Savage Girl

Legend tells of a mysterious dark-haired white woman deep in the African jungle, a goddess who possesses great power over wild beasts. Famed hunter Jim Franklin dismisses the story and plans a trip to the dangerous region to capture wild animals. Financing the trip is an eccentric millionaire, Amos P. Stitch, and guiding them is an unscrupulous explorer named Alec Bernouth. The hunting party captures a ferocious lion, under the unseen gaze of the white goddess. The leopard-skin clad beauty releases the lion from its cage, but is caught in a trap set by the hunters. Her striking beauty captures the heart of Franklin, but Bernouth has more insidious intentions for the girl. Banished from the group when his rape attempt is foiled, Bernouth plots his revenge by enlisting the help of hostile natives who would like nothing more than to kill Franklin and the girl. The goddess must rely on her extraordinary powers to save them.

The Savage Girl features old-fashioned jungle thrills of the popular Tarzan films while incorporating the fascination with gorillas many films in the genre display. A very modest precursor to King Kong's big arrival the following year, The Savage Girl was a blueprint for many grade-B jungle adventures, including Nabonga in 1944 with Buster Crabbe. Director Harry Fraser was proficient in westerns during the 1930s but returned to the jungle for more simian adventures with White Gorilla in 1945. Actress Rochelle Hudson kept busy in many B-pictures during the '30s and '40s including Les Miserables (1935), Mr. Moto Takes A Chance (1938) and a film called Konga (1940), which was ironically about a stallion, not an ape. She also was renowned for her prominent role as Natalie Wood's mother in the classic Rebel Without A Cause (1955). Hudson revived her career in the mid-sixties with appearances in the cult horror movies The Night Walker, Strait-Jacket and Dr. Terror's Gallery Of Horrors, her last film.