Ingagi (Lost 1930 Found-Footage Film)

Ingagi is a 1930 found-footage horror film directed by William S. Campbell, with a cast consisting largely of local Los Angeles performers, the majority of them African-American. The film depicts a research party's encounter with a tribe in the Congo region whose members allegedly hold bestality rites with giant gorillas.

In addition to being perhaps the first entry in the found-footage genre, the film is also famous as the inspiration for King Kong. It is also somewhat notorious for the controversy surrounding its release. Initially marketed as an ethnographic documentary film, Ingagi was soon exposed as a hoax when an audience member recognized an actor playing one of the tribesmen. This led the MPAA, then known as the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Accosiation, to issue a cease-and-desist order against the film's distributors, who in turn sued the MPPDA for causing them to lose profits. A few months later, a private detective working for the MPPDA managed to track down stunt performer Charles Gemora, who portrayed the lead gorilla, and convinced him to sign an affidavit acknowledging his participation in the film. It was also revealed that most of the footage was not shot on location in Africa but rather at the Los Angeles Zoo, while several other scenes had been stolen from an earlier film, prompting yet another lawsuit.

In addition, the American Society of Mammalogists questioned the credentials of the film's lead explorer, Sir Hubert Winstead, leading to an investigation by the Better Business Bureau revealing that no such individual actually existed. The ASM also revealed the Tortadillo, a species of venomous reptile portrayed in the film, to be little more than a leopard tortoise with various prosthetics attached. In the end, the overwhelming amount of evidence against Ingagi convinced the Federal Trade Commision to issue a statement prohibiting any further distribution unless the filmmakers acknowledged their product as being a work of fiction. This evidently never happened, and the film ultimately fell into obscurity.

With the exception of a few screenshots and some publicity material, Ingagi is believed to be all but lost, the original masters having most likely degraded to the point of being unusable.