Her Jungle Love

Trigger warning - this film contains the sweetest kissing and the cutest Ray Milland ever! I could watch Dorothy Lamour play with him on the beach for two straight hours, but they had to come up with some plot and soon enough there's this army of extras interrupting their foreplay. And just when you think they spoiled it, Dorothy emerges from all that mess in a spectacular ceremonial outfit and then some horrific action Indian Jones style follows. Photography is like a dream and highlights the beauty of the main protagonists so much so that it can cause serious hyperventilation - be warned.

Bette Davis once lamented that 'Mr Skeffington' would have looked lovely in colour but for financial reasons only the bad scripts got that embellishment; which explains why Technicolor frittered away its youth on escapist nonsense like 'Her Jungle Love'.

Later described by Ray Milland as "my first honest-to-God leading role in America" naturally he seems rather above it all, although getting to kiss Lamour probably compensated for being briefly required to sing.

J. Carroll Naish bares his teeth as a white-hating idol worshipper who along with his followers (SPOILER COMING:) comes to grief amid a welter of boulders and crocodiles; while along with the Technicolor the eight-armed idol itself is probably the most visually interesting feature of the film (although you only get a really good look at it in the publicity stills).

When an airplane pilot by the name of "Roy Atkins" (Archie Twitchell) goes missing somewhere in the South China Sea two other pilots named "Bob Mitchell" (Ray Milland) and "Jimmy Wallace" (Lynne Overman) are ordered to fly over a certain area in search of him. Unfortunately, they encounter a storm while doing so and have to crash land on what appears to be an unpopulated, volcanic island. Not long afterward they meet an attractive young woman by the name of "Tura" (Dorothy Lamour) who has with her a chimpanzee and lion cub as her only companions. But what they don't realize at the time is that extremely hostile natives occasionally visit the island from time to time and that their lives are in great danger if discovered by them. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a rather dated film which didn't really get interesting until about halfway through. Likewise, although the scenery was nice I didn't especially care for the performance of Lynne Overman who became somewhat annoying quite early on in the movie. That being said, while it wasn't a bad film by any means, I honestly expected better and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Average.

How well I remember first seeing this movie over 60 years ago, and the climatic scene of the volcanic eruption and the crocodile invasion has stuck with me ever since. It was Dorothy Lamour's third movie in which she spends all her time in a sarong, and does it very well - the second time they put Ray Milland with her also!. The story is fairly hackneyed, but the film looks great in Technicolor, and the visual effects for 1938 are quite good. I enjoyed the principals, along with the supporting cast of Lynne Overman (who apparently had to be in every epic produced by Paramount) , and J. Carrol Naish as the required villain who kidnapped Dorothy as a child, and of course, gets his come-uppance in a spectacular way. A good way to spend and hour and a half, but cannot be taken seriously.