Jungle Jim - Jungle Manhunt Film Review

I am about to become a very rich man. Beyond my wildest dreams. The next American billionaire refusing to pay taxes. And it is so simple. All I need is igneous rock with magma within, heat it up, pour sugar on it. Then cold water and you have perfect diamonds! I don't know if I should have shared this with you but we are all friends here. And to think I got that recipe from a Jungle Jim film. You can trust Jungle Jim. This is a standard Jungle Jim film - but it inches close to his late Tarzan films as a jungle tribe is conquering other tribes and taking the men prisoner. Behind all this savagery is of course a white capitalist who is making those diamonds. And it throws in a few kaiju monsters just for the hell of it.

It begins with Jim and his best friend Tamba fishing at the riverside. Tamba is of course a chimp. Jim bores the hell out of anything human. The film does a nice job of using archival footage mixed in with the film - not just the usual animals but some of the natives on boats going through the rapids and others fishing from a wooden structure that goes over the river which was actually pretty interesting. Then on green screen a white woman (Sheila Ryan) is also in a canoe in the rapids and falls over. Jim rescues her. Weissmuller is looking fit here as if he took some of those late afternoons drinking sessions off. She comes to and seems not at all surprised to see a white man there. This is the jungle honey. She goes "are you, are you, it can't be, are you" and I thought for sure she was going to say Tarzan but no luck. It is another white man who disappeared nine years ago that she is looking for. For a big story.

This evil tribe dresses up some of their men as skeletons and attack. One village was having a lovely barbecue with dancing girls and I thought that would be a nice vacation spot until the bad guys show up. Jim comes later and meets up with the white guy that the girl was looking for and he takes them to his village where he has introduced modernity in clothes lines and sidewalks. They think he is a God. He admits it's nice being a God and he doesn't want to go home. Oddly, the tribe's people look right out of South America with their skin color and long black hair. This is fairly common in the later Tarzan and the Jungle Jim films. Clearly, it was a decision not to use black actors. They did in the early films. I would guess that research showed that audiences preferred their natives a lighter shade of dark. On their way to attack the bad guys they come across two giant lizards having a fight. I was impressed that they spent the money until I read that the footage is from the 1940 One Million Years BC. And I was going to give the film a 3 rating for the effort. In the end - spoiler alert - the other guy gets to kiss the girl and Jim kisses Tamba. Who is to say which couple has it better.