Le trésor de la forêt vierge

Jungle Jim (1948)

** (out of 4)

After growing too old for Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller headed over to Columbia where he started the Jungle Jim series with this one being the first of sixteen movies. This time out Jim is leading a female scientist (Virginia Grey) through the jungles looking for a poison that might just be the cure for polio. I had heard this was an extremely goofy and at times rather poor series but this here was my first venture into it and I will go along with the goofy part. There are so many logical plot holes here that you could drive a semi through them but the biggest problem is th best thing going for the film. The problem is that this thing is 100% camp and that's where the entertainment value comes from. You can tell this was an extremely low-budget movie because there's so much stock footage edited in that after a while you actually get a headache from it. The majority of the animal footage is all stock footage but the film's greatest scene is one where Grey isn't paying attention when a crocodile sneaks up on her. As far as Weissmuller goes, he's pretty bad. As a visual level it's certainly easy to watch him but his line delivery is just so incredibly bad that there were a couple times where I had to laugh at him. It was fun watching him but the performance just adds more camp value. Lita Baron plays a jungle girl who adds a lot of sex appeal to the film. George Reeves plays the bad guy here and does a very good job, nearly stealing the film. The film is clearly modeled after a Tarzan movie from start to finish and this includes a swimming scene clearly trying to impersonate the one from TARZAN AND HIS MATE. Even at only 71-minutes the film seems a tad bit long but if you like goofy fun then you'll certainly want to check it out.