mark.waltz Review of Jungle Man-Eaters

Jungle Man-Eaters (1954)

More silliness from the land of rubber crocodiles, gymnast chimps and Styrofoam mountains.

[2/10 · 29 November 2017]

The mixture of the flesh eating Mora tribe and some nasty French diamond smugglers, combined with the standard collection of feisty heroines, noble natives and of course Johnny Weismueller as the increasingly portly title character turns this into more standard weekend early matinée boy's club fare. Tamba gets his hands on a gun, shoots first and covers his eyes later. He's just a little too cute to be believable, and it's obvious that in the final scene, he'll be wearing something, handing over something or jumping around in a zany way that will have him jumping around, leaving Jim and his friends to laugh again as the lady with the Columbia torch lights the end. This cliché ended up being spoofed on many classic cartoons for years, most recently "Family Guy". Shots of headhunters agitating a fighting bull and lion lead into Weismueller's underwater roll with the a hungry crock. Shootouts, drum beating natives and fights on presumably high cliffs are intermingled with familiar stock footage of wildlife escaping from a man-made fire. As I've watched this series in chronological order and am nearly done, it's easy to see why, with TV adding old westerns and action films to their early morning Saturday schedule, why this ended. It's obvious that it was long past due that Weismueller's days in the pith helmet were way past their welcome.