Garp
Well-known member
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BONUS: 'Captive Girl' [1950]
Tarzan meets Tarzan! Yes, Johnny Weissmuller shares screen time with 'Tarzan the Fearless' actor Buster Crabbe in another otherwise middling Jungle Jim adventure.
Jim is summoned from... well, doing whatever it is Jungle Jim does to help track down a mysterious jungle girl. Perhaps she's the lone survivor of an expedition a few years ago to find the lost Lagoon of the Dead...
The film makes us wait a solid 20 minutes before Jim enters the water. But in case you were thinking "Surely he won't be attacked by a crocodile this time..?" just hold that thought. Is this the same crocodile again? The footage would suggest so. Or maybe they are all relatives, out to avenge Jim's previous run-ins with their brethren. Whatever, Jim sure is a croc magnet. He survives, of course, long enough to kick a tiger in the head a few times not long after.
Anita Lhoest plays the titular Captive Girl as a quasi-Sheena. She easily eludes Jim's bumbling attempts to find her for most of the film by calling on her animal friends like some jungle Snow White. Meanwhile, Buster gets to show off his villainous side with a caddish moustache and sneers, scuba diving for the lagoon's treasures. Tied into this morass is a subplot about a tribal leader returning to his native village after becoming educated abroad, utilizing much brown- and blackface in the process. This is a low budget film, using stock footage and, at one point, it's own footage played backwards, allowing a waterfall to defy gravity. Caw-caw the crow is sidelined here - perhaps after 'Mark of the Gorilla' he wanted higher billing - which allows Skipper the dog to fill up the runtime with his intimate and unnatural blossoming relationship with a chimp. Children, avert your eyes.
After the relative high of 'Mark of the Gorilla', this is a comedown. Whereas a Tarzan climax might involve an elephant stampede through a village, here we are witness to the Great Monkey Plague of 1950. No doubt dozens of monkeys attacking your village en masse would be scary to experience, but safe in the confines of an armchair it looks slightly comical. There are really only two things to recommend this film: the Weissmuller-Crabbe faceoff and the gratuitous fan service of seeing Jungle Jim swinging on a vine.
Tarzan meets Tarzan! Yes, Johnny Weissmuller shares screen time with 'Tarzan the Fearless' actor Buster Crabbe in another otherwise middling Jungle Jim adventure.
Jim is summoned from... well, doing whatever it is Jungle Jim does to help track down a mysterious jungle girl. Perhaps she's the lone survivor of an expedition a few years ago to find the lost Lagoon of the Dead...
The film makes us wait a solid 20 minutes before Jim enters the water. But in case you were thinking "Surely he won't be attacked by a crocodile this time..?" just hold that thought. Is this the same crocodile again? The footage would suggest so. Or maybe they are all relatives, out to avenge Jim's previous run-ins with their brethren. Whatever, Jim sure is a croc magnet. He survives, of course, long enough to kick a tiger in the head a few times not long after.
Anita Lhoest plays the titular Captive Girl as a quasi-Sheena. She easily eludes Jim's bumbling attempts to find her for most of the film by calling on her animal friends like some jungle Snow White. Meanwhile, Buster gets to show off his villainous side with a caddish moustache and sneers, scuba diving for the lagoon's treasures. Tied into this morass is a subplot about a tribal leader returning to his native village after becoming educated abroad, utilizing much brown- and blackface in the process. This is a low budget film, using stock footage and, at one point, it's own footage played backwards, allowing a waterfall to defy gravity. Caw-caw the crow is sidelined here - perhaps after 'Mark of the Gorilla' he wanted higher billing - which allows Skipper the dog to fill up the runtime with his intimate and unnatural blossoming relationship with a chimp. Children, avert your eyes.
After the relative high of 'Mark of the Gorilla', this is a comedown. Whereas a Tarzan climax might involve an elephant stampede through a village, here we are witness to the Great Monkey Plague of 1950. No doubt dozens of monkeys attacking your village en masse would be scary to experience, but safe in the confines of an armchair it looks slightly comical. There are really only two things to recommend this film: the Weissmuller-Crabbe faceoff and the gratuitous fan service of seeing Jungle Jim swinging on a vine.