A Selva Nua

Before Charlton Heston faced the Red Sea, the Apes, and the anti-gun folks, he was in this picture, where he takes second billing to the Marabunta (sic), army ants that want to eat his plantation. His other problem is his knockout mail order bride with whom he is having trouble communicating. With Heston at his most passionate, running the emotional ladder from A to B, it's hard to tell. Nevertheless, I saw this movie with my sister when we were about 9 or 10 and movies cost 15 cents. We would hide behind the seat in front of us each time the skeletal remains of the alcoholic guy showed up (we sat through the movie four times). The rest of the theatre shrieked. The movie is really a lot of fun. Those ants are a menace which, like the shark in Jaws, don't really have anything personal against us--they are just hungry and eating everything in their path. Heston must find a way to combat them or lose everything he has. As a teenager, one of my top ten short stories was "Leinengen Versus the Ants." This does justice to the story although I don't remember anything about the "experienced" young woman he finds himself with. I chanced upon this film on AMC one day and I was totally caught up in it. Give it a chance. It will keep you on the edge of your seat. If you're looking for a fully developed dramatic piece, forget it.

The movie The Naked Jungle was magnificent!! It was extremely

enthralling!! The title "Leiningen versus the ants" was the original story!! It was first broadcast on radio probably in the 1940's maybe even earlier!! The radio show was even better than the movie if that is possible!! The suspense, the intrigue, you bit your nails down to your knuckles!! The radio show was fabulous!! That's why they re-broadcast it over and over again every year or every two years. I listened to it many times!! The movie of course gives a different perspective!! You can actually see The RED ARMY ANTS, or RED ANTS, or ARMY ANTS frighteningly live which of course you couldn't do on radio!! These ants do exist and they are dangerous!! But also let us not forget that this movie is a great love story!! Here we have Charlton Heston, a real hunk!! A strapping six foot four very handsome, very physical male!! Then we have his love interest, Eleanor Parker a ravishing, redheaded beauty, with a fantastic body and figure!! A man and a woman in their prime eventually attracted to each other and falling in love at the end!! What more can you ask for in a movie! RED ANTS and A RAVISHING RED HEAD. That's why this was a great movie in it's time and still is today in my opinion!!

The Naked Jungle is directed by Byron Haskin and based around the short story Leiningen Versus The Ants written by Carl Stephenson. It stars Charlton Heston, Eleanor Parker, Abraham Sofaer and William Conrad. Music is scored by Daniele Amfitheatrof and cinematography by Ernest Laszlo.

1901, South America, and mail order bride Joanna Selby (Parker) arrives at the plantation owned by her husband Christopher Leiningen. She is shocked to find life at the plantation is hardly idyllic, but not as shocked as Leiningen is when he finds out that Joanna was once married before. With his own hang ups gnawing away at him and he refusing to accept Joanna as his bride, the relationship appears to be heading nowhere. However, she's made of stern stuff, and when a swarm of soldier ants is known to be heading towards the plantation, Joanna and Chris might just find that love is actually there?

Filmed in glorious Technicolor by Laszlo and produced by George Pal (Destination Moon/The War of the Worlds/The Time Machine), The Naked Jungle seems to be a forgotten movie on the CV's of Pal and Heston. A crying shame since it's very well mounted and carries a uniqueness worthy of further delving. Perhaps it got lost in the slipstream of Them! The other Ant movie out that year? What transpires is an hour of interesting character build up, where Heston & Parker's characters take centre stage and benefit from literate writing (Philip Yordan). The sweaty backdrop of the jungle plantation keeps things on the simmer, but it's the dialect and emoting of the performers that really holds the interest. True, Heston does at times over do it with some "woe is me" acting as he looks off into the distance (he has major issues we learn), but it works because it bounces off of Parker's (a Technicolor treat for the eyes) intelligent and stoic performance.

Film then shifts to creature feature territory for the last third. Once the army of Marabunta are spied off in the distance, laying waste to everything in their path, picture has become a war involving man against nature, where if man wins? He may not only save his life, but more pertinently his soul. Heston stops the tortured emoting and sticks out is lantern jaw, squares up his shoulders and stands firm in the face of such a hostile and intelligent enemy. By his side, the wife, multi talented and brave of heart, they make quite a couple. The chemistry between the two is simmering with sexual tension, and thanks to the writing the characters are fabulously engaging and make us care about the outcome of picture. Director Haskin, too, utilises the scenery and plantation setting to frame his protagonists for maximum impact, his camera work airy and unobtrusive. While his crafting of the biblical fight against the ants is thrilling and boosted no end by marvellous effects work (John P. Fulton).

An oddity? Yes, for sure. But it's a smart and intelligent picture that successfully manages to blend the sci-fi and nature aspects with complex human characterisations. 8/10

This fine drama is as much about unhappy newlyweds as it is about savage soldier ants that threaten a South American plantation. The killer ants cover a wide area, sweep everything before them and naturally are headed straight for Leiningen's cocoa plantation. The dislike between bride and groom nearly upstages the approaching army of ants. Eleanor Parker and Charlton Heston make a handsome couple but she seems to be everything he is not. Parker is confident, poised and self-assured while Heston is insecure, inadequate and out of his depth in her company. Perhaps this explains why he spends so much time trying to diminish her. The film leans heavily on the verbal sparring between Parker and Heston while building tension for the showdown with Marabunta. William Conrad is good in an early role as a jungle commissioner.

Given the fact that this is the Fifties and the Code was coming to an end, this is still a remarkably erotic film, almost Tennessee Williams like in its treatment of sexual issues.

Charlton Heston's Christopher Leiningen could have been created by Tennessee Willlams. He came to the South American jungles as a teenager and built up a plantation out of the jungle and it took him over 15 years to do it. He now decides to get himself a wife and begat some children.

Heston says so quite frankly he has pointedly refrained from indulging any lust with the native women because in his society there'a a nasty name for whites who do so. In keeping with his Tennessee Williams like character, he's from New Orleans so his attitude to darker skinned people is understandable.

He has his brother put in an advertisement for a mail order bride and Heston can't believe his luck when the drop dead gorgeous Eleanor Parker shows up on his door. She's not what you would picture a mail order bride to be. But then marital problems arise when he discovers she's a widow, used goods as the common phrase was back in the day.

Parker has a few of her own issues and that and Heston's inexperience in these matters lead to a rocky start and almost an ending. But then come the ants.

As District Commissioner William Conrad says, every generation or two something puts ants in the ants pants and up they come out of their ant hills and go on the march destroying every scrap of life before them. And man has found no way to stop them.

The ants kind of make everyone come together in a crisis. What they do is some of the most frightening stuff ever put on film.

If The Naked Jungle were made today it would be far more explicit about all the sexual problems than this version was. There might be better special effects. But you won't get better players than you will in Charlton Heston and Eleanor Parker as leads.

Unless they resurrected Tennessee Williams to write the screenplay.