Jungle Bride

A ship sinks off the coast of Africa, and only four survivors make it to shore: Gordon Wayne (Charles Starrett), a guitar-playing nice-guy who has been accused of killing a cop back in the U. S.; Doris Evans (Anita Page), the sister of the man "wrongly" convicted of the crime, and who made it her goal to see Gordon arrested in Europe and brought back to the U. S.; John Franklin (Kenneth Thomson), a law enforcement officer who actually did the arresting of Gordon, and who is set on taking him back for trial; and Eddie Stevens (Eddie Borden), Gordon's comic-relief buddy. These four try to make the best of their situation, constructing primitive huts when not battling fierce lions and laughing at the chimpanzees.

Why a single male lion is wandering around a dense jungle is never explained (that happened a lot in 30's jungle pictures, when the general population was unaware that lions live on the savanna). However, that's about as exciting as this gets, with the remaining animal action meager, to put it mildly. The acting is barely adequate, although the small cast is notable for a variety of reasons: Starrett was on the cusp of becoming one of the longest running B western stars (in the Durango Kid series); Page was reaching the premature end of her stardom, with her abruptly "retiring" this same year at age 23 (she later said that she had been blacklisted for refusing sex with Irving Thalberg); and bad guy Thomson was one of the founders of the Screen Actors Guild. Still, none of that makes this any more watchable.

This delicious, 63 minute pre-Code movie stars Anita Page as the "jungle bride." Doris (played by Page) believes that Gordon Wayne (Charles Starrett) committed a murder that her brother is in jail for. In an attempt to clear her brother's name, Doris and her reporter fiance track Gordon to a ship traveling from South America. A shipwreck leaves Doris, her fiance, Gordon and his best buddy all alone on a deserted island. These four agree to coexist in the hopes of survival, but it's tough! It gets even harder when Doris begins to have feelings for Gordon!

One of the movie's highlights is the island set. It reminds me of a 1930's Gilligan's Island, complete with the attractively furnished huts. Anita's wardrobe is a hoot! She was, naturally, shipwrecked in an evening gown that rips to shreds, exposing her legs. She also gets to wear a circa 1930 Navy outfit that she looked pretty good in too! In one scene, she goes to wash her clothes in a river, and some naughty monkeys steal her clothing! Heeheehee! So much for wardrobe! I always think the "special effects" in a B-movie are lots of fun. Watch the shipwreck scene--was that a toy boat in a bathtub?

I think fans of either Anita Page or Charles Starrett would enjoy this film. It's very short, but fairly well packed with action so you don't get too bored with it. Anita was one of the brightest stars of the early 1930's, and she photographs beautifully in this one! It makes you sad that her career didn't last longer. As of this writing, she is still living, and appears every so often in a documentary or video clip on TCM. Look for this hard-to-find movie, and don't be too critical when you watch it.

