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the audience applauded

Sick Product of a Sick System

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The bad white man is back, after the mysterious okongoe for something in their system that apparently makes a fabulous narcotic. OK, that's a strange premise on its own, but the way that this "Jungle Jim" series is presented is a lot more intelligent than the previous four entries in the series, minus the very good first entry. Unfortunately, it's missing the unintentional humor in those films, and that makes this a bit slow at times. OK, there is the obviously painted mule made to look like a zebra and a slithering spider like creature the size of a man (no rival to the creepy ones of "Cat Women of the Moon"), plus a scary sandstorm that comes out of nowhere. Of course, there's also the obligatory fall into quicksand, a staple of practically every entry in the series. Sherry Moreland is the lucky starlet out of a tribe of Amazon like women to be the female lead, although I would say her creative discovery of makeup among non jungle plants seems quite ingenious.

For this low budgeted film, the sixth in Columbia Pictures' Jungle Jim series, based upon a long-running comic strip of Alex Raymond, creator also of "Flash Gordon" and others, Jungle Jim (Johnny Weissmuller) is able to save an about to drown aircraft pilot, Ronald Cameron (William Henry) whose plane has crashed and sunk beneath a pond into which Jim is about to plunge. Cameron, who might not be the police inspector whom he claims to be, is tracking a missing biology professor who had been field researching an unique beast, the "okongo", that the script's pages describe as some type of hybrid between an antelope and a zebra. While local natives venerate this creature, "evil white" hunters plan to capture the entire herd because the okongo's digestive system transmutes, in some mysterious fashion, its favourite food plant into a powerful and, to be sure, potentially lucrative narcotic drug. These "evil whites" force the men of the local tribe to assist them in locating the okongos, leaving the tribeswomen to call upon Jungle Jim to stop the invaders from absconding with the entire host of the beasts. As champion of the females, Jim confronts numerous perils, from both human and animal adversaries. These include a savage fight to the death at close quarters with a leopard (utilizing footage with a stunt double used regularly for previously released Jungle Jim adventures), a struggle with a "giant desert spider" (obviously a garden hose garnished with palm fronds), and a group of the hostile white men to whom Jim is simply an inconvenience (although one spotlessly attired, whose clothing bears not the least sign of the brutal combat with the leopard, or of the ground-hugging opposition offered by the oversize spider, from which no living being could have reasonably been expected to escape). The film is shot in Southern California locations that bear scant resemblance to the scenario's purported African Congo. Nor does the assorted collection of Central Casting extras, comprised in the main of flabby Filipinos and Hispanics, match the expected appearance of indigenous Africans. These worthies, all barefoot, move with ever so much care through the locations' hard-rock strewn terrain during the course of the work's repetitive scenes of the varying characters who are tirelessly walking for no ostensible purpose. There is yet more for a viewer to chuckle over here: the okongos are only ponies stabled at Corriganville, an often used site for Western movies, and have stripes painted sloppily over their flanks; in order for Jim to be trusted by female members of the tribe, he must know the "tribal sign", and he of course does; his omnipresent pet chimpanzee, here named Kanga, in a clearly unplanned adaptation from the script, swings by way of vine, knocking Jim into a mud puddle, that is then labelled as "quicksand". There is a good deal more of such foolishness, but no advantage is to be gained by flogging a dead okongo for this haphazardly edited, listlessly directed affair that relies upon stock footage and scoring with the entire assemblage of players chasing each other about to no design during the movie's closing one quarter of an hour, or so.

Fury of the Congo (1951) * 1/2 (out of 4) Sixth film in the Columbia-Sam Katzman series has Jungle Jim (Johnny Weissmuller) trying to stop some drug dealers who are capturing horse-like animals whose glands can be turned into a strong drug. What Jim doesn't realize is that the man he trusts most is the one behind the scheme. FURY OF THE CONGO is pretty much what you'd expect from a Jungle Jim movie as we begin with some weird narration that sets everything up and that follows with countless bits of stock footage showing off the animals and then Jim enters the picture and of course he's normally swimming. It's clear that this series was aimed at the kids during a Saturday matinée and that's fine but when viewed today it's really hard to find anything good to say about the films. This one here is one of the weaker ones even though it actually does feature one of the more entertaining or at least interesting story lines. The idea of this zebra-horse crossbreed being used for drugs was an interesting idea that could have worked in another film but here it just leads to one boring sequence after another. Not only do the action scenes come off boring but they're also done extremely cheaply and look so poor that you often start to wonder if perhaps one of the chimps running around the set took a camera and started filming. There are also a few funny goofs in the film including one where Jim grabs a weed that's basically going to be used as a straw so that he can hide underwater and still be able to breathe. I'm not sure if Weissmuller just didn't realize how deep the water was or what but when he goes under he actually goes all the way under including bringing the breathing device under with him. As for the former Tarzan, he's pretty lifeless here but I guess at this point in his career he was just going by-the-numbers. The supporting cast includes Sherry Moreland and William Henry but neither bring much life to the screen nor does Lyle Talbot in his small role. The craziest sequence happens during a windstorm when a large spider attacks Jim. At first I thought this "spider" was just the top of some palm tree because that's exactly what it looks like. The scene is pretty funny because it's obvious this "spider" doesn't have very much movement and when it's supposed to be pulling Jim back, it's easy to see that Weissmuller is using his hands to move back. FURY OF THE CONGO is yet another poor film in this series, which today is mainly for those who enjoy bad movies.

Taken out of its context as a low budget Saturday afternoon matinée, "Fury Of The Congo" doesn't stack up very well against "real" films. But compared to other Tarzan and Jungle Jim films, "Fury Of the Congo" is pretty good. It seems to have a lot more actual outdoor footage than many of the other JJ/Tarzan films of that era, the direction and screenplay are better and snappier...and either Weismuller is quite a bit better delivering his lines than he normally is, or else I'm just getting used to his wooden acting. Parts of the film are actually a fair amount of fun to watch: Tamba accidentally knocks Jim into a quicksand patch at one point, Jim escapes from armed pursuers by breathing thru a reed while he hides underwater, and yes, Jim swings from tree to tree on a series of vines at another point. The movie ends with an energetic mêlée between the bad guys and Jim/Tamba/the enslaved native tribe/their spear wielding Amazonian wives that melds with with a zebra (or Okongo) stampede and a sandstorm.The one thing that doesn't quite work is the scene that got the movie included in the science fiction/fantasy compilation, "Keep Watching The Skies!" - the giant spider attack. In the context of the film, this makes no sense whatever, and worse, it's a pretty dull little scene - the spider costume is utterly unconvincing as it tries to choke Jim, and Jim cuts on the spider's legs until it lets go, and well, you can imagine the rest.You don't look for high quality film making in a Jungle Jim film...you just want nostalgia. This one managed to avoid sucking enough that I was able to enjoy it as a flashback to my 8 year old movie watching experience.