BroadcastChic
Excellent, a Must See
Dorathen
Better Late Then Never
Humbersi
The first must-see film of the year.
bkoganbing
The dog tags of a Woman's Army Corps officer are found in the jungle along with
a few other items by our hero Jungle Jim with the body of a dead pygmy. Our
government has taken an interest in finding and maybe rescuing Ann Savage because with those dog tags is a piece of rope made of a substance grown only
in the jungle. It's strong and it doesn't burn. Of course there are other and unfriendly governments also interested and in 1950 that could only mean the
Commies though they are never identified by name. In the film that would be
Steven Geray and William Tannen who want to find Savage for their own
nefarious purposes.So it's Johnny Weissmuller and David Bruce for our side and Geray and Tannen
for the bad guys going to look for Savage in pygmy country. A lot of stock
jungle footage, an elephant stampede, and Jungle Jim battling a gorilla or a guy in a gorilla suit in unconvincing fashion.When the Jungle Jim series ended, Weissmuller took the series to television where it was better suited. Still it only lasted a season there.With King Solomon's Mines and The African Queen on the horizon, the movie
going public would little tolerate films like Pygmy Island. It's not tolerable now.
JohnHowardReid
Instead of some tired old jungle footage, this one starts off with a really ancient disappearing scientist montage (no offscreen narration whatever until Selmer Jackson introduces Jungle Jim via a flashback). All the same, this should have been one of the better entries in the series: The pygmies could have been colorful. The introductory shots of the bush devils show promise and Ann Savage should have been an interesting heroine. Instead she is totally colorless and ranks as one of the dullest in the entire series. The climax, despite some exploding firecrackers is tame and the other main action highlights such as the underwater fight with the croc and the tangle with the phony gorilla on the bridge have obviously been lifted from the stock library. Fortunately, Steve Geray makes a superior villain – in the process of which – with seemingly casual ease – he puts every other member of the cast – and most especially Johnny W. – distinctly in the shade! Incidentally, Selmer Jackson plays the Commissioner in my credits, but maybe he's also an army officer at the Pentagon?
sol1218
***SPOILERS*** Jungle Jim, Johnny Weissmuller, gets recruited by the Unitate States Government to find this Ngoma plant that only grows on an island off the coast of Africa that produces fibers that are indestructible. It''s a foreign and unmanned power or government, take you pick, who want's to get it's hands on that plant and use it for evil purposes. Like in bankrupting the US as well as other Western textile industries and causing a major depression in the commodity stock markets!With secret US Government agent Captain Ann R. Kingsley, Ann Savage, lost in the jungle, she's actually being protected by a group of white Pygmys, looking for the plant it's now up to our hero Jungle Jim, or JJ for short, to both find and rescue her before the bad guys lead by the double dealing Leon Marko, Steven Gray, find her and where the valuable Ngoma plant is being grown. Jungle Jim does his usual thing in he movie "Pygmy island" including fighting and killing a man eating but rubber crocodile as well as slugging it out with a man in a monkey suit who seemed to have gotten the better of him until his pet chimpanzee Tamba came to JJ's rescue. Tamba not only ends up whipping the big hairy gorilla silly but also makes a monkey out of the guy as well.It's Marko and his cut throat cohorts who disguised themselves as the notorious Bush Devil tribesmen who terrify the Pygmys into deserting their villages that contains the soil where the Ngoma plant grows in. Once it's reviled by Jungle Jim that the Bush Devils are nothing but a gang of puny, in the Pygmy's eyes, white men it doesn't take long for them to get on message and with the help of Jim put and end to their reign of greed and terror on Pygmy Island.The fifth installment of some dozen Jungle Jim movies that by now seems to be following the same storyline with Jim and his jungle friends doing in the bad guys who are mostly greedy foreigners who are up to no good. Being made in 1950 when the Cold War was heating up, with the Korean War breaking out that summer, the bad guys in the film were obviously eastern block USSR communists but for some strange reason the makers of the film kept their identities or loyalties secret. Maybe it was done in not giving the Reds a reason, in being made to look like a bunch of buffoons and complete fools on the silver screen, to make things for us,the nations free world, worse then they already were!
mikeval412
I can't believe how much fun Jungle Jim movies really are! I stayed up very late to watch this one and it's a real gem! Anything with... Johnny Weissmuller, Billy Curtis (wearing a black long wig), jungle settings, tons of stock footage, Johnny fighting a rubber crocodile and a guy in a gorilla suit (is that Crash Corrigan? Looks like his suit.)...is well worth it. This is one that should not be missed! Too bad Johnny only made 16 Jungle Jims.
