Watch The Lost Jungle For Free

Go in cold, and you're likely to emerge with your blood boiling. This has to be seen to be believed.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

The Lost Jungle is one of the more intriguing adventure films of the 30's. Not for its plot – it's extremely average with nothing of interest. No, what makes this one stand out are the animal scenes. Real life animal trainer Clyde Beatty plays himself and he gets in the cage with lions, tigers, leopards and bears and gets them to obey him. A seriously impressive feat when you see how damn scary and dangerous these creatures look. Beatty seems to have been an extraordinary talent and with balls of steel. All of the animal sequences in the film are great. Several don't involve Beatty at all, such as an attack by hyenas and a very aggressive fight between a lion and a tiger. The latter is just something you will never likely see again. I'm pretty sure most of the animal material in this movie would not be 100% legal these days and would breach animal cruelty legislation. But this is a time capsule movie and it is admittedly fascinating to see.The film fades somewhat once the adventure part of the story kicks in. It just cannot compete with Beatty and the wild animals. But for what it's worth it was edited down to feature length from a serial and it is about a legendary island called Kamor where lions and tigers naturally co-exist. A party including Beatty's girlfriend crash lands there and he organises a group to go and rescue them. This side of the film has a lot of the usual staples these old adventure flicks rely on but it's by-the-numbers stuff. The real draw of this one is the incredible animal footage.

Famed circus-man and animal wrangler Clyde Beatty stars as himself in this semi-fictitious account of his girlfriend (Parker), whom he neglects for his animals, disappearing on an expedition to a remote island in the tropics. Naturally Beatty sets off to locate her, but runs into trouble when the blimp on which he's travelling crashes following a storm. Not only does he have to contend with the ferocious menagerie of lions, tigers, leopards and hyenas, but his even more dangerous assistant wrangler Sharkey (Richmond) motivated only to cause maximum harm to Beatty at every given opportunity.Beatty is affable if not really an actor, while the under-utilised Cecilia Parker has little independence in her character to make the impression of which she's capable as the film's biggest name. Every circus needs a clown and Syd Saylor offers slapstick relief as a goofy-looking sidekick to Beatty's 'straight man' routine, and generally speaking, Warner Richmond achieves his brief as Beatty's two-faced nemesis and impostor to the throne.Frequent footage of the animals performing their tricks might be of interest to some, or appear cruel to others; essentially the feature is an advertisement for Beatty's travelling animal circus and so if that's your tonic, you should be entertained.

"The Lost Jungle" is one of those typical 'back-and-forth captured items type' serials-- the bad guys capture something (or someone); then the good guys steal it back; then the bad guys steal it back again, etc., etc. How many of these can you name? 'Holt of the Secret Service,' 'The New Adventures of Tarzan,' 'The Perils of Pauline,' 'SOS Coast Guard,' 'The Phantom Creeps,' 'The Return of Chandu,' and countless others as well as this one-- in this case, stealing the missing jewels.Then there are those serials where the heroes go back and forth to a place-- 'The Lost City,' 'The Phantom Empire,' and the Flash Gordon serials. Except for the Flash Gordon serials and anything with Bela Lugosi, these are all the kinds of serials you watch while you're doing something else. You don't miss much except who's got the 'whatzit' or who's in the 'wherezit' in each episode.What if you cut out most of this endless back-and-forth business and edited it into a tight feature? They did it with this one! Usually feature versions cut out so much the film jumps too fast, skips too much, is hard to follow or doesn't make sense. Here, with the constant back and forth stealing of the jewels (how many times? 3? 4? 5?) cut down to just one time, the whole film flows right along with good continuity.In fact, for the 69 minutes of the movie, most of it is the entire, long first chapter that includes Clyde Beatty in the ring working with the animals (and with Mickey Rooney as a small boy), flying across the ocean in the dirigible (hail to those dirigible serials!) and crashing on the 'mysterious' island. Then bang! zoom! the hidden jewels are stolen and recovered and it's happy ending time! Glorious thirties shots of wild circus animals, especially with Clyde himself. They could have kept more animal sequences in, but why quibble.NOTE: My copy was part of the 'SciFi Classics 50 Movie Pack.' Unless you've got a lot of things to do around the house and need something to watch while doing them, go for the feature version first.

Before I watched this film, I had never heard of Clyde Beatty. Upon watching it though, it quickly became obvious that Beatty was a professional lion (and other wild animal) tamer, and probably quite a famous one at that.The reason for this is that this film really exists as an excuse for Beatty to do his stuff - a large part of the film is devoted to Beatty either taming animals such as lions, panthers, bears and tigers, or performing with them under the big top. The plot is secondary to this action, and is pretty standard for a 'jungle' type movie. Having said that, I found 'The Lost Jungle' to be quite interesting, especially as a historical artifact: acts like Beatty's are seldom seen these days. All in all, I enjoyed watching it: a light movie which gives a glimpse into the past.