The Lost Jungle

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****

For those of you who did not grow up in the days of old-time circus and traveling shows, you may not know the name Clyde Beatty. Beatty is hailed as one of the worlds most famous animal trainers. My father, who is ninety-six, and still in sound mind, saw Beatty in Raleigh, NC back in the thirties and both of us truly enjoyed this movie. The animal scenes were wonderful and reminiscent of the old circus. Supported by Syd Saylor, a noted and well educated actor and comic, added the light touch in just the right places. This film came as one of the offerings in a 50 pack DVD collection and is one of the few really classics in the bunch, but it was worth the cost of the collection to see and have this movie. Clyde did all the 'stunts' himself and his talent in animal training is relished. Enjoy this for what it is, a fun adventure featuring a true American talent.

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?

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

This is not a bad little serial. It has few of the standard serial cliches that bug me, especially not the cliffhanger endings that end up happening completely differently at the start of the next episode (watch the original Captain America serial to see a LOT of that).

Clyde Beatty is a nice enough guy, though obviously not an actor...but then few of the real-life celebrities that did movies and serials in the 30's & 40's were (Red Grange, Frank Hawks, Sammy Baugh...though Houdini pulled it off back in 1919). There are a lot of animal action shots, which is a pleasure to watch. Clyde has this stupid hypnotic eye power over the beasts at a couple of points in the story, but those moments are easily ignored.

All in all a nice little serial...fun, good locations, good guys, bad guys, wild animals, lost treasure...sounds good to me!