mark.waltz More Jungle Jim silliness had him searching for football hero Bob Waterfield. Komodo dragons, men in Woolworth Halloween costumes and other assorted ridiculousness pad out this programmer, the seventh in a series. It's like an edited 1930's serial with a fat Tarzan without the loincloth, an adorable chimp and a brave but vulnerable to danger photographer (Sheila Ryan) on the hunt for the missing football hero and finding much more. An evil leader (Lyle Talbot) sends out men in cheap five and dime skeleton outfits to do his evil bidding, a plot twist that comes out of nowhere and has little impact on the plot other than for some violent native attacks and explosions. The Saturday matinée kiddy crowd went crazy for these types of films that aren't at all challenging, yet filled with action, adventure, unnecessary romance and silly humor. The bad guys are one dimensional, Wakefield a handsome athlete (yet a lousy actor) and the animals either manipulated to be easy to defeat or just so darned adorable. When Ryan dones a sarong, it sets series lead Johnny Weismueller up for more unconditional romance that will end upon the film's closing titles. Cheesy fun, especially with two magnified lizards fighting and a later stock shot of a giant octopus duking it out with a great white shark. Every now and then, I'll return to these for a passable time filler that you'll never catch on anybody's "best of" list.

jcsymmes 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.

bkoganbing A little romance entered Jungle Jim's life in Jungle Manhunt. Not for Johnny Weissmuller mind you at least in the Tarzan films he had Jane. No the romance came for Sheila Ryan who came with camera in hand as a news reporter looking for a football player who disappeared in a presumed plane crash several years earlier. And Ryan's in need of a guide.The guy that Ryan is seeking is Bob Waterfield the Frank Tarkenton of his day. Waterfield was probably the best quarterback of his day, a very popular guy and also one of the first Christian athletes though he was far from Tim Tebow. At the time this film was made he was starring for the Los Angeles Rams. And Waterfield was also half of a very big celebrity couple of himself and Jane Russell.Anyway rumors of a white man leading a native tribe on various raids to capture men and kill all the others in peaceful tribes bring Weissmuller into the local war. Ryan tags along to see if it could be Waterfield.Instead it's Lyle Talbot playing a foreign scientist with a bit of cheesy accent who is enslaving the men to work in his uranium mine where they're prone to die real soon. Weissmuller finds the mine, finds Talbot and along the way finds Waterfield.Jungle Manhunt was fascinating to watch various acting styles employed. Lyle Talbot did what was required of him and overacted outrageously for the kid trade the target audience was and for posterity because he knew how corny this film was and knew also it would be a camp classic. Ryan was a good actress and did what was required of her to look both feminine and competent in the man's world even though she did need rescuing by Weissmuller from drowning. Weissmuller who in his first Tarzan film just got a grunt or three and some jungle gibberish for dialog, graduated to where he could handle dialog if not great at least competently. Poor Waterfield as an actor, he was great quarterback.I have to say this particular Jungle Jim feature was enjoyable even if I did laugh in the wrong spots.

classicsoncall I was getting a little worried, almost an hour into the picture and Jungle Jim (Johnny Weissmuller) still hadn't tangled with a wild animal yet, but at 58:08 he makes short work of a shark - no battle actually, he just stabs it! That was right after the shark beat up on an octopus, so maybe he was too tired to fight. What's curious to me was how a shark and an octopus found their way into an African river. Besides the battle of sea creatures, we're also treated to a tussle between a pair of dinosaur impersonating lizards, one of which had a dimetrodon fin attached to it's back. Pretty cool stuff for a kid watching this stuff back in the 1950's, because after all, I was one of them.As for the movie's main plot, you really have to pay attention to let the whole thing sink in. An evil scientific genius (Lyle Talbot) discovers that boiling igneous rock will release the liquids and gases in it's magma composition, and when common sugar is added, a residue of carbon from the burned sugar is held suspended by the magma. Then when the whole solution is immersed in cold water, what's left is re-crystallized into synthetic diamonds - Whew! When I tried it, I only got a hot, wet rock. You know, I think they made all that up.There must have been a reason each Jungle Jim movie offered a different female lead, this time it was Sheila Ryan as spunky photographer Ann Lawrence. They're out to find a former All-American football player who went missing in the jungle some nine years earlier. The opening film credits state 'Introducing' Bob Waterfield, a real life pro player and coach for the Los Angeles Rams. The 'introduction' tag is usually meant to herald an up and coming new star, but in this case, Waterfield's performance was decidedly less successful than his football career. At least Rick Vallin turns up one more time as yet another tribal chief named Bono, causing me to wonder where the current rock star Bono's name actually came from - Hmm. And say, you know who else gets an opening film credit - Tamba The Chimp!! I got a kick out of an early scene when Miss Lawrence first meets Jungle Jim when he saves her from drowning. Admiring his features, she asks him to 'turn your head to the right', to which he turns his head left! Having seen about a half dozen Jungle Jim films recently, I have to admit that once viewed, they're largely forgettable, but at least when they're on they offer a lot of fun, even if some of it is just plain goofy. This one though, I must say probably had the best ending of one so far. Not only does Ann Lawrence get to kiss Jim's co-hero Bob Miller (Waterfield), but Tamba gets to plant one on Jungle Jim himself!