African Treasure

Pat Gilroy asks Andy Barnes for a safari guide. Andy gets word that two wanted diamond smugglers are with Roy DeHaven. They are guided by local Pedro Sebastian but the group is missing. Andy calls upon Bomba (Johnny Sheffield) for help. After battling a lion, Bomba answers the call but there is confusion over Lita Sebastian, Pedro's daughter. Andy receives a wanted poster showing Pat Gilroy as the criminal Roy DeHaven.

This Tarzan rip-off franchise continues to be a second-tier production. It's not a good starting point. It has all the hallmarks of the B-movie. There is action but not that well staged. There is an exotic babe in South Pacific dress for some reason. They do have a chimp but that's not a good thing in today's sensibilities. It has the simple B-movie charms, but I'm bored by the end.

Another Bomba the Jungle Boy movie starring Johnny Sheffield. Here our junior Tarzan is battling diamond smugglers who are forcing natives to work as slaves. Laurette Luez plays the daughter of one of them. She's certainly a looker. Not that Bomba would notice. Lyle Talbot plays the leader of the diamond smugglers, who first enters the picture posing as a hunter and fooling stupid Andy (Leonard Mudie). At this point Mudie has become a series regular. Woody Strode has a bit part as a jungle mailman (!). The jungle telegraph stuff is the highlight of the picture and that's saying something since most people will probably find it pretty ridiculous. There's the expected rear projection and stock footage, used to cheap effect. Bomba's fight with a lion is probably the weakest in the series up to this point. At its best the Bomba series was nothing special and only of interest as middling adventure stories. This is not the series at its best. Actually, this is one of the worst. Even at just 70 minutes the movie drags and feels like it takes forever. Of some minor interest for series fans but nothing here for casual viewers.

Perhaps he's not into girls, or maybe he's already got a thing going with Kimbbo the Chimp (it can get lonely in the jungle), but Bomba (Johnny Sheffield) shows absolutely no interest in smokin' hot babe Lita Sebastian (Laurette Luez), even when she says that she doesn't know how to repay him for his bravery. I'd have a few ideas! Bomba's certainly no Tarzan, that's for sure.

Speaking of Tarzan, this adventure for Bomba isn't on a par with even the weakest of the Johnny Weismuller classics, in which Sheffield played the yodelling vine-swinger's adopted son, Boy. It's not Sheffield's fault - he does what he can with the weak material: no, the fault lies with Ford Beebe, whose direction is as bland and uninspired as his script (he also pads out his film with dreary stock footage). I've seen four other films by Beebe thus far, and 'Mediocre' seems to be his middle name.

The dismal plot sees Bomba help Lita to rescue her father, who is one of a group of unfortunates forced by diamond hunters to work in a mine in a crater in the jungle. The film is so dull that the highlights (lovely Luez aside) are a monkey wearing a napkin and the chimp throwing a rock. While I'm usually a sucker for a tussle with a stuffed lion, Beebe even manages to suck the fun out of that. The film's dumbest moments are Bomba using a tree as a makeshift jungle drum (try that next time you're in the woods to see how stupid it is) and finding a submerged tunnel through which he can swim into the crater unseen - how fortuitous!

3.5/10, generously rounded up to 4 for Luez.

African Treasure finds Johnny Sheffield as Bomba the Jungle Boy looking to help his native friends who've been taken prisoners and forced to mine diamonds in a secret location that some smugglers know about. Arthur Space and Lane Bradford keep the prisoners and another criminal played by Lyle Talbot holds Bomba's friend, Commissioner Leonard Mudie prisoner as well. The odds don't look good for Bomba.

But of course with his knowledge of jungle ways Sheffield does triumph in the end. Like Tarzan, Bomba has a chimp to make chumps out of the bad guys and save him in a tight spot. Like Tarzan, Bomba's learned the value of friendship with the animals though he does get into a fight with a lion here.

This particular Bomba entrée has got more than it share of pulp adventure sequences that would have kept its young audience glued to their movie seats. It will keep you in your Laz-E-Boy chairs as well.

Andy Barnes (Leonard Mudie) gets word by short wave that two of the three geologists who passed through his district some weeks before were known diamond smugglers, and that nothing since has been heard of the trio. And he also learns that a hunter, Pat Gilroy (Lyle Talbot), who has just arrived at the compound is really an escaped convict named Roy DeHaven.

Obviously, time to call in Bomba the Jungle Boy (Johnny Sheffield). He is summoned via the jungle drum wireless-telegraph, and Barnes asks Bomba to go to the cheesy back lot set and try to locate Gatesby, the geologist who was with Greg (Arthur Space) and Hardy (Lane Bradford.)Bomba finds the body of Gatesby but...lucky him and the viewer---he also finds Lita Sebastian (Laurette Luez), who is out in the jungle looking for her father, Pedro (Martin Garralaga),a Portuguese guide, and the cheesy jungle set now looks better than it did.

Through the help of jungle drums and his animal friends, all stock footage except Kimbbo the Chimp, Bomba leads Lita to where her father, and a large number of natives, are being held as slaves by Greg and Hardy, who have found diamonds in the crater of an extinct volcano, known locally as The Mountain of Diamonds. Lita is captured by Greg, but Bomba has summoned help and Gerg and Hardy flee but not without first staring a landslide on the enslaved workers.

Bomba has a lot of work to do before he can restore order to this jungle.