Fireball Jungle

The Cuban-born Joseph Prieto (aka Joseph Mawra) could be the single most under-rated person in the history of exploitation films. He not only directed SHANTY TRAMP and SAVAGES FROM HELL, he is also responsible for all four OLGA movies and the dykesploitation film CHAINED GIRLS.

This extraordinary, action-packed car-racing wonder is his very best.

The whole film revolves around a big race and the urges of the evil, snickering Cateye Meares (Alan Mixon) who'll do anything to win it. OK, pretty standard plot. What really makes the film is it's countless exploitation elements. Within 94 minutes you get a screeching car elimination, a cat fight, references to LSD and, in the best scene, a totally bent comedy-filler set in a bar with toilet-seat bar stools and urinal beer-taps!

A great, great film that stands beyond any other car-racing film ever made. See it to believe it.

I love the movie. My biological parents were in the movie. Since I was adopted out in Tampa as an infant, finding this movie was a God Send. I got to at least see my dad. He is in the bar scene listening to the band.

Campy and not great but for me...it is everything.

Saw this "Z" film with my dad at the run-down Rio Theater in downtown Miami in around 1970 or so. It was the second half of a double feature. This is truly a very sad state of affairs-the complete downfall of a really outstanding actor, Lon Chaney, Jr. He looks about as weather-beaten as possible. He looks like he has been on a 6 month drinking spree. The poor guy looks horrible. It's like seeing a washed-up Jane Russell in the Born Losers, or Robert Taylor in The Savage Pampas. "How The Mighty have Fallen!"

However! There is a bright spot. Chaney gives a heart-wrenching, gritty, realistic, and professional performance. As a matter of fact, if you are a Lon Chaney, Jr. fan, this film is a must-see. Because the bottom line is, even though this is a "Z" film, made on a shoe-string budget, with a cast of easily forgotten, Chaney tries his best, and delivers his typically outstanding performance.

I recently went to a friend's house with a group to see a rare copy of this atrocity, which he managed to dig up on DVD-R and screened on his DVD projector. I'm not really much of a drinker, but during the course of this evening I knew what to expect with Chaney Jr. and therefore decided to get toasted for a change, drinking four bottles of beer. Not much, really, but for me it had the desired effect! This was supposedly Lon Chaney Jr.'s truly last film, and it's a really horrid piece of garbage. But was it truly Chaney's LAST? I've heard at varying times that either THE FEMALE BUNCH or perhaps Dracula VS. FRANKENSTEIN were Lon's Swan Song(s). Oh well....

Anyway ---- FIREBALL JUNGLE had us rolling, and I was so buzzed by the time it started that it was like some sort of bizarre acid trip, with a sick and bloated Chaney popping up every now and then guzzling beer (what else?) which was fetched by his faithful dog. It was supposedly a race car flick, but only mere moments into it none of us could make head nor tail out of just WHAT THE HELL it actually was! Was it a race car movie? A psychedelic relic? I must tell you it was quite surreal sitting there laughing at the ineptitude of the film, all the while drinking beer myself while watching the seldom-on screen Chaney doing the same thing, flipping open his flip-top cans and guzzling away! At one point someone in the audience commented on how "sad" Chaney was, and I suppose had I not been bombed I might have felt the same; as it was, I was just eating (or rather, drinking) this up! One other guy in our group had a worse buzz on, as he wound up in the bathroom tossing his cookies a couple of times. This was much more entertaining than the movie. 0 out of ****

Stupid plot, stupid dialog, stupider situations, all leading up to a really stupid car chase at the end. This is the kind of stuff that gets purposefully left off of resumes. I saw this back in 69 as part of a double feature (they used to show you two movies for the price of one--really, it was standard operations.) I don't remember the other movie because it wasn't nearly as dumb. But somehow I seem to remember having to watch this turkey twice--no doubt the fault of my then-girlfriend, who would drag me out of movies because she couldn't follow the plot. I thought of this film immediately when I learned that IMDB has a "Bottom 100" list. This needs to be included.