The Jungle

Most films about prehistoric animals almost always feature dinosaurs. This is one of the few films I know of that deals with prehistoric mammals. In this film the menace is woolly mammoths that are driving elephants out of the countryside and into villages wrecking havoc and death. While the basic idea is interesting, the film itself is slow going. The American version which is only a little more than an hour long is padded with lots material designed to use up footage. Its seems it takes the party almost forever to encounter the mammoths. The final confrontation is exciting but it takes too long. The only other point of interest is that this is the earliest American/Indian co-production that I am aware of.

Let's cut to the chase...the plot here in "The Jungle" is ridiculous. It's set in India and elephants have apparently been stampeding the countryside and killing many people. However, the great American hunter called in to take care of it, Steve Bentley (Rod Cameron) has just reported that everyone in his party but him got killed...and they were NOT elephants but Woolly Mammoths!! So, the determined Princess (Marie Windsor) heads into the jungle with her trusted Rama Singh (Cesar Romero) to see for herself...and Steve accompanies their party.

In addition to Woolly Mammoths, the film also features something common in the era...white folks playing the leading roles even though they are supposed to be Indians. Romero can kinda pull it off but Marie Windsor looks about as Indian as Lassie! I think the film was sepia tinted to try to hide this but it doesn't work well. Nowadays, such casting is seen as culturally insensitive and insulting. At least everyone else in the film appears to be Indian and the film DOES get the look and feel of India right and the animals seem to be more accurate than most B-movies (where you'd see rhinos and kangaroos and more in the Indian jungle!). Considering it's a low-budget film, I was also surprised that some of the film was actually filmed in that country. So, culturally it's a mixed bag.

So is it any good? Of course not! It really can't be! It's a product of its times but really isn't all that great...at best a slow-paced and very silly time passer. But, when it comes to giant monster films, it's better than most (not that this is high praise!).



By the way, if you suffer from Ophidiophobia (the fear of snakes) skip this film. Trust me on this. Also, animal lovers might also want to avoid it as there's a scene where a tiger and Sloth Bear fight and it honestly looks like they just tossed 'em together and let them fight! Fortunately it APPEARS neither animal was seriously injured. Later, they toss a boar at a leopard! Great animal lovers they were NOT!

Understand the limitations of the time, and this probably had a low-budget, but for me way too much of this movie consisted of... travel along a path stop and watch an animal fight or attack... sometimes with the same animals multiple times. Made it a bit dull for me.

Indian Princess Marie Windsor, along with Indian something-or-other Cesar Romero and American hunter Rod Cameron go off in search of prehistoric mammoths who are terrorizing regular elephants. Windsor is almost believable as an Indian, although her bindi disappears halfway through the movie. We do get a gratuitous shot of her in a bathing suit, so I can't complain. I had a hard time wrapping my head around Romero wrapping a turban around his head, but at least his acting is acceptable. Cameron, on the other hand, is extremely dull. There seem to be several subplots going on, but I couldn't keep up with most of them. One of the more ridiculous scenes is a knife fight between Romero and Cameron, which involves a lot of pointless pointing. The film was shot entirely in India, so there is some interesting scenery, and the supporting cast of local actors is decent. The mammoths, which don't appear until the final few minutes, are a letdown. Since they are barely onscreen, it's hard to tell what kind of "makeup" was used, but my guess would be large shag rugs.

Jungle, The (1952)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Low-budget nonsense about Princess Mari (Marie Windsor) who moves back to India where hunter Steve Bentley (Rod Cameron) and Rama Singh (Cesar Romero) fight over her. While all of this is going on villagers are being killed by stampeding elephants so the three love birds go into the jungle and discover woolly mammoths. The jungle film had been around since the silent days and when you hear jungle and low-budget you typically expect all sorts of stock footage mixed in with the actors on a sound stage. It's shocking but that's actually not the case here because this film gets the added benefit of having actually been shot in India and these locations are certainly a major plus. Sadly, the rest of the film is a major chore to sit through because the 73-minute running time is pretty much all start and very little end. We know we're going into the film to see the "monsters" but they don't show up until around three-minutes left to go in the film so we have to sit through countless dialogue scenes that just go no where and it's clear the only reason they're in the film is to fatten up the running time. We get quite a bit of footage of local animals including several elephants as well as lions, tigers and boars. We even get a pretty violent fight between a boar and a tiger that might be the highlight to many even though it never gets too graphic. Being able to see all this stuff was a bonus but the rest of the footage is pretty lame. The sight of the woolly mammoths are a real treat because they're just elephants with some sort of rug thrown over them. I will give the producers credit because they don't look too horribly bad but at the same time it's still very obvious at the trick they did. The three leads are decent in their parts but none of them are worthy of awards. I'd say it's a safe bet that all three were happy with their trip to India so we're lucky we got anything from them. Director Berke was a veteran of this type of film has he was behind the camera on several of the Jungle Jim movies but I can't say I'm impressed with his work as he brings no energy to anything we see.