Steve Holloway (Mikel Conrad) and his crew are on a bombing mission. They crash into the ocean and two life rafts are deployed. In the raft with Steve are Benny (Richard Monahan), Andy (Morgan Jones) and Ed (Mark Lowell). During the night a storm comes up. In the morning the other raft is nowhere in sight. The guys drift for eight days before they see land. It appears to be an island in the distance. After paddling they eventually reach the beach. Exhausted the guys fall asleep.
When they wake up, they are surrounded by women with spears. They have landed on an island where time has stood still. The only human inhabitants are a race of ancient Druid women. The guys are taken prisoner. The leader is Sandra (Doris Merrick). Sandra believes they are in league with the hairy men, a tribe of Neanderthals that have attacked the tribe before killing their men and kidnapping the women. Now all that is left of the tribe are some of the women. Sandra doesn’t trust the men and wants to put them to death. The other women of the tribe want to keep the guys for breeding purposes.
Sandra secretly releases the guys and tells them to cross a valley to get to freedom. What she doesn’t tell them is that the valley is full of dinosaurs and man-eating plants. Sandra hopes the guys will be eaten. There are some close calls so the guys decide they’re better off battling the women. They end up being rescued by some of the women who didn’t know about Sandra’s plan.
When the hairy men attack, Steve and his crew fight them back with their guns. Sandra realizes that the guys really are helpful. Steve believes that the hairy men haven’t gone for good and are preparing for another attack. They do. That’s also the time that the island volcano decides to erupt.
“Untamed Women” was released in 1952 and was directed by W. Merle Connell. It is a low budget science fiction jungle film with war undertones.
The dinosaurs are mostly lizards, armadillos, and puppets, all backscreen or forced perspective. I don’t know why it is that they always put armadillos in low budget dinosaur movies. The dinosaur footage is mostly from “One Million BC” 1941 and I believe so is the volcano.
The movie is full of plot holes and bad acting but it is also full of camp and scantily clad jungle women. How Druids ended up in the South Pacific speaking Shakespearian English is not dwelt on too much. Still the movie was fun, mostly because of the Slurpasaurs.
The pseudo dinosaurs in the movie, and in every other movie with a modern-day animal dressed up as a “dinosaur”, are affectionately called Slurpasaurs. The original Slurpasaurs were lizards, iguanas, baby alligators and similar creatures with horns, fins and any number of other accoutrements glued on to them. They got their name from the slurping sounds they made, or the slurping sound effects they made, in movies. Eventually Slurpasaurs were expanded to cover everything from iguanas to pigs dressed up like triceratopses. Even the elephants from the “Star Wars” franchise that portray Banthas are a kind of Slurpasaur, not to mention the shrews in “The Killer Shrews” 1959. Slurpasaurs became any animal that was dressed up to be a dinosaur or monster.
Reportedly the German version of the movie has an additional 8 minutes added to it. The additional scene uses some German actresses and incorporates a nude scene.