Bomba on Panther Island Film Review

I wasn't sure if I was watching an Andy Hardy movie or a Bomba movie. Poor Bomba, chased after by two white women out in the jungle where savagery and desires combine for tawdry discoveries. Where the growls of the women are louder than the growls from the bush. Bomba discovers that being the only white stud around has its advantages. If only he knew what to do with it. Instead, he walks around with a simpleton grin on his face, not realizing he is the fox in the hen house. Oh, what to do? One of the women pretends not to like him while the other laps him up like fresh milk. Where is Judge Hardy when you need him. It should be an easy decision. The lapper is Lita Baron, a singer with the Xavier Cugat Band and later married to Rory Calhoun. Born in Spain. Come on Bomba.

This is really quite bad with basically nothing happening for the first 60 minutes other than Bomba becoming a yo-yo in the battle of the sexes and then in the final ten minutes we get a jungle fire, a storm, a fight with the panther and a sad farewell. A black panther has killed Bomba's best friend. A monkey. We barely got to know him and he was gone. This so outrages Bomba that he spends the rest of the film trailing it when he isn't on a different kind of scent. He comes across an American and his sister (Allene Roberts) trying to clear the land to set up a plantation. He is a racist asshole who keeps complaining that the black employees don't work hard enough, don't saw the right way, are too superstitious, are too stupid while she whines about being in the jungle when she would rather be home with her friends. Well, she has a point. Who would want to live out in the jungle where there isn't a white man for miles.

Then Bomba shows up. The sister has a female companion that the natives think is the spirit of a panther but the only thing she wants to eat is Bomba. Her heart breaks into a flamenco when she sees him. With the sister it is more of a waltz. Tons of stock footage and wandering around the jungles of Los Angeles. The ending is rather amusing - spoiler alert - the sister decides she will stay and then Bomba goes, my work here is done. Goodbye. And turns away like the Lone Ranger and she basically goes, well fuck me. I want to go home. And Lita being the survivor she is, curls up on the brother's shoulder.