Review by Michael_Elliott

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.