El tesoro del volcán

I recently obtained a copy of The Lost Volcano, which is a quite hard to find movie.

This is one of a dozen Bomba the Jungle Boy movies starring Johnny Sheffield after he finished playing Boy in the Tarzan movies.

The movie was quite enjoyable considering the low budget with Johnny playing a much younger version of Tarzan. His language is similar to Tarzan's too. This movies gets better as it moves along and the best part of the movie is the impressive eruption at the end. This is actually stock footage from One Million BC (1940), although we don't see any monsters from this movie. This is the second time Johnny Sheffield has encounted footage from One Million BC, as he encounted some of its monsters in Tarzan's Desert Mystery (1943).

I enjoyed this movie a lot and is worth seeing if you get the chance, as it is quite rare.

Rating: 3 and a half stars out of 5.

Johnny Sheffield is quite an agreeable hero in this jungle adventure story. Tommy Ivo is "David Woods" a young lad who camps on the outskirts of the forest with his zoologist father, his mother and their maid "Nona". Meantime, "Bomba" has been watching them and intent on releasing the animals they have been caging up, visits the youngster and they make friends. When a group of hunters stop by, they reckon the young boy knows the whereabouts of a wonderful treasure so they kidnap him and force him to take them to it. "Bomba" learns of this plight and sets off to rescue him - and to save everyone from an ominously noisy volcano. It's all pretty run-of-the-mill stuff but has enough action, vine-swinging and dastardly baddies to amiably pass 75 minutes; especially if you are prepared to overlook the obvious use of library footage....

Bomba the Jungle Boy encounters Paul Gordon's safari party with captive animals. Bomba manages to free some of the animals from their cages. Paul still does not believe in the local legend of Bomba. Paul's son David disagrees with his father's work and his disbelief in Bomba. David plays in the jungle and actually meets Bomba. Two hunters arrive searching for a hidden treasure under the volcano. They kidnap David who claims to have learned the location from Bomba. Bomba comes to the rescue.

I really like the messaging. They're fighting against the captive animal trade which is a bit ahead of its time. I like the use of the volcano stock footage. I would rather not use the fake volcano which looks fake. This B-movie franchise is always going to be hampered with fake settings and silly white boy premise. That cannot be helped. This one is probably as good as this franchise is going to be.

This is certainly not the worst of the BOMBA series. But you have to be warned before watching it, it is destined to all kinds of audiences, mostly young or naive ones. If you are a TARZAN goer, maybe you'll like those films, maybe not. You have to be in the good state of mind, the good "spirit", be indulgent. This is never boring, unless you watch all the series in two days. This very one is not exceptional but only entertaining for saturday or sunday matinees. The animals stock shots, footage, is the common elements for those films, and the villains - mostly White ones - are for me the most interesting characters in those movies.

This film in the Bomba the Jungle Boy series has Johnny Sheffield making friends with the son of Donald Woods and Marjorie Lord who are in the jungle for Woods's work as a naturalist. The parents don't believe that Bomba exists, but their maid Elena Verdugo sure believes in the legend.

Some visitors come archaeologist Grandon Rhodes and his guides Don Harvey and John Ridgely and young Tommy Ivo as the son shows him a jewel encrusted dagger from a lost city in an extinct volcano that's right next a very much live one. Rhodes sees another finding like Schleimann did with Troy, but the other two see loot. They kidnap Ivo and force him to lead them to the treasure in the volcano with Bomba and the parents in hot pursuit.

I think you see where this is going. There was something kind of sweet about Bomba being lonely and making friends with young Ivo who in fact does look like him more than the local natives do. Even training him in jungle survival, a sort of Bomba Junior. Of course once Elena Verdugo happened on the scene I would think he'd want to make friends with her. She looks like she wants to with him real bad. In the previous film in the series Lita Baron in a similar role was a whole lot less subtle and I'm betting Monogram Pictures probably got mail on that from parents.

For a kid supposedly Bomba's protégé, young Ivo acts really dumb some times. Bomba rescues him once and the kid's actions get him captured again.

Not one of the better Bombas.