The Hidden City

The evil Emir Hassan tries to have Bomba killed. Although he's injured, Bomba manages to get away and is nursed back to health by a pretty village girl named Zita (Sue England). Zita develops a crush on Bomba and follows him into the jungle so she won't have to marry Hassan. Turns out Zita has forgotten her past. In an unbelievable twist, Bomba remembers some things that help him piece together who Zita really is.

The fourth in Monogram's Bomba series starring Johnny Sheffield is a particularly plot-heavy entry. This is the first one to leave the set and film on location. No, not in Africa. Don't be silly. All the pennies in Monogram's piggy bank couldn't have paid for that. I'm not sure where they filmed at. If I had to guess, I would say the LA Arboretum. This one also has some good action scenes and less cheesy stock footage. Pretty Sue England is fun and has nice chemistry with Sheffield. But since these movies were aimed at little boys, they never allowed much "mushy stuff." It's probably the best of the Bomba movies, going solely by entertainment value and nothing more.

Bomba and the Hidden City (1950)

** (out of 4)

Extremely far-fetched but entertaining entry in the Monogram series has Bomba (Johnny Sheffield) witnessing a political assassination and years later the evil ruler (Paul Gulpoyle) plans on marrying a woman (Sue England) against her wishes. It's up to Bomba to try and save the girl as well as help her remember her past. This fourth film in the series is pretty camp and there's no question that it's over-the-top but I found it to be slightly entertaining simply because of all the craziness going at. At just 71-minutes the film doesn't last too long, which is always a good thing but it also manages to be rather fast paced, which was a first for the series. Director Ford Beebe actually keeps the film moving very well and we even get some decent action scenes from start to finish. This includes Bomba taking quite a bit of abuse as he tries to flee from the bad guys who are constantly shooting and throwing knives at him. The entire mystery of who the girl isn't all that hard to figure out and I'm sure the 3-year-old kids in the theater at the time figured out who she was long before it's revealed. Sheffield once again does a good job in his role of Bomba as he certainly fit the part and has no trouble playing it. England is fairly entertaining as the girl but this film clearly belongs to Gulpoyle as the crazy one. The actor really gives it his all and you can just see the glee in his eyes from getting to play a bad guy. With all of that said, this is still a low-budget Bomba movie so the various negative things are still present.

Although Bomba And The Hidden City has some oblique references to the real outside world when the late World War II is mentioned, this one has to rate as one of the lesser Bomba The Jungle Boy Features.

This film finds Johnny Sheffield oddly enough the witness to an assassination in the jungle of the former rulers of the Hidden City which has a Moslem culture. The surviving daughter Sue England grew up like the other twin in The Man In The Iron Mask with no knowledge of her legacy. It's a case of jungle amnesia. If he knew the usurper veteran movie villain Paul Guilfoyle would kill her.

A lot of the plot here really doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I blame that on the bad editing at Monagram Pictures. And Bomba also has a few escapes that should never have happened.

Bomba has to help the beautiful Sue England (who has kind of a cute Bettie Page bangs thing going on), who is the rightful heir to the throne, but is instead forced to marry the dastardly Hassan who seeks to steal the kingdom. Silly, low budget, and completely unoriginal, but I will say I enjoyed this one slightly more than the other Bomba films I've seen.

Though only 19 when this was made, I think that Johnny Sheffield was now becoming just a bit too old to carry off this most preposterous of "Bomba" tales. When he is spotted by a photographer swinging through the trees, the local Emir decides to have him killed as, basically, glorified vermin. Ever indestructible, our young lad is rescued, downriver, by the original Princess Leah (OK, slight spelling variation) whom it turns out is the daughter of the rightful Emir who had been unceremoniously overthrown. Needless to say, our chivalrous loincloth-clad Sheffield is up for helping her to reclaim her inheritance. As with the Weissmuller "Tarzan" films, this series has begun to run out of steam. The charm and innocence of earlier iterations have gone; the storylines have become angrier, and the underlying simplicity long since compromised by invasive weaponry and technology (even by 1950s standards). The writing isn't up to much here, either - and there is an annoying romantic sub-plot that bogs it down rather. They are still watchable little features, all of them, but this one - less so.