Scientist Susan (Jenny Neumann) goes to the African jungle to find her
husband, who has gone missing on a mission to find the missing link. She
is supported by fellow scientist Paul (Garth Pillsbury), but unfortunately
also by journalist David (Walt Robin) and his wife Laura (Barbara Leigh).
Now Laura is not too bad a person, but David is really in league with
poachers Brady (Stuart Lancaster) and Sikes (Marius Mazmanian), the very
guys who have killed her husband to capture a bunch of missing links -
here called homo habilis, and later near men - and make a
fortune off them. Soon enough, Susan has made contact with the near men
and has started studying their habits and learning their language - heck,
she has even started to have sex with one of them - while David and his
cutthroat friends have made Paul and Laura their captives, and David is
asshole enough to encourage Brady and Sikes to rape Laura, too. David and
Laura manage to free themselves and make an escape though. Soon enough,
the two of them run into Susan, who tells them about her findings, and
they tell her what has happened to them in the meantime. Despite their
ordeal, Susan asks them to stay and guard her back in the name of science,
and despite their ordeal, they agree in a heartbeat. Soon Susan has
usurped a high position in the near man tribe, basically I guess because
of her looks, her willingness to have sex, and because she knows about the
white man's weapons - because eventually, David, Brady and Sikes move in
on the near men, and it's only thanks to Susan that only one near man is
killed and it doesn't end in a bloodbath. So Susan and the near men, aided
by Paul and Laura, start the counter attack, lure David and company into
an area riddled with tracks ... and once the traps have sprung, the near
men slaughter them. And to kill David the ringleader, the near men even
learn how to fire a gun ... In the end, Susan decides to stay with the
near men, her newfound tribe, while Paul and Laura return to civilisation
vowing to tell noone of the near men's existence. So ok, this
is one bad film: The basic plot is downright silly, the storytelling is
full of narrative implausibilities, the cast is below average (though at
least the girls look nice and get topless), the missing links look
ridiculous, and the directorial effort is definitely less than inspired
... and yet, the movie is just too much fun not to be liked, at least by a
trash film enthusiast like myself. I mean, this is not arthouse cinema,
world cinema, a message film, doesn't give a fuck about being
ethnologically correct or relevant, there is no hard scientific background
to anything shown on screen, this is just a silly and a little sleazy low
budget piece of escapism - taske it seriously and you'll hate it, but
don't and you will be wildly amused ...
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