Great Film overall

A lot of fun.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The acting in this movie is really good.

An embezzler on the run crash lands in the middle of the African jungle. His young daughter grows up under the protection of a large gorilla and becomes known to locals as the legendary white witch. An explorer sets out on an expedition to find her.This jungle adventure is directed by Sam Newfield who is famous for having directed more films than anyone else. Nabonga is very similar in plot line to another of Newfield's films, White Pongo. Both films feature large apes who covet young white women. And both also have striking titles that are never actually used in the film at any point! This picture is a pretty campy affair with a white jungle queen who acts more like a petulant city girl. It's overall entertaining enough to an extent but at the same time it has a lot of overly familiar adventure flick elements that aren't too interesting, such as a villainous, greedy explorer on the good guy's trail. The scenes with the girl and the ape were quite good fun though and, despite being nothing too great, this one is reasonably diverting as these types of movies go.

I love jungle adventure films, me. From those crazy Tarzan films from a billion years ago, to the care-free and heart-warming Italian Cannibal films of the late seventies, you just can't go wrong with sending Whitey into some foliage (with some guides, obviously), and watching them get eaten by the locals, swallowed up by quicksand, or fall foul of some grumpy animal. Nabonga, however, doesn't have much in the way of action, has plenty of stock footage (seemingly from some turn of the century documentary), a man in a gorilla suit, and not much else. I mean, the hero of the piece loses two punch-ups! What hope do we have? It involves some guy going on the lam with his kid and some money who crashes in the jungle, only for him to die and the kid to grow and become friends with a gorilla, who protects her. Some guy comes looking for the cash, and some other people want the cash too.Alright, it's not that bad, really. The stock footage is almost as prominent in the amazing Zombie Creeping Flesh, and give me a guy in a gorilla suit over Andy Serkis any day, but there's still too much mooching around for it to be anything more than average. It's good that the kid lost in the jungle had a dress that grew as she grew though…who knows what other lost technology resides in the great green unknown?

It's just an adventure story. A young girl is raised by a gorilla after her father, a crook, dies. A really boring man played by Buster Crabbe finds her and needs her to give some money and jewels back. Of course, there is another guy who wants the loot. Most of the movie is the discovery of the White Witch who is really just a good looking young woman and the efforts to keep her alive by the duo of Crabbe and gorilla. Most of the scenes are silly and forgettable. There are a lot of animals (stock footage) and lots of vines and trees. It is entirely predictable and there are few surprises. The relationship between the girl and Crabbe goes nowhere. Can you imagine the reality of her being put back into Western society.

"A young girl is the only survivor of a plane crash that carried herself and her father, a bank embezzler escaping with the money. Befriended by a gorilla that protects and cares for her, the girl grows up in the jungle guarding the fortune. The son of the bank president, from which the money was stolen, tracks down the girl to recover the money, but falls for the girl and must protect her from an unscrupulous guide, who wants the money for himself," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.The "stock footage" is so obvious, it's annoying. Co-stars Buster Crabbe (as Ray Gorman) and Julie London (as Doreen Stockwell) are in very good shape. Mr. Crabbe gets to show off his chest, but Ms. London remains covered. Crabbe plays his scenes with London notably well (like a muscular Ozzie Nelson). In her first appearance on film, London is very beautiful. Since Ray "Nbongo" Corrigan plays the gorilla named "Samson", probably "Nabonga" means gorilla in another language.** Nabonga (1/25/44) Sam Newfield ~ Buster Crabbe, Julie London, Barton MacLane, Fifi D'Orsay