I was getting a little worried, almost an hour into the picture and Jungle Jim (Johnny Weissmuller) still hadn't tangled with a wild animal yet, but at 58:08 he makes short work of a shark - no battle actually, he just stabs it! That was right after the shark beat up on an octopus, so maybe he was too tired to fight. What's curious to me was how a shark and an octopus found their way into an African river. Besides the battle of sea creatures, we're also treated to a tussle between a pair of dinosaur impersonating lizards, one of which had a dimetrodon fin attached to it's back. Pretty cool stuff for a kid watching this stuff back in the 1950's, because after all, I was one of them.
As for the movie's main plot, you really have to pay attention to let the whole thing sink in. An evil scientific genius (Lyle Talbot) discovers that boiling igneous rock will release the liquids and gases in it's magma composition, and when common sugar is added, a residue of carbon from the burned sugar is held suspended by the magma. Then when the whole solution is immersed in cold water, what's left is re-crystallized into synthetic diamonds - Whew! When I tried it, I only got a hot, wet rock. You know, I think they made all that up.
There must have been a reason each Jungle Jim movie offered a different female lead, this time it was Sheila Ryan as spunky photographer Ann Lawrence. They're out to find a former All-American football player who went missing in the jungle some nine years earlier. The opening film credits state 'Introducing' Bob Waterfield, a real life pro player and coach for the Los Angeles Rams. The 'introduction' tag is usually meant to herald an up and coming new star, but in this case, Waterfield's performance was decidedly less successful than his football career. At least Rick Vallin turns up one more time as yet another tribal chief named Bono, causing me to wonder where the current rock star Bono's name actually came from - Hmm. And say, you know who else gets an opening film credit - Tamba The Chimp!!
I got a kick out of an early scene when Miss Lawrence first meets Jungle Jim when he saves her from drowning. Admiring his features, she asks him to 'turn your head to the right', to which he turns his head left!
Having seen about a half dozen Jungle Jim films recently, I have to admit that once viewed, they're largely forgettable, but at least when they're on they offer a lot of fun, even if some of it is just plain goofy. This one though, I must say probably had the best ending of one so far. Not only does Ann Lawrence get to kiss Jim's co-hero Bob Miller (Waterfield), but Tamba gets to plant one on Jungle Jim himself!
As for the movie's main plot, you really have to pay attention to let the whole thing sink in. An evil scientific genius (Lyle Talbot) discovers that boiling igneous rock will release the liquids and gases in it's magma composition, and when common sugar is added, a residue of carbon from the burned sugar is held suspended by the magma. Then when the whole solution is immersed in cold water, what's left is re-crystallized into synthetic diamonds - Whew! When I tried it, I only got a hot, wet rock. You know, I think they made all that up.
There must have been a reason each Jungle Jim movie offered a different female lead, this time it was Sheila Ryan as spunky photographer Ann Lawrence. They're out to find a former All-American football player who went missing in the jungle some nine years earlier. The opening film credits state 'Introducing' Bob Waterfield, a real life pro player and coach for the Los Angeles Rams. The 'introduction' tag is usually meant to herald an up and coming new star, but in this case, Waterfield's performance was decidedly less successful than his football career. At least Rick Vallin turns up one more time as yet another tribal chief named Bono, causing me to wonder where the current rock star Bono's name actually came from - Hmm. And say, you know who else gets an opening film credit - Tamba The Chimp!!
I got a kick out of an early scene when Miss Lawrence first meets Jungle Jim when he saves her from drowning. Admiring his features, she asks him to 'turn your head to the right', to which he turns his head left!
Having seen about a half dozen Jungle Jim films recently, I have to admit that once viewed, they're largely forgettable, but at least when they're on they offer a lot of fun, even if some of it is just plain goofy. This one though, I must say probably had the best ending of one so far. Not only does Ann Lawrence get to kiss Jim's co-hero Bob Miller (Waterfield), but Tamba gets to plant one on Jungle Jim himself!