Bomba, enfant de la jungle

Johnny Sheffield who had grown too old to play Boy in the Tarzan films got a nice break from Monogram Pictures and was able to extend his career with the Bomba The Jungle Boy series of films. Like Tarzan, Bomba grows up in the jungle and in fact this film bears no small resemblance to Tarzan, the Ape Man.

Bomba's Jane is in the person of former child star Peggy Ann Garner who is a visiting photographer with her father Onslow Stevens. She gets separated from Stevens and enjoys an idyll of sorts with Bomba who is more articulate than those early Weissmuller Tarzans.

The only other regular in the Bomba series is Commissioner Andy Barnes who is a glorified game warden here and played by Charles Irwin. In later films Barnes would be played by Leonard Mudie.

Some stock jungle footage is integrated nicely into the film, better I would say than a lot of the Tarzan films done at RKO at the same time with Lex Barker.

Not a bad beginning for the series.

When I sat down to watch "Bomba: The Jungle Boy" I thought I was in for a fun, goofy hour. Instead I sat through a painfully dull movie. This is my second Bomba movie and I don't want to be mean but Johnny Sheffield is deadwood on screen. He brings nothing to the table. On the plus side, Peggy Ann Garner is cute and appealing. So the stars kind of balance each other out. "Bomba: The Jungle Boy" will only stay in my memory bank for about another ten minutes.

Johnny Sheffield as a teenage Tarzan in the African wilds, rescuing a pretty young shutterbug and (rather half-heartedly) attempting to reunite her with her photographer father and his guides. Having already played "Boy" opposite Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan several times, Sheffield was a natural choice to enact the formative years of this role once filmmakers began to run out of ideas and made the (worthwhile) decision to explore the loin-clothed legend's early beginnings. Sheffield is somewhat self-conscious as the boy who calls himself Bomba, and yet his modest performance is the best thing in the picture. He's straightforward in an innocent way, immature and yet brave around the girl, and he manages an amusing connection with the audience (one can almost hear the sighs of young filmgoers as Bomba gently helps Peggy Ann Garner's Pat onto a log to cross the river). The film is padded with nature footage (most of it poorly photographed and repetitive), and too much time is spent dragging the characters back and forth through the foliage, but the simple story (perky girl meets tame savage boy) still holds a spark of enchantment. ** from ****

Bomba, the Jungle Boy is the first of the Bomba movies with Johnny Sheffield (Boy from the Weismuller Tarzan movies) as Bomba.

In this first movie, a safari in Africa including a girl and her dad are photographing and filming the wildlife when the girl, Pat gets lost and Bomba finds her. They become friends and he helps her to look for the rest of the party, facing several dangers along the way including lions, leopards, a huge swarm of locusts and unfriendly natives. She is reunited with the others at the end and Bobma disappears back into the jungle.

Joining Johnny Sheffield in the cast is Peggy Ann Garner as Pat, Onslow Stevens (Them!) as her dad and Bomba regular Smoki Whitfield.

Bomba, the Jungle Boy is worth watching if you can get hold of a copy.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

On safari in Africa, pretty teenager Peggy Ann Garner (as Patricia "Pat" Harland) photographs animals with father Onslow Stevens (as George). For better pictures, "glorified game warden" Charles Irwin (as Andy Barnes) and "native" Smoki Whitfield (as Eli) lead them deeper into the wild, where they meet "Teen Tarzan" Johnny Sheffield (as Bomba). The popular "Boy" from the faltering "Tarzan" movies was a natural pick for this unofficial spin-off series. While successful, it's nothing special. The first outing finds Mr. Sheffield and Ms. Garner in a tame "Tarzan and His Mate" (1934) mode. Best scene is when Garner tears her dress and Sheffield offers her his loincloth; she declines as the always-obvious stock footage inserts two chimps kissing.

**** Bomba, the Jungle Boy (3/20/49) Ford Beebe ~ Johnny Sheffield, Peggy Ann Garner, Onslow Stevens, Charles Irwin