Gungala la vergine della giungla

Having watched so much Euro-Cult dross this year, I only decided to check this out against my better judgement at the last minute...but how could I resist after reading its review on "Stracult", which described the film as "a great and immortal piece of ultra-cult"!! Anyway, what promised to be the exploits of an eroticized female Tarzan, alas, turned out to be a rather dismal jungle adventure with the scantily-clad title character actually not appearing all that much (and, given the time of release, the nudity is still very much downplayed)! The plot deals with the usual themes of such films: a jungle expedition in which one of the members has ulterior motives for joining it; at one point, the party is captured by a native tribe; when they come upon the "Panther Woman", some of them want to communicate with her while others just want to shoot her, etc.

Kitty Swan looks good in the title role but doesn't otherwise create much of an impression - but, then, she is saddled with a one-dimensional character only able to growl like a jungle beast (which she reprised the following year in GUNGALA, THE NAKED PANTHER [1968], directed by Ruggero Deodato!); even so, I was more interested in statuesque blonde Linda Veras (who would soon appear in two excellent Spaghetti Westens by Sergio Sollima - FACE TO FACE [1967] and RUN, MAN, RUN [1968]). Surely one of the most irritating aspects about the film is that, for long stretches, the characters speak only in the natives' tongue, with little understanding allowed to the audience as to what's being discussed (which certainly didn't help my involvement any)!