Absolutely Fantastic

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

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

I enjoy a good pulp adventure story with an exotic setting, but it's been a long time since I've seen one as silly as this.The sets are ultra-silly to begin with: other than yonder copse of trees, the background is largely devoid of vegetation, which is awfully strange for the jungle deep in darkest Africa. It doesn't take very long until we see our first tiger battle (tigers being an Asian cat, mark ye well)--and the tiger takes on a domestic Philippine water buffalo, no less. To be honest, we're positively overflowing with tigers, which is silly, insofar as any ecosystem is awfully thin on apex predators and quite heavy on prey animals.From the outset, Buster Crabbe's acting is beneath terrible. Frankly, it sounds as if he's reading from a canned script--and applying just about as much interest: I expect him to next say, "Yes, Jim, let's head over to the . . . hold up while I flip the page here . . . the, um, Lagoon of the Dead." Realism is scarcely contributed by the lily-white staff of his hunter's cabin (the term for "hunter" is "shikari," but I can't remember the spiffy Swahili term for his cabin) or by the Polynesian or Hawaiian-looking dude who bangs drums Hawaiian style: I expected him to presently dig into some coconuts and pineapples! Pretty soon, we're off to the native village, where the Viking-helmeted witch doctor (Vikings didn't actually have horned helmets: let that be our little secret) is leading some inscrutable ritual involving sticks. Oh, and the witch doctor's name is Hakeem--which, when I last checked, is, like, extremely Arabic. Of course, Jungle Jim (I guess he's searching for his buddy, Mountain Jim) is climbing boulders and steep cliff sides and such with the help of a sturdy lapdog that appears to be a Maltese or a Wheaten terrier or something (it's always handy to bring a hardy work dog with you on an African mission). The dog does provide comic relief, admittedly, when Jim's pet chimpanzee is upset by something and wants to hide his eyes behind something warm and fluffy. Whoa, suddenly we have an alligator battle! Unfortunately, the alligator (or was it a crocodile?) is the most obvious rubber model I've ever seen: it doesn't even fight back, and--when Jungle Jim sticks his hunting knife into it--it doesn't even condescend to bleed. (This must be thanks to Jim's other buddy, Veterinarian Jim.) By this point, I lost interest entirely. I apologize if this review seems somewhat jumpy, but it's honestly reflective of the jumpy nature of the story.Whoops . . . I spoke too soon: we have now suddenly discovered a "sacrificial temple," replete with beautiful native girls who--despite an evidently high order of civilization--think that it's appropriate to march through the underbrush in bare feet, snakes and thorns notwithstanding.Yecch.

***SPOILERS***Campy but entertaining Jungle Jim, Johnny Weissmuller, flick that really has two things in it that keeps it from sinking into the "Lagoon of the Dead": The watery grave in the movie that the local natives preform human sacrifices for their Gods. First there's the strikingly beautiful jungle girl Joan Martindale played by California swimming champ Anita Lhoest and last but not least the films final sequence. That's when hundreds of wild and shrieking monkeys, lead by Jungle Jim's pet chimpanzee Tumba, come to Jungle Jim as well as Joan and the deposed, by Witch Doctor Mahala played by Rick Vallin, former village chief the collage educated Harkim's, John Dehnrer, rescue. To make things a bit more interesting there's also former Olympic swimming champ,like Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Crabbe playing the greedy and fortune hunting Barton. A role that the clean cut all American boy, or now man, Crabbe of Flash Gordon fame rarely if ever was cast in.Nothing really new here with the stock footage, mostly shot by big game hunter and trapper Frank "Bring em back alive" Buck, about the most exciting scenes in the film. It was jungle girl Joan who had it in for the Witch Doctor Mahala in him having her parents's, who were American archaeologists, done in an leaving her an orphan. Surviving in the jungle with the help and support of her animal friends especially her pet tiger, a tiger in darkest Africa?, Joan is the only person who witnessed Mahala murder her parents! And it's her testimony before a colonial court that can end up leaving Mahala hanging at the end of a rope!***SPOILERS*** Jungle Jim together with Joan the Jungle Girl have a number of close calls in the movie but in the end their captured,together with former chief Hakim, by Mahala & Co. where their to be dumped as human sacrifices into the "Lagoon of the Dead" laden with gold jewelry to make sure that they reach the bottom and never float to the surface! It's then that all hell breaks loose with Tumba the Chimp and his band of monkeys putting an ends to Mahala's dreams of staying village chief and avoiding justice in the murder of Joan's parents! Tumba and his monkeys also saved the local colonial authorities the trouble and money of a trail for Mahala by doing him,and his followers,in themselves!

Captive Girl (1950) * 1/2 (out of 4) Johnny Weissmuller is back as Jungle Jim and this time he's trying to locate an evil white woman roaming the jungles. She actually turns out to be a good guy but the real bad people are a tribal witch doctor (John Dehner) and a fortune hunter (Buster Crabbe) seeking gold. CAPTIVE GIRL is mildly interesting because it features former Olympic gold medal winners and former screen Tarzan's Weissmuller and Crabbe going up against one another. You'd think that the producers would have taken advantage of this and done something fun with it but they don't. In the end this fourth installment turns out to be another very weak one and it's clear that there really isn't much hope for this series. The ultra low-budget is obvious because the majority of the screen time is either stock footage or quick cutaway shots to Jim's dog and a monkey that is constantly following him around. This here is probably the only reason to watch the film because throughout I noticed that the monkey would start being mean to the dog and then we'd get a fast edit to something else. They say working with animals is something directors hate and I'm going to guess that they had a lot of trouble here as the two co-stars obviously didn't get along well. Weissmuller fits the role nicely, as usual, but also as usual his line delivery is pretty much not there. Crabbe does what he can with his role as the bad guy and I'm sure character actor Dehner didn't like appearing in this type a role at this point in his career. Anita Lhoest plays the white girl and while she's cute that's about all she's able to do.

Swimming champions Johnny Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe duel it out in Captive Girl part of Weissmuller's Jungle Jim series. Crabbe was in better shape however because we get to see him stripped down where Weissmuller even in his swimming scenes is clothed.Crabbe is only one of two villains. The other being John Dehner ludicrously made up in blackface to play the tribal witch doctor. This may have been the nadir of that career, but Dehner soldiered on as he kept a straight face throughout the film.Weissmuller as the legendary Jungle Jim has been hired to go to India presumably to find and locate an evil jungle witch, a white girl roaming the jungle there with a tiger as a companion who has been running a small terrorist campaign against Dehner and his minions who've been ruling his tribe in the absence of Chief Rick Vallin who has gone off to white man's missionary school. Now Weissmuller and Vallin are traveling together, Weissmuller to find the mysterious white girl with the tiger and Vallin to reclaim his legacy.Crabbe is a treasure hunter who is after the loot that the white girl's parents found presumably as archaeologists back in the day before they disappeared.The white girl is Anita Lhoest, swimming champion of the Forties who looked real good in some tiger skin bodywear. They gave her minimal and I mean minimal dialog, less than Weissmuller and Crabbe had back when they were playing Tarzan. This was Anita's one and only film and why no one thought of her for Sheena, Queen Of The Jungle who knows?I saw these films as a lad and looking at it now I see how ludicrously bad some of these Jungle Jim films were. Positive camp.