Too much of everything

Just perfect...

The acting in this movie is really good.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Bomba and the Hidden City (1950) ** (out of 4) Extremely far-fetched but entertaining entry in the Monogram series has Bomba (Johnny Sheffield) witnessing a political assassination and years later the evil ruler (Paul Gulpoyle) plans on marrying a woman (Sue England) against her wishes. It's up to Bomba to try and save the girl as well as help her remember her past. This fourth film in the series is pretty camp and there's no question that it's over-the-top but I found it to be slightly entertaining simply because of all the craziness going at. At just 71-minutes the film doesn't last too long, which is always a good thing but it also manages to be rather fast paced, which was a first for the series. Director Ford Beebe actually keeps the film moving very well and we even get some decent action scenes from start to finish. This includes Bomba taking quite a bit of abuse as he tries to flee from the bad guys who are constantly shooting and throwing knives at him. The entire mystery of who the girl isn't all that hard to figure out and I'm sure the 3-year-old kids in the theater at the time figured out who she was long before it's revealed. Sheffield once again does a good job in his role of Bomba as he certainly fit the part and has no trouble playing it. England is fairly entertaining as the girl but this film clearly belongs to Gulpoyle as the crazy one. The actor really gives it his all and you can just see the glee in his eyes from getting to play a bad guy. With all of that said, this is still a low-budget Bomba movie so the various negative things are still present.

"Bomba and the Hidden City" is a slipshod chapter of a very cut rate series of adventure sagas. It was directed, however, by a master of the serial form, Forde Beebe. This kiddie clunker was the kind of thing Beebe could direct in his sleep and judging from what follows the title, that's where he spent most of his time, jungle hammock style, collecting a cool $150 salary while waiting for the bus to another part of the forest.The storyline follows our semi-intrepid jungle boy, by now really filling out his French cut Tarzan loin wrap. He galumphs and swings through the eucalyptus trees of the Santa Anita Racetrack Botanic Gardens, searching for some supposed hidden city. This "city" more of a couple of shacks with a forlorn palm-tree and a few added stumps,seems to be known by everyone especially the Arab suits, read villains. The plot is something like "Tarzan's Desert Mystery" or "Tarzan's Nazi Adventure" or "The Return of Somebody with a Name like Schnarzan". Forgive me, sometimes I get carried away with all the excitement. The city, hidden or not, has the sister of another member of the cast who may or may not have been there before. Nobody knows for sure. Also, in the village is somebody called "Ferengi", perhaps an escapee from a space opera, though that is probably doubtful. As can be expected, Bomba makes everything right while hardly having to fling his spear.The bad guys get their well deserved drenching and just when we are sitting on the edge of our thrones with the possibility of the jungle boy getting his first lady friend, the end comes. But one big thing we can be sure of, in the next outing of our titular hero, he still won't have any body hair, a true "child" until all the film runs out!

***SPOILERS*** Bomba, Johnny Sheffield,gets himself in hot water here by being Johnny on the Spot in witnessing the murder of pretty Zita's, Sue England, parents and living to talk about it. This happened a while ago back in WWII when the person who took over Zita's father leadership of the Hidden City Hassan, Paul Gulpoyle, was working with Gen. Rommel's Afrika Corps as him being a traitor to his people.We have to wait until the film "Bomba and the Hidden City" is almost over for Bomba to reveal his big secret which he kept from Zita who from the shock of her parents being murdered had completely lost her memory about that tragic event! But of course Hassan and his top henchman Abudllah, Charles La Torrer, didn't forget what they did and try eventing they can to shut Bomba up before he spills the beans on them!Bomba does his usual heroics in the movie swinging on tree vines and saving damsels, or Zita, in distress but of course he needs help from his many jungle friends, monkeys and chimpanzees, to do it. As for the beautiful Zita who's been adopted by her now step father Raschid, Leon Belasco, she has no idea to who she really is which is the only reason keeping that's her alive! That's until a sharp eyed Bomba finds a number of snapshot photos of her and her real parents to jog back her memory. The funny thing about all that is that it was Hassan himself, her parents murderer, who unknowingly provided Zita or Bomba with the incriminating photos!***SPOILERS*** Bomba who was on the run throughout the entire movie from the Hassan Mob finally turns the tables on them with the help of his friends great white hunter Dennis Johnson, Damian O'Flynn, and his faithful native companion Hadja, Smoki Whitfield. It's really that double-crossing and sleazy rat Hassan who ends up really getting the worst of it, of what his gang of cut throats got, in the entire movie. Running for his life from Bomba and his monkey friends in the jungle Hassan ended up, by falling into the river, as food for the local crocodile population! The hungry crocodiles in how many they were and how little Hassan, being of average size and weight, had to offer them just couldn't get enough of the guy.

Although Bomba And The Hidden City has some oblique references to the real outside world when the late World War II is mentioned, this one has to rate as one of the lesser Bomba The Jungle Boy Features.This film finds Johnny Sheffield oddly enough the witness to an assassination in the jungle of the former rulers of the Hidden City which has a Moslem culture. The surviving daughter Sue England grew up like the other twin in The Man In The Iron Mask with no knowledge of her legacy. It's a case of jungle amnesia. If he knew the usurper veteran movie villain Paul Guilfoyle would kill her.A lot of the plot here really doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I blame that on the bad editing at Monagram Pictures. And Bomba also has a few escapes that should never have happened.