrilling, true-life adventures of Sir Herbert Winstead as he leads his hunting safari through darkest Africa. Armed only with some rifles and a couple of hand-cranked movie cameras, Winstead and his team face danger and possible death every step of the way, climaxing with the astonishing tribe of women who mate with --

Oh, hell, what am I talking about? Despite what the movie's prologue states, there was no such person as Sir Herbert Winstead. And by the way, seventy-five percent of Ingagi''s footage was stolen from a 1915 documentary Heart of Africa; the rest was filmed in the heart of California.

And as for those tribe of women... well, they're the only portion that justified Ingagi's existence in 1930 -- although the word "justified" is questionable in relation to the human beings onscreen. Let's just say there would have been no audience patronizing Ingagi without its final 15 minutes. 

Judging by how audiences
were fooled, I'd say Darwin
was wrong.

If you thought the last four years were proof of how easy it is to hoodwink a sizable portion of the American population, Ingagi will make you wish you had access to a movie camera, non-actors, and an editing room over 90 years ago.  

The idea that audiences accepted someone named Sir Hubert Winstead speaking with a New York accent, pronouncing "first" as "foist" and "search" as "soich", is the first tip-off of just how gullible people were. The real narrator, Louis Nizor, sounds like he's reading the script for the first time, which is probably the case. Rehearsals take time, and time is money!

Then there's the film quality itself. While the California-as-Africa scenes are in fine condition,  the    real documentary footage -- only 15 years old at the time -- appears to have been trampled on by an elephant herd before being left out in the sun too long. 

Luncheon is served.

Oh, there's some interesting shots in the 1915 footage. And by interesting, I mean stuff that is no longer considered worthy of movie entertainment, like rhinos writhing in pain after being shot, and dead hippos being dragged upside down along the ground. 

But at least their meat was sustenance for the tribal population. But what was the point of trapping monkeys for anything other than our amusement? Come to think of it, maybe that was enough.

One more wisecrack, and this ape is ready
to pounce.

As with similar low-rent releases of the 1930s, Ingagi''s narrator wouldn't be doing his job if he didn't offer the occasional "amusing" observations about the natives. As tribal women do the kind of hard physical labor more appropriate for men, he asks, "Isn't this a wonderful way of reducing?" -- as in weight. Their native assistants are regularly referred to as "our boys", while both they and small animals are called "the little beggars."  Today, he'd be begging -- for his life.

An extra 10 points for this guy keeping a
straight face.

Rickety footage of real animals, however, wasn't enough for the director, so Winstead (or whoever it really is) discovers a previously-unknown animal with the body of a tortoise and the armor of an armadillo, which he immediately dubs a tortadillo. Or what anyone with half a brain would see is a turtle in a plastic costume from the Five & Ten. 

No matter. We're assured that his dog died three hours after being bitten by this mini-monster. Did I refer to audiences as "gullible"? Make that anencephalic.

Most movies ran only three days,
so the people of La Crosse clearly
desired a week of interspecies sex.

It wasn't a tortadillo that lured people to Ingagi  (African for "gorilla", in case you were wondering). The real drawing card was a group of tribal women who live in sin with a gorilla. And this is where, for modern audiences, things likely go off the rail.

I would have taken a screenshot, but just watching things unfold made me feel ashamed. My idea of the Central Casting description will have to do: Negro women wanted to play African natives in love with a gorilla. Must move as if mentally deficient. Total nudity required. $1 for one day's work. 

It's worse than it sounds, a degrading scene that these poor women likely welcomed just for the money. One woman holds a baby (or doll) described as having a face more gorilla than human, which tells you what the filmmakers are trying to get across without actually saying it.

Look out! It's a man in a monkey suit!

At least  neither they, nor the merely topless woman who's later given to the gorilla as a sacrifice, were ever in danger. For their simian swain is actually Charles Gemora, Hollywood's #1 monkey impersonator from 1927 until his death in 1961. 

That his suit looks absolutely nothing like the real thing we see in close-ups makes no difference. Just the idea of a black woman and a gorilla making monkey business was enough to get the cash registers jingling.

The reverse P.O.V. of the cameraman filming
the gorilla. Did audiences think it was filming
him?

And how they jingled! Ingagi went to gross an astounding $4,000,000 -- at a time when the average ticket price was 25 cents. You can't blame the producer for repeating the whole psuedo-doc-shock with Nu-Ma-Pu: Cannibalism,  with the wilds of California standing in for the Solomon Islands.

Twenty years later, Ingagi
was on a double-bill with a
renamed Freaks.
That's entertainment!

Hard as it is to believe, Ingagi was one of the most influential movies of its time. The gorilla/woman angle was repeated (to far better effect) three years later by King Kong. The art of stitching together pirated silent footage with cheap talkies continued with Are We Civilized? and White Gorilla (notice how those things keep popping up?), and undoubtedly many more.

As movie restrictions lessened in the 1960s, the "doc-shock" genre became known as "mondo", thanks to Mondo Cane. Subsequent movies upped the ante (real or faked) with Traces of Death, Faces of Death, Shocking Africa, Shocking Asia... you get the picture. 

As for the movie that started it all, Ingagi ran in grind houses for decades, proving that audiences never smarten up. After disappearing in the 1970s, a print was found in, of all places, the Library of Congress, and restored to 4K with its original tints. Feel free to pick up a copy, but don't tell them I sent you. Let me retain what little pride I have.

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Read about White Gorilla here.

Read about Are We Civilized? here.