Jungle Goddess

I can't figure out how anybody could make a comment saying they expected more out of the lead actors in this B-feature when the two male leads, George Reeves and Ralph Byrd, gave the exact same performances in this film as they did when playing "Superman" and "Dick Tracy," or any other role they played in their long careers. And the film was made for the express purpose of supplying mid-week and double-feature bill-of-fare for the several thousand small-town and side-street theatres in the U.S. that couldn't afford the rates charged on "The Snake Pit" ( a non-jungle jungle film), which is the one to watch if one is looking for "realism" from films released about the same dates in 1948. Evidently, the ability to look at a film within the context of when it was made and who it was made for---even a low-budget, credibility-lacking, poverty-row potboiler such as "Jungle Goddess"---doesn't exist among the majority of today's television viewers whose sense and understanding of history regarding movies and/or eras in history only dates back to the day-before-yesterday.

Of course, compared to most of the other 1948-produced films, it is a clinker and a clunker, but that is where the comparisons need to be made.

For plot researchers, this one has Greta Venderhorn (Wanda McKay), a young girl, as the only survivor of a plane crash in the "African" jungle at the beginning of World War II, and she is rescued by a tribe of "natives"---no more real than the people populating Camelot---who proclaim her as their "White Goddess." (Gracious, how un-PC.) Six years later, two ex-Army Air Corps pilots, Mike Patton (George "Superman" Reeves) and Bob Simpson (Ralph "Dick Tracy" Byrd), searching for the plane wreckage spot it, and land in an attempt to find the missing girl. It seems that Gloria's father's will stipulates that the person or persons that find his daughter, dead or alive, will receive a large reward.

Well, as fate and screenplay writer Joseph Pagnano would have it, they find the village and Gloria, and learn that she has had all she wants of playing Miss White Goddess of 1948, especially since her father's estate is not going to be depleted none too much by the payments of the reward, so she, Mike and Bob plan to escape and head back for civilization.

BUT...and a big but it is...one of the two men discovers that there is nearby a valuable deposit of ore, and he decides that he wants the ore and the reward and Gloria all to himself (no dummy, he), and conflict rears its ugly head, and the two male leads are soon scuffling on the plank floors of the rear-lot jungle set. Plus, the tribe witch doctor, Oolonga (Smoki Whitfield), isn't all that happy that these two intruders are making off with the White Goddess and the tribe's ore (even if the tribe didn't know they had some valuable ore and Wanama (Armida)is on hand to claim the title of Off-White Goddess with a Spanish accent) and Oolonga is pursuing their oom-gawa, bad-juju white butts with intent to punish. (Hey, lighten up, it's just a b-feature from the late 40's and a film of its time or, at least, the makers thought it was.)

Now, we wouldn't dare disclose whether "Superman" or "Dick Tracy" is the semi-bad and slightly misguided hero, who finally sees the light but catches a chukked spear and dies anyway, because that would be a bell-ringing, light-flashing, five-star SPOILER-SPOILER-SPOILER-SPOILER-SPOILER...for the few who aren't hip to 1940's cast-order listings.

What century was this film made in? The racial attitudes in this snooze-fest are unbelievable. Yeah sure. Any self-respecting black tribe in Africa will bow down at the first white person who walks along. Ridiculous.

There's very little plot here: Pilots look for girl, find her, try to escape. The end. For the life of me, I don't know why this film was made. There's absolutely no point, and it would fail as an action/adeventure film because there's so little action (and some pathetic insertions of stock footage).

I would expect better from the two lead actors.

In this low rent adventure, two aviators search for a missing heiress who vanished in the African jungle at the onset of World War Two. Our intrepid explorers discover she is alive and well and is being viewed by the local natives as some kind of "white goddess".

Many of these old time, low rent, ludicrous jungle flicks are quite entertaining when viewed in the right frame of mind and if the films are lively. However, JUNGLE GODDESS is just bad. It has a few campy scenes, but overall it is very uneventful. About half the film consists of scenes of the lead characters sitting around inside a hut and talking. There is also an overlong and dull flashback sequence. I was disappointed that there was nothing that really stood out as vivid. This film lacks the elements of the type that sometimes make these silly little pictures entertaining; ludicrous native rituals, the heroine being carted off by a gorilla, hero battling with a stuffed lion etc.

A FEW NOTES: George Reeves made two cheap jungle pictures the same year. This and JUNGLE JIM, where he played the villain. The set used for the pub at the start of this film, looks like the one used in UNKNOWN ISLAND, made the same year.

Show 203 of the popular Mystery Science Theater 3000. It's typical of many 40's Hollywood movies in which the white characters play God to the native Africans. Of course, the Africans with lines are played by white actors in dark makeup (sometimes in blackface.) It gets its proper roasting in MST3K.

Wow, you'd think that even B movies would at least TRY to get the facts straight. There were quite a few things wrong with this one, but here were the most annoying for me:

1. Our heroes looking at African animals from the air with binoculars, yet when we are shown the "binocular" view, it's taken from ground level.

2. Huge airplane cockpits. 1940's airplane cockpits were incredibly cramped arrangements that were crammed with instruments, yet the cockpits shown here are massive, with not a dial, switch or gauge to be seen. Convenient for filming perhaps, but completely unreal. Not to mention planes that change models in mid-flight.

3. Indigenous species. The padding in this film included stock footage of the animals supposedly seen on the ground in Africa. These included a cougar and an orangutan, neither of which are native to Africa.

4. While the "Dutch", English-speaking "Jungle Goddess" of the title was in Africa, she taught a local African woman broken English. Yet when the woman spoke the broken English, it was with a Mexican accent. Riddle me that one, Batman!

This one was pretty bad all the way through, with two thoroughly unlikable and annoying male leads. And at just an hour long it still had 20 minutes of padding. If you've only got 40 minutes worth of script, you don't have enough of a story to even make a movie, so why try?