Adventure Girl

Even though it is cheesy compared to 2021 standards, it is a great walk back into Guatemalan culture where all the extras were surely natives. Just remember this film was done almost 80 years ago with giant cameras and real film. I can not imagine what it took to get all the natives to agree to be on film much less get them to act while carrying 1000's of pound of gear in the jungle. Great fun if you can get off your high horse and enjoy a real blast from the past.

The film includes a long, furious wrestling match between Joan Lowell and a mysterious Mayan princess. Although she is not credited in any source I can locate, I am quite certain that the Mayan princess is played by Ula Holt (New Adventures of Tarzan (1935) AKA Tarzan and the Green Goddess (1938). If I am correct, I think this might be Ms. Holt's only other known screen credit. A second link with the Tarzan film is a grotesquely ornate stone arch which appears as the background of scenes near the end of each film. I think there must have been some connection between the two films.

In 1929, silent film actress Joan Lowell's book "Cradle of the Deep" was published and became a sensation. However, some time later, it was discovered that she made up the entire seafaring story....and she had, in fact, never even left the waters of California! Oddly, despite the book being debunked, in 1934 "Adventure Girl" debuted and is based on this fictional book marketed as fact.

The film is done documentary style....with no dialog other than Lowell's narration. It consists of a journey aboard a sailboat that eventually led to a treasure map, a giant emerald and death-defying stunts.

Believe it or not, despite the content of the film, it was a very boring and rather unprofessional looking movie. It's not quite as bad as the summary on IMDB indicates (read it...you'll see what I mean) but it is pretty bad....not just because it's not true but because it's dull and could have been told much better. If the story had been a traditional movie with dialog, it certainly would have been better.

By the way, if you do watch, and I don't recommend it, be forewarned that you'll see quite a few creatures killed during the course of the story. Many of these are not exactly cuddly, such as a tarantula and a snake, but it looks as if they did kill a few animals to spice up the dull story.

I genuinely didn't understand this movie, but it was so fascinatingly bad that I carried on watching. 'Adventure Girl' reminds me of an Ed Wood movie, because it attains his easy breezy cheesy sleazy level of ineptitude. This movie also reminds me of 'Perils of Nyoka', 'Sheena, Queen of the Jungle' and the old Victorian music-hall recitation 'The Green Eye of the Yellow God'.

As far as I can tell (and I could be wrong) 'Adventure Girl', starring Joan Lowell, is based on a book she wrote called 'The Cradle of the Deep'. Now here's where the confusion starts. IMDb lists that book as a novel, as in *fiction*. Ms Lowell's self-righteous narration in this movie seems to indicate that 'Cradle' is non-fiction, and that this movie is her rebuttal to all the people who disbelieved the veracity of her book. I suspect that the truth is somewhere in the middle: it's my guess that 'Cradle of the Deep' was published as fact, but was actually a cradle of lies and was freely denounced as such.

There's nothing believable in this ultra-low-budget movie, which purports to be a documentary re-enactment of true events. Joan Lowell plays herself, or a fictionalised version of herself: a distaff version of Johnny Weissmuller's Jungle Jim. Allegedly, she went to Guatemala to steal (I mean discover) a fabled emerald that's been propping up the eye socket of a Mayan idol. I'm absolutely positive that someone connected with this movie has read the English poem 'The Green Eye of the Yellow God'.

Off to Guatemala sails Joan, with her handy crewmen Bill and Otto. Their sailboat gets caught in a gale and loses its mast. Bill gets blown overboard, and hardy Joan dives in after hm while the sailboat is caught in the gale and speeds away without them. Joan and Bill are forced to tread water in the Gulf of Mexico for two hours. Meanwhile, the camera is right there with them, steadfastly recording this.

Eventually the merry crew end up in the Guatemalan jungle, where the natives immediately capture them and make plans to roast Joan at the stake. This sequence is gobsmackingly bad, with the 'natives' staring into the camera and giggling in embarrassment whilst they mumble unga-bunga curses in the general direction of Joan. We are constantly aware of the camera (and the cameraman) grinding away while Joan is allegedly in dire need of assistance.

Eventually, Joan gets into a bitch-slap fight with a Guatemalan jungle woman, who looks suspiciously Caucasian. All of this is offered in absolute earnest, yet all of it is howlingly faked and often hilariously so. Throughout the film, Joan's turgid narration insists that we recognise the ongoing fiasco as an accurate re-enactment of genuine events.

This film rates perhaps one point out of 10, but I laughed so hard and so often that I'm willing to throw in two extra points. On the other hand, I don't want to encourage this sort of mendacious ineptitude. Split the difference and rate this rubbish 2 points out of 10.

A strange attempt to make a film out of a journey to Guatemala on a sailing boat. The story is a search for pirate treasure in a lost city. It's no more than a recapitulation of a type of adventure story groaning with age even in 1934. This type of story is so well known that the would be artists got sloppy and begin to use abbreviations. The cinematic version of "you know". The 'lost cities' are some colonial ruins and not the great Mayan cities of Central America. The adventure girl of the title behaves reprehensibly with the 'natives' whose religion is depicted as the usual bowing before idols like in the cartoons and they speak about journeys being so many 'suns' away. These are the people who developed the most accurate calendar of their time. It is that crude in its representation of people and places. The mysterious arch in the picture was built at Chichicastinago by the Spanish (and not some long forgotten people) and is quite amazing as it frames this vast plain bisected by an absolutely straight road before a wall of mountains in the distance as if it was racing away from civilization. Out there lies pure mystery, it seems to be saying. It is nowhere near the Rio Dulce, which is mentioned often as the site of the film. One would think that at least the film would have captured a charming picture of Guatemala circa 1934 on film, but they seemed so intent on concocting their trite story that they made the real jungle look like a Hollywood fake. The entire film was shot silent and the narration is spoken over the action by the star and author Joan Lowell AKA Helen Trask.