Valley of Head Hunters (1953) User Reviews

Not the worst Sam Katzman's stuff

[searchanddestroy-1 · 1 June 2014]

I can bare that kind of Sam Katzman's production, no more than 70 minutes length at the most. A rather amusing time waster that you may forget one hour after the viewing. Many stock shot - footage material - unconvincing, and I would say laughable, acting and of course a tepid directing. But who would ask more for this grade Z stuff made for the big screen. Yes, I can stand this Sam Katzman's prod piece of work, but certainly not his serials, all made for Columbia Pictures in the late forties and till the late fifties. Those serials were a real killing, even for the most hard boiled serial fan - I am not, I admit, except for Republic ones. A million miles away from Columbia serials.

This film made entirely in studios - who would expect locations - I repeat, is lightly better than the Bomba films, but far worse than the Tarzan features. I won't class it among the Jungle Jim series. All seem the same for me. I won't tell if it is the best JJ ever or the second or the worst, the last in the best JJ of the whole series.

If you are a fan or just a time killer, don't hesitate.

Not losing my head over silly Tamba...er Jungle Jim movie.

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 8 July 2017]

Certainly, Tamba is an adorable Chimp, funny and friendly, filled with pranks, and get this, heroics. But this is a Jungle Jim film, still going, and some good ideas every now and then to keep the series fresh. But Tamba's moved from cute sidekick to major character, turning the series into a cartoon. In this entry, Johnny Weusmueller deals with an evil explorer (Robert Foulk) who uses hideous threats to score mineral rites, basically blackmailing the chief of a former tribe of headhunters and stirring up their primitive antics again. It's up to Johnny Weismueller's Jungle Jim and an African born white woman (Christine Larson) to stop the terror and bring Foulk to justice.

It's an entertaining entry in the series which contains a ton of thrills but gets bogged down in the overdone silly antics of Tamba. The uprisings and native tribe ceremonies are frightening to the possibilities of their outcome, and the conflict is pretty potent and even politically realistic. But the overabundance of backflips by Tamba and his forced "cuteness" adds a desperate feeling to keeping audiences interested, and that makes the series seem either ripe for a TV transfer or a conclusion to the series altogether.

Pico I'm going with M'Gono!

[kapelusznik18 · 4/10 · 28 September 2015]

****SPOILERS**** A chunky looking Jungle Jim played by Johnny Weissmuller- far from the Olympic God he looked like as the undefeated swimming champion in the 1924 Olympics- gets involved with a tribe of headhunters who are not really headhunters that are working for the unscrupulous American gangsters Arco & Pico, Robert Foulk & Joseph Jr. It's Arco & Pico who are using out of town native mercenaries to terrorize the native population into accepting their paid and bought off stooge M'Gono, Vince M. Townsend.Jr. as their chief.

It's when Pico found oil seeping out of the swamps in the region him and his criminal associate Argo came up with this plan to get native chieftain M'Gono, whom he got off from a murder conviction, to take control of the native tribe and have him give them the exclusive right to drill for oil there. The plan is to get a bunch of natives disguised as headhunters who go on a rampage terrorizing the population so they will vote "The man who can get the job done" M'Gono into office over his opponents Chief's Bagava & Gitzhak,Don Blackman & Paul Thompson, who refuse to give into them.

***SPOILERS***Jungle Jim hampered by the just graduated from West Point Lt. Barry, Steven Ritch, who thinks that he's the reincarnation of Nnapoleon and has no idea about conducting jungle warfare where Jim is forced to goes on his own together with his pet monkey Tamba to stop Aeco & Pico and their fake headhunters from, by causing chaos in the region,taking over. It's when Jungle Jim exposes the headhunters as being stooges in getting M'Gono into power that all hell breaks loose with the local natives, in finding out that they've been tricked into making M'Gono their chief, turn on them and their boss Arco who ends up getting impaled on a fallen tree with his fellow gangster shot full of arrows, by the outraged natives, as he tries to make his getaway by rowboat!