The Jungle (1952)

A great white hunter and an Indian princess trek into the Indian jungle to investigate a number of wild animal stampedes which have resulted in the deaths of many people. On their journey, ... See full summary »

Director:

William Berke

Writers:

Orville H. Hampton (additional dialogue), Carroll Young

Stars:

Rod Cameron, Cesar Romero, Marie Windsor

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Rod Cameron	...	Steve Bentley
Cesar Romero	...	Rama Singh
Marie Windsor	...	Princess Mari
Ruby Mayer	...	Aunt Sumira (as Sulochana)
M.N. Nambiar	...	Mahaji
David Abraham	...	Prime Minister
Ramakrishna	...	Babu, the young boy
Chitra Devi	...	Dancer

Storyline

A great white hunter and an Indian princess trek into the Indian jungle to investigate a number of wild animal stampedes which have resulted in the deaths of many people. On their journey, they discover a herd of prehistoric wooly mammoths are responsible for the terror!

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Plot Keywords:

jungle | prehistoric times

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Taglines:

FILMED IN MYSTERIOUS INDIA! (original print ad - all caps)

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Genres:

Adventure | Drama | Fantasy

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Details

Country:

India USA

Language:

English Tamil

Release Date:

1 August 1952 (USA)

Also Known As:

Kaadu

Filming Locations:

Iverson Ranch - 1 Iverson Lane, Chatsworth, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Lippert Pictures, Voltaire-Modern Theatres Ltd.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

73 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White Black and White (Sepiatone) (original release)

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

While most reference books give Marie Windsor's character name as "Princess Mari", her character's name in the movie is actually "Princess Sita".

User Reviews

A Different Kind of B Film

Jungle, The (1952)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Low-budget nonsense about Princess Mari (Marie Windsor) who moves back to India where hunter Steve Bentley (Rod Cameron) and Rama Singh (Cesar Romero) fight over her. While all of this is going on villagers are being killed by stampeding elephants so the three love birds go into the jungle and discover woolly mammoths. The jungle film had been around since the silent days and when you hear jungle and low-budget you typically expect all sorts of stock footage mixed in with the actors on a sound stage. It's shocking but that's actually not the case here because this film gets the added benefit of having actually been shot in India and these locations are certainly a major plus. Sadly, the rest of the film is a major chore to sit through because the 73-minute running time is pretty much all start and very little end. We know we're going into the film to see the "monsters" but they don't show up until around three-minutes left to go in the film so we have to sit through countless dialogue scenes that just go no where and it's clear the only reason they're in the film is to fatten up the running time. We get quite a bit of footage of local animals including several elephants as well as lions, tigers and boars. We even get a pretty violent fight between a boar and a tiger that might be the highlight to many even though it never gets too graphic. Being able to see all this stuff was a bonus but the rest of the footage is pretty lame. The sight of the woolly mammoths are a real treat because they're just elephants with some sort of rug thrown over them. I will give the producers credit because they don't look too horribly bad but at the same time it's still very obvious at the trick they did. The three leads are decent in their parts but none of them are worthy of awards. I'd say it's a safe bet that all three were happy with their trip to India so we're lucky we got anything from them. Director Berke was a veteran of this type of film has he was behind the camera on several of the Jungle Jim movies but I can't say I'm impressed with his work as he brings no energy to anything we see.