Incontro nell'ultimo paradiso

Normally when you get an Umberto Lenzi film set in the jungle; there's blood and people getting eaten, but with Daughter of the Jungle he actually tried to make a comedy film! Naturally I went into this expecting the worst, but surprisingly it's a decently entertaining film. If I had to compare it to something else along the same lines, I'd probably use Massacre in Dinosaur Valley; although this film is nowhere near as good as the later trash classic. Anyway, we focus on two American men who find themselves in the jungle. They're kidnapped by a bunch of cannibals but think they've been saved when they see an American plane. However, it turns out that the plane is full of mercenaries looking for rubies; so the Americans flee into the jungle where they find a beautiful girl who brought up by monkeys. This film is obviously very cheap and clearly Lenzi was in 'can't be bothered mode', and it's hard to believe that this film was made by the man behind the likes of Almost Human and Seven Blood-Stained Orchids. The use of stock footage is abundant too and the plot is unbelievably stupid. The film was obviously intended to be funny; although the jokes continually miss the mark and the only funny thing about it is the dubbing; which is among the worst I've ever heard. The voices are frankly ridiculous and that saps up any chance that the film may have had to gain any credibility. Still...it does at least make for amusing viewing and the film is at least not as bad as I thought it would be.

Directed by Umberto Lenzi, Daughter of the Jungle is a tongue in cheek parody of both Tarzan and cannibal movies. Sabrina Siani plays the roll of Luana (a female Tarzan-like character) who was lost in the jungle as a child when her parent's helicopter crashes. Rodolfo Bigotti (Ringo) and Renato Miracco (Butch) are two goofy tourists who manage to get lost in the jungle, chased by cannibals and 'rescued' by Luana.

OK, the movie doesn't deserve a 6 based on it's production values, acting, direction, or story; but I give it that score because it's just damn funny. I watched the English dubbed version and the voices alone are hilarious... the brutish guy sounds like Pee Wee Herman while the main bad guy's voice and accent change throughout the movie, another character even cracks a joke about it. The dialog is no less funny as Butch constantly harangues Ringo and blames him for everything. Sabrina Siani is not the best looking girl but she's better than average although she carries a little more junk in the trunk than I personally care for. I give her props, she plays her role well and acts with extreme confidence even when topless. That last might seem silly but many women in film assume distracting, self conscious postures while topless. It's not a movie for everyone but fans of tongue-in-cheek comedies and cannibal movies might find it entertaining.

Umberto Lenzi, the pioneer of disturbingly gory cannibal films, directs. A strange change of pace for this director and the jungle genre. Be advised, this is a dumb, unfunny slapstick comedy-adventure with cardboard characters and comic book villains. There's even a comedic fat guy thug who constantly falls down or gets conked on the head. Hilarious. Probably better in the original Italian as the English dubbing is horrible.

Our heroes are a pair of knucklehead dudes from New York who seem to have wandered in from some frat-boy sex comedy (which were popular at the time). After pointlessly wasting a half-hour of screen time, they get stranded in the Amazon jungle -- which just happens to be full of African wildlife. They stumble across hostile natives, semi-comic-relief criminal goons hunting for rubies, and Luana, a beautiful blond jungle girl (Sabrina Siani from "White Cannibal Queen"). Luana cavorts with a chimp, swings on vines, talks to elephants, swims topless, and does a classic Tarzan yell. After getting an eyeful of Luana, one guy says: "Edgar Rice Burroughs got it all wrong." (That's the funniest line in the film.) The dopey dialog is loaded with wisecracks that reference other films ("you got it all over Bo what's-her-name"). She grew up alone after her parents perished following a helicopter crash-landing. Among the many implausible plot points is the repair of the helicopter that's been rusting away for 16 years. We're also supposed to believe these clueless dolts can somehow refine crude oil sludge into gasoline without any technology. Okay, whatever...

The only saving grace is the absolutely gorgeous Sabrina Siani, one of the most appealing and sexy jungle girls to come down the pike. She wears a skimpy leather top and a barely-there thong that hides none of her fabulous caboose. Siani has the kind of perfect posterior that anthropologists should study and document for future generations. Fortunately, we have this film. Everything else in this dreadful "Sheena" rehash is instantly forgettable.

I'm always on the lookout for any film that might offer a little Italian cannibal action, and with Daughter of the Jungle being directed by Umberto Lenzi of Cannibal Ferox fame I figured it might be worth a blind buy.

How wrong I was.

While the film does serve up a tribe of primitive savages in a jungle setting, graphic gut munching is most definitely off the menu; what we get instead is lots of truly awful comedy and some cheap titillation courtesy of blonde babe Sabrina Siani, who plays a female version of Tarzan called Susan.

This jungle hottie is discovered swinging through the trees by a pair of American chumps, Ringo (Rodolfo Bigotti) and Butch (Renato Miracco), who have become lost in the jungle, encountered and befriended a local tribe, and have subsequently found themselves in hot water with a ruthless gang of criminals (led by Sal Borghese) searching for rubies. With a little help from their new primitive pals, the pair of doofuses take on the bad guys.

The film's excruciatingly unfunny slapstick and constant supposedly amusing bickering between the two friends make this film a real struggle to sit though, and even the sight of Siani in (and out of) her tiny jungle costume isn't enough to compensate.

1.5/10, round up to 2 for the smoking chimp.

Umberto Lenzi is perhaps most (in)famous for "Cannibal Ferox", a film that is not good maybe, but is certainly memorably brutal. This movie seems to have a similar plot with two Euro-idiots deciding to tour a Third World jungle where they encounter both a primitive tribe and vicious ruby smugglers. However, they also meet a lone teenage white girl (Sabrina Siani), who is living there for no apparent reason, and the movie becomes instead a throwback to the late 60's "female Tarzan" movies like "Luana", "Samoa", or "Tarzana". Although it was apparently filmed partly in the Dominican Republic (rather than a European zoo), this movie resembles the contemporary cheap-jack Eurocine/Jess Franco productions ("Cannibals", "Diamonds of Kilimanjaro") much more than it does the Italian cannibal epics. The "locals" seem to be a strange mixture of African and Asian, while I strongly suspect many of the "natives" are really white Europeans in grease-paint. To make matters worse, this is actually a comedy. Italian comedies are really an acquired taste (not unlike huffing paint thinner), but even by the standards of that inferior genre, this is pretty inferior.

Lenzi was fairly proficient at gialli and police thrillers (i.e. "So Sweet, So Perverse", "Almost Human"), but he demonstrates no aptitude whatsoever for screwball comedy. The male characters are all incredibly annoying, but it's hard to know whether to blame the Italian actors or the talentless idiots responsible for dubbing them into English. Then there's barely legal Euro-model Sabrina Siani, who had a great body, but absolutely no idea how to use it. It wasn't that she was a bad actress so much as that she was simply NOT an actress. She never really made any attempt to act, just letting her pert young breasts and her post-adolescent derrière do it all for her. Unlike someone like Edwige Fenech, who was a genuinely talented actress, or Gloria Guida, who was definitely serviceable, Siani doesn't manage to pull off either funny OR sexy here. Her body is the only thing she (or this entire movie) has going for it.

If you're tempted to see this, I would recommend instead Franco's "Cannibals" (also with Siani) or "Diamonds of Kilimanjaro" (with Katja Bienert). Both movies are much more unintentionally funny than this movie is intentionally, and most of the annoying cast in those gets devoured by bloodthirsty cannibals.