Female Jungle

One night outside a seedy LA bar, a sexy blonde Hollywood starlet is strangled to death by an unseen, shadowy figure. Naturally the cops are baffled, and one cop in particular is having the queasy sensation that he himself might be the killer. That cop has good reason to suspect himself because he's played by Lawrence Tierney--and Detective Tierney spent that very evening in that very bar drinking himself into Blackout Land (an uncanny nod to the particular problem that sent the actor tumbling down to poverty row). After being summarily dressed down for his repeated drunkenness, Tierney is then inexplicably asked to lend his questionable expertise to solving the murder.

What then begins is a bizarrely claustrophobic nightmare chase to the end of the line, offering up a host of potential other suspects. Could it have been the sinister Hollywood gossip columnist (John Carradine) who helped make the starlet's career and was then casually dumped by her? How about the oddball caricature artist (Burt Kaiser) who had recently drawn the starlet's likeness and was one of the last people to see her alive? And what about the caricaturist's wife who just happens to work at the bar? Let's not forget about Tierney's drunken cop who staggers his way through this nocturnal labyrinth with all the conviction of a man staring down at the bottom of an empty bottle. And how does Candy, the gorgeously voluptuous call girl (Jayne Mansfield in her screen debut) who's been sexually involved with both the artist and the cop figure into all of this? Perhaps it's best to not to be overly concerned with the storyline, which is deliriously beneath pulp trash, and relish the demented visual poetry of cinematographer Elwood "Woody" Bredell, himself no stranger to the dark confines of the noir universe, with 1940s classics like PHANTOM LADY, THE KILLERS, SMOOTH AS SILK, and THE UNSUSPECTED lurking on his resume. (Bredell was 70 when he shot FEMALE JUNGLE, which would be his final feature film. He died in 1976 at age 91.) And this is precisely why FEMALE JUNGLE is such an important film, for it relentlessly discards any use for logic in favor of the inhabitation of its own deranged nightmare world. Bredell invests the film with such strikingly abstract imagery that it's impossible to attribute its surreal look and feel to the accidental good fortune of its nearly non-existent budget--as many of the film's detractors have done. Rather, it is a pure distillation of the totality of the noir ethos and much more resonant with the thrill of death and doom than any other 1950s film outside the realm of Nicholas Ray.

FEMALE JUNGLE was the first film directed by Bruno Ve Sota. And despite having directed only two others (THE BRAIN EATERS (58) and INVASION OF THE STAR CREATURES (62)) his career was fairly deep as an actor, appearing in such disreputable (and legendary) films as DEMENTIA (55, aka DAUGHTER OF HORROR, which he also co-produced and allegedly co-directed), a bunch of classic 50s Roger Corman films, namely THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS, ROCK ALL NIGHT, WAR OF THE SATELLITES, BUCKET OF BLOOD, THE WASP WOMAN and ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES as well as the Arch Hall, Jr. teen trasher THE CHOPPERS (61; Leigh Jason), and the tres obscure beatnik noir THE CAT BURGLAR (61; William Witney).

Shot in 1955, FEMALE JUNGLE was picked up for distribution by Sam Arkoff and James Nicholson's fledgling American International Pictures (then briefly known as ARC) and released in early 1956 as the second half of a double bill, beneath a Roger Corman western THE OKLAHOMA WOMAN. Ve Sota, oddly enough, has a small role in that film, too.

But it is FEMALE JUNGLE, an imaginatively ambitious and unapologetically naked excursion to the darkest regions of film noir, that we will remember Bruno Ve Sota for—and deservedly so.

This highly recommended film is not available on a US DVD (a UK one does exist, though). It came out on a VHS tape from RCA / Columbia in the early 90s and turns up on eBay every now and then. Jump on it when it does.

Even at 73 minutes this film began to drag, which is a shame because as B-movies go it had quite a lot of promise. The 1950's were better known for the sometimes laughable sci-fi offerings - it was often only the cheap special-effects which caused derision though and the films had lots of good ideas and storylines. The film noir rip-offs from the same period didn't rely on effects and most are worth watching - they are certainly better than the straight-to-video junk churned out in the 90's.

'Female Jungle' begins with the murder of a glamourous blonde actress outside a bar. Having immediately grabbed our interest the narrative steadily falters and ultimately the good work is undone by a confused plot and characters who elicit little interest.

Lawrence Tierney plays the central character, a drunken cop who may be involved in the crime, but he only serves as a dull vehicle around which the minor, but more interesting, characters can operate. These are primarily John Carradine as the suave but sleazy agent of the murdered actress and Jayne Mansfield who plays Candy Price, the mistress of a down-on-his-luck artist who knew the victim ( the artist is played by one Burt Kaiser who also wrote and produced the film, but seems to have done nothing else at all - wonder what happened to him ).

The action seems to take place over one night - there are certainly no daylight scenes - but there is a disjointed feel to proceedings and I kept getting lost towards the end as to what was exactly happening.

If you take away the great title, the opening 5 minutes and Jayne Mansfield then there is not much here. B-Movies don't need a great deal though and these 3 elements make the film just about worth catching.

Lawrence Tierney was given numerous low-life/tough-guy roles throughout the 40's in such noirs as BORN TO KILL (1947) and THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE (1948), until he gained himself a bad name in Hollywood for his constant bar-brawls and arrests. The Tierney architype was resurected in the 50's when minor studios decided to milk the one-time noir icon for what he was worth. His only 50's come-back films I know of are THE HOODLUM (1951-United Artists) and THE FEMALE JUNGLE (1956-ARC), directed by the very under-rated Bruno VeSota right after DAUGHTER OF HORROR.

