Queen of the Amazons (1947)

I don't know if it's possible to make a film entirely out of stock footage, but QUEEN OF THE AMAZONS came awfully close. The plot involves the search for one Greg Jones, who went on safari and never returned. The search party includes his father, Col. Jones (no first name), and his fiancée Jean, who is only allowed to go because she's excellent with a gun. Hired to lead the jungle search party is one Gary Lambert, the venerable Great White Hunter and sexist. The party ends up at a village ruled by Zita the Amazon Queen, a white woman who was shipwrecked in Africa as a child and has never known life outside the jungle. Greg is there too, the sole survivor of an attack on his safari by ivory smugglers. It turns out, Greg was on an undercover mission to root out the smuggling ring. With Zita's help, he finally identifies and apprehends the ringleader. As often occurs in these films, there's a romantic sub-plot. In fact, there are two, but I'll spare you the banal details.For a good 75% of this hour-long film, we're watching stock footage of the African jungle. You could go to the kitchen and make yourself a sandwich in the time it takes to get from one plot point to another. In one scene, Jean watches gazelles through a pair of binoculars and asks, "Why are running so fast?" Then we see stock footage of the gazelles that is clearly in slow-motion. Jean is portrayed as a sharpshooter, but she suddenly turns helpless when her beloved dukes it out with the bad guy. The same thing happens to Zita, the supposedly fearless leader of a tribe of Amazon warriors. As soon as the hero and villain start throwing their fists around, Zita cowers in fear while her brave warriors all run away. The fight scene itself is hard to follow because the same stunt double was used for both the hero and the villain. Sure, it's a low-budget film, but give me a break! And of course, the Amazon warriors, who've spent their whole lives in the jungle, somehow look like they just stepped out of a beauty salon.QUEEN OF THE AMAZONS fails to establish the slightest sense of urgency or drama. We're told of all the dangers the search party could face, but rarely does the film show any. On the other hand, I never would have guessed the villain's identity, so kudos for that.

A safari travels from India to darkest Africa to rescue a survivor from the clutches of the legendary amazon women. Along the way, however, the travelers are plagued by a mysterious murderer. From the title, I was expecting 60-minutes of pure camp. Instead I got about 15 and those come at the end, mainly with Amira Moustafa as Zita, the amazon queen. The trouble is she's got to be one of the worst actresses I've heard in a while, even if she's all kinds of eye candy in that tight wrap-around sarong. No wonder she only had three movies. But what's the delectably fine actress Morrison doing in a z-grade production like this. She had such an erratic career, yo-yoing between prestige and programmers. Z-grade or not, I did enjoy the lengthy stock shots of the real Africa, the wild animals and natives on the savanna. Actually, the cheapo production did a pretty good job blending exterior studio shots with the stock footage. Then there's the poetry spouting Bromberg who adds a colorfully creepy element, while Lowery, a veteran of low-grade horror, lends an energetic touch when he could have just walked through. On the whole, the campy title tells a lot, but there are unexpected compensations.

(Some Spoilers) The movie "Queen of the Amazons" takes place not in the Amazon Basin in the jungles of South America but in darkest Africa's lion and elephant country. As for the fierce and feared, by the natives in the region, Amazon women warriors there about as threatening as the women on HBO's "Sex and the City" and as far as I could see-or count- there was only two of them in the entire movie.The movie actually begins in India where Jean Preston is looking for her husband, or is it fiancée, Greg who was lost on a tiger hunting safari a month earlier. As it turns out Greg ended up in Africa where he was taken prisoner by a group of woman Amazon Warriors lead by their leader the fearless and beautiful Queen Zita. With the switch in locations, from India to Africa, we get to see lots of stock footage of life in the wild as well as natives doing their thing in dance routines body piercing and an amazing, all caught on camera, lion hunt where the natives take on the king of beasts with nothing more then spears and arrows!To spice the story up a bit we have Greg working undercover for the local authorities to infiltrate and smash a contraband ring dealing with ivory tusks. Greg ends up-being the only man around- becoming Queen Zita's lover which greatly, after she finds that fact out from the Queen herself, upsets his fiancée Jean Preston. The real hero of the movie turns out to be Great White Hunter Gary Lambert who together with his friend and five star chief, or cook, Gabby leads the expedition into the jungle to find Greg.Gary soon realizes that there's a traitor-who's working for the illegal ivory smugglers-in his group that includes, besides Gabby, Greg's father Col. Jones this nutty professor & friend of the Preston family Wayne Monroe. Gary as well as the films director also realizes, in the movie really going nowhere fast, that he has to find out who the traitor is before the entire movie audience falls asleep from boredom!Well you can say the movie did pick up in the final minutes with Gary & Co. having it out with the contraband ring and the person behind it, after he came out in the open, getting his just deserts; A poison dart shot from a blowgun by the other Amazon-besides Queen Zita-in the movie. As death was quickly overtaking him the guy-the traitor- still had to go on reciting his awful poetry that besides those of us watching had even the wild animals, like monkeys and exotic birds, going nuts!

I got this in a science fiction collection. I kept waiting for some technological or science oriented event to take place. This is a bad jungle movie. That's it. It's about a group of people who go to Africa to find some guy who disappeared during a safari into the bush. His fiancée is with the group. She gets to go along because of the way she handles a gun. We are led to believe that the women in this movie are formidable and capable. One can out shoot the male lead. However, when faced with danger, they shrink back and scream. The Amazon Queen is the same way. She has built a society in the jungle, showing no mercy at times, but when it comes time to confront the villain, all she can do is plaster herself against a wall and howl. The men are just as bad. Most of the film is stock footage from African newsreels. It allows you to get a sandwich between plot elements. At times it appears that the safari has about 400 native supply carriers. At other times they have about five. People get eaten by lions and killed with spears. A romance develops between the great white hunter and the other guy's fiancée. The evil Amazon Queen doesn't do much of anything except make idle threats. And when push comes to shove, she doesn't seem to have any power at all. What a worthless movie!