Jungle Jim in the Forbidden Land (1952)

All you need to be is a damsel in distress, here Angela Greene, cornered by a black panther which in Jim's arms looks like a kitten. She's a beautiful anthropologist searching for a mysterious people, giants of the jungle and as mysterious as the forbidden land itself. This has one of the better setups for the mid series, outwearing its welcome except for the kids who rushed to these on Saturday morning and the later youthful TV audiences who clamored for Tarzan, Bombs and any look back at the ever popular but dying serials so popular in those last days of the golden age of cinema. That's when they made em' fast, made em' cheap, and made em' in bulk. As long as Jim and his chimp pal Tamba cavorted through the African wilds, they could find an audience.Smartly, this shows the raid on Greene's canoe by dangerous hippos, reminding us of the dangers of these seemingly peaceful herbivores. Johnny Weissmuller deserves credit for going as long as he could, dealing once again with on-the-warpath natives, elephant poachers and Styrofoam sets. They actually name the tribal chief "Zulu", and there's a mysterious prophet like character named "the old one". Lester Matthews and Jean Willed are the obvious bad guys, part of Jim's expedition for nefarious reasons, utilizing truth serum to find out what they need to know. This seems to be a little more polished than previous episodes which were mostly rushed. A plot twist borrowed from "Island of Lost Souls" adds to the intrigue. Danger at every turn and a steady, fun pace puts this at above average.

**SPOILERS** Pretty and determined lady anthropologist Dr. Linda Roberts, Angela Greene, just survived a deadly hippo attack that wiped out her entire expedition only to be spotted and attacked by a ferocious and hungry black leopard. Luckily for Linda the big cat is killed by the jungle man himself "Jungle Jim", Johnny Weissmuller, who came both running and swimming to her rescue. Mr."Jim" or James Bradley which is actually "Jungle Jim's" real name, taken from the newspaper comic strip where the character originated from in the late 1930's, is not at all willing to help Linda find the forbidden land beyond the "Valley of the Elephant". It's there where the legendary "Giant People" are said to be inhabitants of. Linda is certain that the "Giant People" are the illusive "Missing Link" that can finally connect man to the world of primates.What makes Jim change his mind is when he learns that a number of native ivory poachers together with Americans Doc. Edwards, William Tanner, and his girlfriend Denise, Jean Willes, are also looking for the secret land of the "Giant People"! Not for reasons of research in order to prove Darwin's' theory of Evolution but to trap all the elephants in the area and slaughter them for their precious ivory tusks!"Jungle Jim" in trying to stop Doc & Danise together with their partner in crime the native Chief Zulu, Frederick Berest, from corralling the elephants gets himself into far more trouble then even he ever expected to be in. Jim gets into a life and death struggle with one of the "Giant People", the seven foot tall Clem Ericson, who was held together with his mate, the over six foot tall Irmgard Helen H. Raschke, captive by Doc & Denise. It's in his fight with he "Giant Man", who had Jim on the ropes, that Jim is saved by his pet monkey Tamba who brains the big guy with a rock. Jim is later knocked out could, from behind, by Doc who together with Denise framed Jim for a murder that he was totally Innocent of! That of Fred Lewis, George Eldridge, who in attempting to stop both Doc and Denise from carrying their dastardly plan ended up getting killed, by Doc, for his treat to report them to the local authorities.Jim now a wanted man in the Fred Lewis murder has to not only prove his innocence, before he's tracked down and shot by the local native police, but at the same time stop Doc & Denise, with the help of Chief Zulu and his tribesmen,from wiping out, in order to get their hands on their ivory tusks, the entire local elephant population!This turns out to be a job far too big for "Jungle Jim" to handle himself. But with the help of the now on the loose "Giant Man" and his pet chimpanzee Tamba and of course the threatened with extinction elephants themselves "Jungle Jim" does managed to pull it all-and thus save the day- off!

"In the Forbidden Land" seems to me to have a weaker and less focused screenplay compared to the other JJ episode I've seen (the one where he goes looking for a missing football player). Or maybe seeing another one helped me realize just how perfunctory and by-the-numbers this series really was. But the performances were about the same, and the effects and sound stages and liberal use of stock footage and white actors was about the same. Johnny himself still looked reasonably fit (for a 1950s actor who didn't know anything about modern theories of resistance training or nutrition) in his one extended shirtless scene, which is always good for a viewers' morale.Goofy mistakes and second rate production elements abound, of course. A hippo attacks a canoe and eats one of the paddlers (aren't hippos herbivores?).Jim alternates fighting a stuffed panther with stock footage shots of a real one snarling at the camera. "Giant people" from a lost tribe turn out to resemble werewolves (rather than "missing links"). Asian elephants are outfitted with tusks and ear prostheses in an effort to resemble African elephants (at least they knew the difference). There's random footage of "Tamba" the chimp being "cute" that has no connection to almost anything else in the plot and is just there because, hey, people expect a chimp sidekick for Johnny. And every one in the plot is rock stupid. The final third of the plot involves Jim being framed for murder (apparently the commissioner was supposed to think that Jim shot himself full of pentathol and clubbed himself unconscious) but not being allowed to explain what happened because they've gagged him. (The stated reason is that they don't want him to "call for help from his animal friends". The real reason is that the plot twist wouldn't last for 30 seconds if Jim was allowed to speak).Still, if you choose to watch a "Jungle Jim" adventure in this day and age, you either want to relive the experience of being 8 years old and watching a Saturday afternoon matinée, or else you are an archivist and collector of all similar things from that era. In either case, you parked your brain at the door at the beginning of the film. (I'm not sneering - I enjoy certain pop culture items from my childhood far more than they deserve on their actual merits.) So here you are: enjoy!

The Jungle Jim movies produced by Sam Katzman and starring Johnny Weismuller were all low grade jungle adventures made strictly to fill the bottom half of a double bill. Unless you watch them out nostalgia or, are like me, a fan of Weismuller, they are pretty rough going. None of them seem to have been made with idea of making something good. The concurrent Tarzan films at RKO with Lex Barker, and the Bomba the Jungle Boy series at Monogram starring former "Boy" Johnny Sheffield, while not great, were at least reasonably well produced.JUNGLE JIM IN THE FORBIDDEN LAND is slightly enlivened by the presence of the strange "giant people." They are not giants, just very tall. They are supposed to be some kind of missing link. The makeup by Clay Campell is surprisingly good for such a cheap picture, but the only problem is that the "giant people" look more like werewolves than some kind of "missing link". Otherwise, JUNGLE JIM IN THE FORBIDDEN is just another Jungle Jim movie with the usual perfunctory performances, light skinned Africans, Columbia backlot jungle, stock footage, Tamba's hijinks etc.