Excellent but underrated film

A Masterpiece!

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It takes nearly two reels for this to get its plot started, focusing on stock footage and shots of cute wild baby animals (including a bear!) and the viciousness of nature, mostly thanks to the presence of destructive men. The hidden city from the first film has been exposed, so Jim ventures out to deal with restless natives, discovering another hidden civilization where valuable crystals become the source of greed. Young Elena Verdugo, as the daughter of a really ancient king, becomes Weissmuller's latest eye candy for nearly 70 minutes, while he struggles to prevent this seemingly peaceful land. Meanwhile, there's a man in an ape suit (holding a baby chimp) fighting a lion, rescued by Jim who wrestles with it as mama ape looks on then cozies up to him in thanks.There's a vicious femme fatale (Myrna Dell) obviously up to no good, Caucasian actors in jeweled turbans playing African royalty and all sorts of nefarious villains with no real motive. I could easily have rated this at a 3 or 4, but it's done all so innocently and comes off as such Saturday morning fun that I couldn't bear to bomb it. At any rate, it's still better than any of the best Bomba movies I've seen, and without a doubt, any of the schlock that's being released as "entertainment" today. Dell is hysterically over the top as a blowsy Shelley Winters type, trying to seduce the not interested Weismueller. Once again, his comical crow pal and cute pup are back, adding more visual comedy to the delightfully silly story.

Johnny Weissmuller's second appearance of Jungle Jim concerns him protecting the secret and treasures of an ancient civilized tribe called Zhamm who have built a hidden city. The son of the chief has been paying court to a girl in another place giving her trinkets made of precious metal. That gets the antenna treasure of Joseph Vitale and Ralph Dunn raised.Fortunately for the good guys Jungle Jim performed an intervention when he takes sides against a lion attacking a gorilla and her baby. He also takes out a crocodile and a shark as well during the course of the film. That wins him the gratitude of the gorilla community and in the climax they prove to be of invaluable help.The Lost Tribe is high camp all the way, gloriously bad cinema, but kind of fun.

The Lost Tribe (1949) * 1/2 (out of 4) The second film in the Columbia series has a group of white folks showing up in the jungle to do whatever it takes to locate a hidden city where an unnumbered amount of diamonds are. Of course things take a violent turn so Jungle Jim (Johnny Weissmuller) must step in and put a stop to it. I'm viewing this series out of order but to date this here is without a question the worst I've seen and that's saying quite a bit because in all honesty the entire series has been pretty bad. I'm really not sure where to start but we could discuss the poor acting, the laughable rubber crocodiles or perhaps we could discuss the really bad stock footage. We could discuss all of the horrible things but what would be the point of that? Instead I'll bring up the one classic thing that makes the film worth sitting through and that's a scene towards the middle of the picture where we get a lion going up against a gorilla, which is of course just a man inside an outfit. The fight between the two was pretty exciting and I must say that it had such a campy feel to it that I couldn't help but think that the entire film should be better known to fans of bad cinema. While watching the fight I had to wonder what the guy inside the outfit was thinking. Sure, the lion was trained to work with actors but if I was inside that suit I'd be worried that the lion would think he was going up against something real. Either way, thankfully both the lion and gorilla give the best performances in the film and they keep it from being a complete bomb. Good job boys!

With the exception of CAPTIVE GIRL, this may be the worst film in the entire "Jungle Jim" series. This film is below average even for a Jungle Jim movie, and the average was pretty low to begin with. The plot is a rehash of the previous film, JUNGLE JIM (1948); bad guys from the outside want to pillage a lost city in the jungle. The city is supposed to be in some far off remote region of Africa, but judging from the film, its about an hours walk from a populated port town. This film is loaded with all kinds of plot contrivances and elements that don't ring true, even for a Jungle Jim movie. The only thing of interest is the exciting ( and pretty bizarre) final confrontation with the bad guys.