Lawrence plays a bum alcoholic detective who investigates in the murder of an actress committed outside the same bar he was drinking in. The plot unfolds itself from flashbacks. Producer, Burt Kaiser plays an alcoholic and unemployed artist, married to waitress, Kathleen Crowley. Kaiser is asked one night by a mysterious gossip columnist (the wonderfully sinister John Carradine, looking suave as ever in white tie and tails) to have his characature painted. Kaiser and Tierney both have affairs with Candy, a deliciously slutty bombshell (Jayne Mansfield, looking stunning in her film debut). Other suspects include George, the black janitor, James Kodl providing some intentional laughs as Joe, the bar owner and Cornelius Keefe (billed as Jack Hill!) as the Chief.

During World War 2, anyone who went to the movies had no choice but to pay money and view low-budget black-and-white quickies beacuse of the restrictions. Bottom-of-the-barrel studios like PRC and Monogram were in their element turning 'em out faster than they ever did before. This also gave film noir (considered lowbrow entertainment back then) an opportunity to be shown to wider audiences. The 50's saw just about every cinema-goer heading for the 70mm CinemaScope epics and big-name blockbusters leaving all other kinds of films to be viewed by nonexistent crowds at either art-house or drive-in theatres. It also saw the very last of the film noir echoeing it's way through the minor studio system. FEMALE JUNGLE, a great noir by many standards, was sold to Sam Arkoff and James H. Nicholson for ARC (pre-AIP) in 1956 and was dumped on a drive-in double-bill with OKLAHOMA WOMAN, a western directed by Roger Corman! I still don't think that FEMALE JUNGLE has got the appreciation it deserves. It is a superior film noir full of interesting low-life characters and dimly lit side-streets which all of us noir-lovers crave for in a film.

In an interview, Jayne Mansfield said that FEMALE JUNGLE "was filmed in two weeks and led to nothing". She was paid $150 for starring and then returned to her job as a popcorn-girl in a cinema before returning to the screen again in WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER? Lawrence Tierney wound up driving a taxi cab in Central Park before being resurected again (!) to play his tough-guy role in John Huston's PRIZZI'S HONOR (1985) and again in Tarantino's RESERVOIR DOGS (1993). Bruno VeSota later directed THE BRAIN EATERS (1958) and INVASION OF THE STAR CREATURES (1962), starred in numerous drive-in features throughout the late-50's and 60's (TEENAGE DOLL, A BUCKET OF BLOOD, THE CHOPPERS...) before dying of a heart attack in 1976 aged 54.

There's a persuasive argument to be mounted that the end of the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood movie-making can be ascribed not to the studios' divestiture of its theater chains but to the explosion, in the motorized society of the 1950s, of drive-in theaters, where the main attraction was not on the screen. Up to that point, even the lowliest second feature was apt to show at least a modicum of craft and plausibility. The exploitation movies changed all that, ushering in an era when just about anything goes – or, often, nothing.

American International Pictures was the outfit that pioneered fodder for the teenage popcorn-and-petting trade. In 1956, it released one of its few features that might be considered even marginally noir – Female Jungle (also called The Hangover). Neither title quite fits, though the second has a bit more claim to legitimacy than the first, which was simply a ploy to pack 'em in.

After the gala premiere of her debut film, a starlet leaves a seedy bar and meets her quietus at the hands of a strangler. For the next hour or so, Lawrence Tierney, John Carradine, Jane Mansfield and half a dozen other characters go racketing around through the night on a series of wild-goose chases. Tierney plays an off-duty policeman whose long evening bending his elbow resulted in a blackout; he thinks he might have been the killer. Carradine plays a gossip columnist whose helped the dead starlet's career, only to be jilted. Mansfield (in her screen debut) seems to be playing a call-girl who's in love with an out-of-work caricaturist whose wife might be the next victim of….

All that said, Female Jungle remains watchable, if barely. It was AIP's policy to engage a few actors on the way up and a few more on the way down, filling up the rest of the slots with whoever was handy (both the producer and director have parts in the movie). But Tierney, by this time seriously on the skids and persona-non-grata in the major studios, exudes some of his rough magic while Carradine, looking particularly suave, gives it his old-trouper's all. And Mansfield, of course, has her own morbid fascination. There's a peculiar allure to some of this late-50s sleaze; if you're into it, this is the movie for you.

Female Jungle is a fairly good and at times noteworthy low budget indie feature. Produced by star Burt Kaiser, who plays a down on his luck sketch artist with the longest 1950's hair this side of Elvis, the film also features Lawrence Tierney, who sleepwalks through his role as a drunken cop trying to win back the respect of his sergeant by helping solve a murder mystery. Tierney's career was entering crisis mode at this point thanks to his own drinking problem, and though he's obviously trying his best here, it shows. The story is fairly feeble, but the fine cast--which also includes John Carradine, Attack of the Giant Leeches man Bruno Ve Sota, an unglamorous looking Jayne Mansfield, and Davis Roberts--is worth watching. For a poverty row cheapie the film looks quite good--a testament, perhaps, to the effective work of DoP Elwood Bredell, who always did good work with little money on 'B' classics like Man Made Monster and Phantom Lady.