Jungle Manhunt

This is one of the better Jungle Jim entries.Although still low-budget with the usual stock footage it has some good things goibg for it.First of all,Johnny Weissmuller looks quite fit and shows off his physique twice in the film.He looked better here,than in his last Tarzan film.Sheila Ryan as Ann the lady photographer is a beautiful and spunky co-star.She looks lovely in a sarong in a scene where she is getting cozy with the lost football player,Bob Waterfield.(a real-life player).Also along for the ride are Rick Vallin as Jim's native friend,Tamba the Chimp and that great B-actor Lyle Talbot as the villain.A predictable JIM adventure,but still a lot of fun.

Jungle Manhunt (1951)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Seventh film in the popular series has a football star (real football player Bob Waterfield) going missing in the jungle so a reporter (Sheila Ryan) hires Jungle Jim (Johnny Weissmuller) to go searching for him. Soon they find a wild skeleton man tribe as well as various dinosaurs. I wasn't expecting too much going into this film but I was still left disappointed because I've become of a fan of director Landers who is probably best remembered for the Karloff/Lugosi film THE RAVEN. The director has also directed films in series such as Boston Blackie, The Whistler and various other "B" movies. He can usually turn trash into good fun but that's not the case here. This is only my second film in the series and I'm already starting to get bored with it. There are still many campy moments here including one very embarrassing goof that happens towards the start of the film. After Jim rescues the reporter she goes to look at his profile and tells him to turn his head to the right but he ends up turning it to the left. I couldn't help but feel embarrassed for ol' Johnny and this scene almost made you forget his bad but campy performance. Waterfield isn't too bad in his role and we've also got camp favorite Lyle Talbot playing a mad scientist. The dinosaur sequence, lifted from ONE MILLION B.C., is extremely silly as is another scene, lifted from yet another movie, where an octopus and shark fight in the middle of the jungle!

I had long been curious about the "Jungle Jim" movie series after reading about it in the Leonard Maltin movie guide. So when Turner Classic Movies scheduled three of the movies one afternoon, I decided to give them a look.

After watching them, I can understand why there's been little effort to resurrect this series into the minds of modern moviegoers. To be sure, there are some unintentionally hilarious things about this series. There is the frequent use of stock footage, which may not have been obvious to '50s viewers, but is very obvious today. Much of the outdoor footage is obviously not shot in the wilds of Africa, but on the desert landscape of California. Jungle Jim, on the flimsiest of excuses, goes swimming at least once in every movie, and the underwater footage is obviously filmed through the glass window of a tank. I saw the same stone staircase in *all* of the Jungle Jim movies I watched.

While there are some laughs to be found in these movies, there are also some unlaughable parts. Weissmuller was starting to show his age, sometimes looking significantly older than the age he actually was. And there's the treatment of natives in the movie. Despite the fact that the movies take place in Africa, the natives are played by Caucasians! (Though considering their simple-minded nature and willing to be bossed by Jungle Jim, people of African descent might actually be thankful.) As for THIS particular Jungle Jim adventure, like the others I watched, I found it to be (overall) somewhat dull and talky, though the use of stock footage from ONE MILLION B.C. and a shark/octopus fight (in a river in Africa?????) did provide some needed laughs. But at the end, I felt like I hadn't seen anything new. As I said in my summary line at the beginning of this review, if you've seen one JUNGLE JIM movie...

the most interesting thing about the movie is the performances. There mostly pretty bad. Johnny Wessimieser may have had one really goodgreat movie but here hes barely wood-perhaps because he actually has to talk in the movie he acts as if he is afraid of it . Everyone Else to Bob mMller as a football player is also bad-the natives the villain everyone is pretty much terrible.

That said Shelia Ryan, is pretty great in the movie-either that or she is just head or heals better then anyone else in the movie that it just looks great. Shes spunky, generally funny and has a good late 40s sense of power and accomplishment even if she just mostly gets dragged around in the film.

its not in any means a good movie, yet i can't hate it.

More of the same for Jungle Jim fans here as Johnny Weissmuller's jungle hero gets involved in helping Anne Lawrence (Sheila Ryan) in the search for a missing football star. The backdrop is one of dastardly doings by some nefarious character, who is instigating raids on villages led by the Skeleton Men. Cue Jim involved in a good quota of close call dramatics.

There's the usual cheap moments; bad rear projection, giant prop boulders that move when someone touches them, but these are the kind of things we tend to afford affection for these days. From drowning perils to big lizard, to fisticuffs and sexual tensions, Jungle Manhunt, without reaching the higher end of the franchise, never falters in its prime objective to entertain without pretension. 6/10