Jungle of Fear (1993)
It would be rather unfair to give this film any sort of rating since it was never finished. It's currently out there in the market as a 120-minute workprint that contains a lot of footage but it's all time coded and it's certainly not put together. Certain scenes have no sound effects or music. A lot of times it's clear that you are watching either an outtake or a scene that probably wouldn't be in the movie. Also, several of the cast members have extremely thick accents so I'm sure a dubbing job was needing to be done as well.
Is the film worth watching? If you're a Franco nut like myself then you'll probably want to watch it since you're probably like me and want to see everything that the director did. As I said, it's impossible to treat it as anything other than a workprint because it's simply not put together and who knows what the director would have done with it.
The reason it's worth watching is that you've got a funny cameo by Franco and then there's the cast. William Berger, Christopher Mitchum, Antonio Mayans and of course Lina Romay are all on hand here and it's Franco's love that is so great. She really gives a fun, hyped-up and energetic performance and I really enjoyed her here. It's really too bad that the film will probably never be completed because it seems like this might have been one of her best performances.
As for the story, I can see a little of Poe's The Golden Bug and it's certainly in the adventure genre. There's a really bad looking snake and other fake looking bugs all set in the jungle. JUNGLE OF FEAR is interesting to watch but that's about it. It's hard to really compare it to the rest of the director's work in its current state.
