The Lost Jungle

Evidently, I watched a different version. This was also released in the same year and under the same title as a 68-minute feature version of the serial by Mascot Pictures Corporation. It is incorporated in the 50 movie pack Sci-Fi collection.

Plenty of animal training scenes staring at the Hogenbeck-Wallace Animals. Clyde the benevolent and gentle animal trainer is too naive about human nature to realize that one of his men Sharkey (Warner Richmond) tries to kill him every time he turns around, and too preoccupied to realize he must marry Ruth Robinson (Cecilia Parker) or lose her to a South Seas trip planned by her father.

While Clyde is busy playing with his felines, Ruth and her father Capt. Robinson (Edward LeSaint) are shipwrecked on an uncharted island of Kamor with lions, tigers, bears, and more unscrupulous beasts, oh my. Ruth gives Clyde the bird. I mean she sends him a cable by carrier pigeon.

Clyde to the rescue on a new airship. Lightning strikes in a storm and you guess it Dirigible Victory splits up. Sharkey bails like a rat leaving a sinking ship, with the only parachute. What are their chances of getting lost on the same island? What is worse, Sharkey is lurking somewhere and up to his nefarious plots.

Will Clyde become "tiger chow" and who will get the girl?

I'm not going to criticize the movie. There isn't that much to talk about. It has good animal actions scenes which were probably pretty astonishing at the time. Clyde Beatty isn't exactly a matinée idol. He's a little slight and not particularly good looking. But that's OK. He's the man in that lion cage. We know that when he can't take the time away from his lions to tend to his girlfriend, he will end up on an island with her and have to save the day. Someone said earlier that it is a history lesson. The scenes at the circus are of another day, especially the kids who hang around. I didn't realize that even back in the thirties, they sailed on three masted schooners. It looked like something out of 1860. I guess that's the stock footage they had. No wonder the thing got wrecked. They're always talking about fixing her up. There's even a dirigible. It tells us a little about male female relationships at the time, a kind of giggly silliness. But if you don't take it too seriously, you can have fun watching it.

Hey kids! Wanna see a guy whipping tigers and lions and bears and leopards and firing a blank gun at them and stuff? This is the film for you - and this guy's the hero!

***this film is crap***

I can't even be bothered describing this one. It's a jungle film with very little jungle action. No natives. The same animals you see at the start turn up as wild animals, and this nugget just abuses the animals all the way through. I don't care if it's a bygone age.

***takes huge crap onto lion taming***

I need ten lines? Okay

****takes another crap on lion taming****

This is an adventure film. Some action with the animals and a man whipping the animals but that's about it. Why is this film considered Science Fiction I'll never know because it's far from it -- not one ounce of Sci-Fi within the film, not unless the ship/boat is suppose to be Sci-Fi. It's also a Romance with the animal trainer and the girl he rescues.

Anyway, the film is quite dull, it's got a couple of cute moments, some beautiful animals and a couple of dorky characters. There is also an animal trainer/tamer that mainly (pretends to) whips them.

I have no way of knowing how these animals were treated on and off the sets but I doubt they were treated all that well - but I don't know for sure.

There's not much to see nor much else to say about this one.

3/10

"The Lost Jungle" features world famous animal tamer, Clyde Beatty. While mostly forgotten today, he was quite possibly the greatest animal tamer of all time and he was the first to be the featured headline act in a circus and the first to own his own circus. Beatty only appeared in six movies...including this 12-part movie serial.

For the most part, I think this serial could be "Clyde Beatty and His Pal Deal with a Bunch of Jerks!". Why? Because instead of the usual villains that populate serials (such as spies, masked villains and the like), Beatty has to mostly deal with jerks who try to kill him. One is his assistant, Sharky, a know-it-all who is jealous of Clyde and tries several times to get him killed. Additionally, when the dirigible Beatty is on crashes, two more homicidal jerks (Krby & Flynn) try to kill Clyde because he knows they killed an explorer to take his treasure! In many cases, he escapes death by fighting with various wild animals, though he also engages in a few fights with his enemies. Along to help him is his sidekick (Syd Saylor) and 1001 animals from the circus where Beatty worked in real life.

So is it any good? Well, yes and no. Nearly all serials are a bit cheesy and you can't judge them by the standards of a typical movie. But despite a few silly portions of the film (the island they crash onto has animals from all over the world on it!), the action is pretty good and usually it's actually Beatty fighting off animals and doing stunts. Not great...but not bad either.

By the way, if you do watch, note Mickey Rooney as an extra in part 1.