Terror in the Jungle

TERROR IN THE JUNGLE is about a boy named Henry (Jimmy Angle) who is a recent graduate of The Academy Of Hideously Bad Acting. On a plane trip to Brazil, catastrophe strikes! The plane, filled with alumni from Henry's school, including a 45 year old "rock" band sporting various fright wigs, goes down in the jungles of Peru.

Thankfully, hungry crocodiles eat everyone but Henry, who makes his way via coffin (!), to a tribe of sun-worshipping natives. All, while Henry's dad tries to locate him.

This might sound like a surefire schlock classic, and in many ways it is. However, it also suffers from a supreme dullness so complete, as to cause fits of uncontrollable shaking and death!

An early entry from Crown International Pictures, it makes their later tripe seem magnificent by comparison!...

If there's anything worse than this movie I don't want to see it. I remember so many amazing things--a nun dropped out of a coffin to make a raft for a little blond boy; the little blond boy himself adored as a god; lots of stock footage of Peru as an ideal vacation spot. Shining Path and Alberto Fujimori should blast away any notion that Peru is a vacation paradise. The whole thing is so awful that Plan 9 or even Robot Monster is an aesthetic treat by comparison. This film should be bombed and strafed and bombed again.

OK, now it's my turn to weigh in on this disaster. I'm the director who's credited with this fiasco but in my defense I have to explain that there were three directors on this film and we all suffered under a producer with no experience, no taste, no sense and worst of all, NO MONEY. I was fresh out of film school working as an editor when I was introduced to him when he was looking for a director. I convinced him I could handle a feature having already won two awards at film festivals for two shorts I had done. This was the biggest mistake in my life. Once on, for a mere $50 a day, I realized what I had gotten into. He hired a bunch of non-SAG actors who actually PAID HIM to be in his movie. None had any experience in front of a camera and all the characters were his creation. I was stuck in that plane mock-up for two weeks with these desperate souls trying to create something from nothing. The script was only half written when we started and he said he would finish it when we got to the jungle. When we completed the plane interiors, including the now famous "crash" scene, the rough cut was 83 minutes long and we hadn't even reached the jungle part of the story.

I told him we had to make some serious trims, both for time and for performances. He refused to cut anything. He was so in love with the crap we had he actually once said he believed that the actress playing the stewardess would win an Oscar for her scream scene in the fire. I knew I was doomed. We argued over and over about what I felt should be dropped, trimmed and eliminated until I had it. I walked from the production and that wonderful salary.

Undaunted, he went to Peru and used the cameraman as the replacement director. Down there they wrote the second half of the script and shot it as he wrote it. Back in LA they now had a bigger disaster, naturally. The film was way too long, badly shot, badly acted and unwatchable. He and this second director fought, as did I, and he then walked away as well. Now the producer was over a barrel. He had sunk what little money he borrowed and still believed he had a hit on his hands if he could just get it finished. He hired a third guy to come in and fix the problem. This genius hired a bunch of extras, put bad wigs on them and went to Griffith park in LA and shot more crap that was even more laughable than what they got in Peru. After that the producer shopped around for stock footage of native ceremonies and came up with some god-awful crap from a 40's schlock film and cut it in... the final disaster is what's on screen. I've lived in shame my entire career because for some reason I always get the credit for making this turkey. I was one of three victims! The entire debacle was the brain child of the producer and none of us had a chance in hell to make it any better than it was doomed to be from the start.

And that's the truth.

Making a jungle movie POORLY isn't easy...first, you have to make sure that the nightclub style ceremonial dance scenes are choreographed with just the right amount of schlock...you have to make sure all of the costumes have been lifted from the 1968 Miss America (or maybe Miss Ecuador) swimsuit competition...and you definitely MUST insure that all the actors have never performed beyond the high school level...

I'M TOTALLY AMAZED THAT THIS MOVIE ISN'T UNIVERSALLY CONSIDERED TO BE THE MOST BEAUTIFULLY MADE BAD MOVIE OF ALL TIME. I laughed more during this movie than any other...EVER!!!!!

The problem is that, since it is so unknown, it's hard to find. Yet it's definitely worth the effort if you like this sort of thing,

Bad acting all around. Bad script. Bad music. Bad editing. Bad special effects. Bad Continuity. Little Henry is off to be with Mom, but the airplane doesn't make it. Also on board are a rock band (with their terrible wigs), and a few oddball characters. After accidentally pushing a nun out of the airplane, it crashes. Some searchers find where the boy landed. Then we spend a crazy long time on a couple lovely floor shows by the native savages. Some of the villagers and some of the dancers are quite light skinned, which makes one wonder how they could be so white, while the rest of their tribe is so dark. It's all too hokey for words. and the final 15 minutes just go all over the place. Actually filmed in Peru, if one can believe the credits. We make it to the end, but just barely. It's all so terrible. but it got made. Skip this one.... showing on Epix channel.