"Untamed Women" was a long forgotten United Artists release from 1952, its star Mikel Conrad having previously directed and starred in 1949's equally obscure "The Flying Saucer," which never suggests that its saucer comes from outer space. Director W. Merle Connell stayed on the fringes of Hollywood, usually as an editor, though among the films he photographed were John Carradine's "The Unearthly" and Phil Tucker's "The Cape Canaveral Monster." This was the last feature for screenwriter George Wallace Sayre, whose prior credits include the 1939 Boris Karloff vehicle "The Man They Could Not Hang," John Carradine's 1944 "Alaska" at Monogram, and the studio's 1945 Charlie Chan entry "The Shanghai Cobra." The late 40s and early 50s saw a rather large number of low grade 'Lost World' efforts like "Unknown World," "Two Lost Worlds," "Lost Continent," "The Jungle," and "Captive Women," all utilizing the same stock footage of lizards posing as dinosaurs from Hal Roach's 1940 "One Million B.C." "Untamed Women" is told in flashback by the only survivor of a WW2 bomber crew of four whose plane went down in the Pacific, drifting for days before reaching an island inhabited by scantily clad cave women, their first thought to capture the 'hairy men' who have a history of killing. Once the quartet prove to be friends, the girls fall all over each other to claim one as a mate, despite the protestations of high priestess Sandra (Doris Merrick). The boys survive attacks from a man eating plant and a single roaming dinosaur before a large number of cavemen appear to claim their brides (reliable Bronson Canyon again), most of their ammunition used to repel them. The entire pointless exercise concludes with a volcanic eruption that claims all the lives on the island, save the one man who overcomes his amnesia to tell the impossible tale. Lyle Talbot is the one familiar face, as the doctor who opens and closes the picture, his best known genre credits opposite Bela Lugosi, "One Body Too Many," "Glen or Glenda," and "Plan 9 from Outer Space." There's always camp value in seeing perfectly coiffed models trying to pass themselves off as prehistoric women, their tribal dances offering additional eye candy, and there is some attempt to meld live actors with stock footage but it's really a lost cause, these Untamed Women all looking quite docile to this viewer.
