Ingagi - The Lord of the Wild

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Movie
German title Ingagi - The Lord of the Wild
Original title Ingagi
Ingagi-movieposter-1930.jpg
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1930
length 75 minutes
Rod
Director William Campbell
script Adam Shirk
production William Alexander
music Edward Gage
camera L. Gillingham
Ed Joyce
Fred Webster ,
George Summerton ,
Harold Williams
cut Grace McKee
occupation

Ingagi - The Lord of the Wild is an American film directed by William Campbell from 1930. It pretends to be a documentary about gorillas , who keep women as sex slaves in the Belgian Congo . This makes him an early example of the Mondo film as well as the exploitation film genre .

action

The film is shot in the style of a documentary. Sir Hubert Winstead and David Swayne are exploring the Belgian Congo as researchers for the British Royal Geological Society. In the process, you will encounter a number of exotic animals, such as a 65-foot-long python as well as a new species called the tortadillo. A cameraman is killed by a wild lion, the group themselves shoot a baby rhinoceros.

In the end, they meet an African tribe of women who keep gorillas as sex slaves. The last ten minutes of the film show a sacrifice ceremony in which an African woman is to be sacrificed to the gorilla so that the tribe can continue to live. Swayne shoots the "beast".

background

The film was produced by Congo Pictures. Although the film won over critics like Mar Tinée from the Chicago Tribune , it was quickly exposed as a fake. It was found that a large part of the scenes came from Grace Mackenzie's Heart of Africa (1915). The film also mainly shows archive footage of orangutans , not gorillas. In addition, most of the scenes were filmed at William Siegel's Los Angeles Zoo , which was specially set up for jungle films. Recordings of an actor in a gorilla costume were also added. Of the rest of the animals that were filmed, some don't even live in Africa. Some blacks from South Central were also used as actors as well as women from showbiz who were supposed to portray blacks by blackfacing .

The film was brought to theaters with a marketing campaign unprecedented at the time. The lobby was transformed into an African collection and leaflets were distributed to draw attention to the documentary sensation. At the Orpheum Cinema in San Francisco, the film grossed $ 23,000 in one week. The film also broke the house record there in Seattle. It was bought by RKO Pictures , which secured national rights. In total, he is said to have grossed around 4 million US dollars.

The American Nature Association and its journal Nature Magazine warned against this and similar films because they would drag the documentary genre through the dirt. The American Society of Mammalogists described the film as "a grotesque misinterpretation of the actual history of Africa, which still claims to represent a real expedition". The film was also labeled racist because it took up stereotypes of black sexuality and alleged zoophilia and presented them as facts. Eventually, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America Company intervened and banned the film. However, since Hollywood was still in the pre-code era , this was handled inconsistently. Three years later, the Federal Trade Commission banned the production company from advertising with the words "authentic" and confirmed that the word "ingagi" was a filmmaker's invention.

meaning

The film was considered one of the earliest exploitation films . The film set multiple box office records and was so popular that a Tin Pan Alley songwriter dedicated the song My Ingagi to the monkey .

The financial success of the film is said to have inspired RKO Pictures to give Merian C. Cooper's King Kong and the White Woman (1933) the green light.

Contrary to rumors to the contrary, the film is not considered lost. However, it has not yet been entered on the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress .

The 1940 film Son of Ingagi took over the eponymous character. However, it was no longer a fake documentary, but an independently produced horror film, which is considered the first horror film with a completely black cast.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Illegitimate dad of 'Kong'. In: Los Angeles Times . January 8, 2006, Retrieved July 29, 2020 (American English).
  2. ^ Going ape. The Guardian , April 14, 2000, accessed July 29, 2020 .
  3. ^ A b Rhona J. Berenstein: White Heroines and Hearts of Darkness: Race, Gender and Disguise in 1930s Jungle Films . In: Film History . tape 6 , no. 3 , 1994, ISSN  0892-2160 , p. 314-339 .
  4. ↑ Gregg Mitman: Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film . University of Washington Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-295-80372-2 , pp. 51–54 ( google.de [accessed July 29, 2020]).
  5. ↑ a b Kaleb Horton: The Old Story Of King Kong. In: MTV.com. Retrieved July 29, 2020 .
  6. ^ Twelfth Annual Meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists . In: Journal of Mammalogy . tape 11 , no. 3 , 1930, ISSN  0022-2372 , p. 426-431 , doi : 10.2307 / 1374161 .
  7. ↑ Gregg Mitman: Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film . University of Washington Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-295-80372-2 , pp. 52 ( google.de [accessed on July 29, 2020]).
  8. ↑ Science News: The Gorilla Film "Ingagi" . In: Science . tape 71 , no. 1849 , June 6, 1930, ISSN  0036-8075 , p. x – x , doi : 10.1126 / science.71.1849.0x , JSTOR : 1655641 .
  9. ↑ Julia Lee, Henry Louis Gates: Our Gang: A Racial History of The Little Rascals . University of Minnesota Press, 2015, ISBN 978-0-8166-9822-6 , pp. 134 f ., doi : 10.5749 / j.ctt18s30zn.10 .
  10. ^ Ingagi: The Film of a Thousand Wonders. In: clevelandhistorical.org. Retrieved July 29, 2020 .
  11. ^ A b Robin R. Means Coleman: Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present . Routledge, 2013, ISBN 978-1-136-94294-5 , pp. 39 f . ( google.de [accessed on July 30, 2020]).
  12. ↑ Some Films Not Yet Named to the Registry | Film Registry | National Film Preservation Board | Programs at the Library of Congress | Library of Congress. Retrieved July 29, 2020 .
  13. ↑ Tensecondsfromnow Says: Son of Ingagi (1940). In: The EOFFTV Review. July 14, 2020, accessed on July 30, 2020 .