This film is really quite terrible but somehow is fun almost because of it and because of the real chemistry between the two stars, both of whom are terrible in it but still you can't take your eyes off of them. The editing is dreadful. There is a huge amount of stock footage just as you would expect including chimps that have been brought in to do silly things and there is some human who keeps grunting in the background and trying to make you think it's the chimps doing it. Anita Page is a terrible actress but she gets little to work with here as some scenes finish off and you wonder what the point of them was. In any case she's a real bombshell and the pre-code side boob shot of the amply endowed Miss Page and her bare back and slit dress leg shot will no doubt be rhapsodized in some summary of pre-code babes. She delivers lines and emotes as if she is in a dreadful high school play and her close-ups play as if she's in a silent movie. But we love her anyway. Charles Starrett is perfectly cast as the brawny almost comic-book like superhero who makes everything work out and gets the girl as well. He sings the same song over and over-- a terrible song called Call of the Jungle-- and the mismatching of his alleged singing (it isn't he) and his not even close to approximation of a guitar player help to label this as a Z film and not even really a B. It's the bottom of the barrel. Starrett does actually sing for real as a drunk in the beginning of the film and the sound is completely different from the singing he allegedly does later in the film! And yet, bad as it all is, the shipwreck sequence still packs a wallop and there is some beautiful photography of the jungle hill on which Starrett pseudo-plays his guitar as Page is lured to make love with him. Their love scenes together seem pretty convincing too as if Anita really went for him. Starrett was always better than his B or Z film material, always giving his all and coming across as a solid leading man. Like John Wayne, his acting may not be the best but he has always a definite screen presence, part of which is due to his size and good looks mixed with an apparently amiable personality. All in all, this has to be a guilty pleasure film. It is dreadfully made and quite a few scenes seem to play out as if the director had no idea what they were supposed to accomplish and then we just go on to the next scene... and it took three guys to direct this film! I kept wondering how Page then at MGM and Starrett then at Paramount could have been loaned out and agreed to make a film with such wretched production values. It seems Trem Carr, the Monogram Pictures founder, had a big hand in this one but why wasn't it released by Monogram which he founded in 1931, two years before? Could it be that this was below the quality that Monogram would accept? Was it simply an independent effort that he helped to get into release? We may never know and the two stars seem at once trapped by their awful material here and at the same time they are trying to make something more of the mess than it should be. I had fun watching this and if you aren't too ashamed of yourself for wasting your time on this garbage you will too.

A year later a proper studio with proper actors used a very similar plot to make an excellent film called FOUR FRIGHTENED PEOPLE. This is most definitely not an excellent film - it does however feature Anita Page getting her clothes stolen by a chimp.

As soon as you see a chimp in a pre-code movie you know exactly why he's there. A chimpanzee has one purpose and one purpose alone in a pre-code movie: an actress will discretely strip off to go for a swim and the chimp will subsequently run off with her clothes.

Along with Jean Harlow, Anita Page certainly had one of the bounciest bodies of the 1930s! This was an asset even Mussolini admired. Whereas Il Duce was apparently besotted with Anita, L B Mayer wasn't - he only needed one Jean Harlow in his studio so coupled with the fact that she allegedly wouldn't sleep with Irving Thalberg, by the time this was made her career was virtually over. Thus she was farmed out to this third rate outfit to make this third rate film which feels like it was made in someone's shed.

Her acting ability wasn't really any worse than Jean Harlow but to be honest, that's not saying much. This film should not be one she should put on her c.v. Her co-stars in this are hardly any better though but I suspect this is a result of poor direction because Anita Page for example was pretty good in a few other films such as WAR NURSE or SKYSCRAPER SOULS.

Chadwick Productions didn't really go in for believable characterisation, just fun action adventure. Not sure you could tick the boxes for fun or adventure but there's at least a lot of action going on. The amateurish feel of this however makes you think you should finish watching it just out of politeness because those guys must have put a lot of effort into making this on that budget so the least you can do it watch it.... even though you know it's rubbish.

Whereas in FOUR FRIGHTENED PEOPLE which stared the divine Claudette Colbert, thanks to C B DeMille's direction we got to see how the survivors' personalities and mindsets were affected by their situation, in this we just get actors reading words. Anita Page's prettiness is not enough justification to sit through this.

Enjoyable precode movie whose only intention is to entertain its audience. Nicely filmed on the actual seacoast and in a jungle setting with good atmospherics. The music is mostly just Charles Starrett's laid back guitar strumming while singing or humming catchy tunes. Starrett is a tall good looking hunk and his laid back leading man style is perfect for this romantic little shipwreck movie.

The star Anita Page exudes screen presence and appeal as a strong, determined woman who knows what she wants. She is gorgeous in the precode style of the early 1930's. The well-endowed Ms. Page is a Harlow-esque bombshell and, as far as shipwrecked babes rank, I would say that not even Ginger or Mary Ann could be ranked any higher than her.

"Jungle Bride" is made simply and inexpensively but is nonetheless well-made, a romantic shipwreck film with two stars who have a lot of chemistry. It will hold your attention in a charming way and it even ends charmingly with the simple, breezy notation of "Fin". This is not an old fashioned movie in spirit, and it manages to retain a quality of timelessness.