Bomba e a Escrava

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.

Nature photographer Dennis Johnson is taken with Bomba the jungle boy, a white guy swinging from tree to tree. Dennis arrives in the Hidden City and is invited in front of the Emir who agrees to send a party to join his expedition. The Emir secretly wants to kill Bomba. Bomba is rescued by Zidah who does not want to join the Emir's harem. She escapes into the jungle to follow Bomba.

I've never heard of Bomba, the book or the series or anything. In here, he's a less than appealing character. He is both clueless and a jerk. He can't get away from Zita fast enough. She's a damsel in distress and he is desperate to leave her behind. Even Dennis Johnson is problematic. He knows enough that the Emir wants to kill the jungle boy but he insists on seeking him out anyways. This is bad Tarzan. The whole premise is that Bomba holds the secret which threatens the Emir when in fact, the secret is nicely kept in a trunk by the Emir so that everybody can discover it at a convenient time. It's a lot writing flaws which eventually overcomes whatever charms that came with these actors and characters.

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.

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.

Many of the MGM Tarzan films were exceptionally good and well made. Wanting to cash in on the studio's success, many lesser production companies also made similar films, though with a fraction of the budget or attention to details. Most of these Tarzan and Tarzan-like films from other studios stink when you see them today. Too often, the films are filled with poorly integrated stock footage and silly acting...though Monogram Studio's "Bomba and the Hidden City" is a bit of an exception. It lacks the usual cheep stock footage and is a bit more plot-driven than usual.

In "Bomba and the Hidden City", some white explorer has heard reports of a white boy living in the wild. He's interested in finding Bomba...and asks the absolutely worst person to assist him, the local Emir (Paul Guilfoyle). Why? Because the man is scum...and he has a secret that Bomba knows. But what is the secret? And, how does it fit in with a headstrong young lady he's just met?

As I mentioned above, the film is NOT filled with awful stock footage...a problem in most low-budget Tarzan-style films. It does feature some American Alligators near the end, which is odd for Africa...but so are all the Arabs living in a jungle! You just have to not ask yourself quesitons about such things, though it's REALLY hard to understand how the young lady cannot recall her parents nor the Emir's actions considering the photo of her with her folks that you see near the end. It appears that the incident must have occurred a year or two previously...so how could the young lady have zero memory of them? She doesn't seem to be suffering from a head injury and I think it's just a plot hole. Still, despite several reasonable gripes due to the writing, it is better than the average Bomba film and is harmless fun.