This is the type of film that i feel deserves a badly written review, simply because it's so bad itself that to describe it defies logic. There's the right amount of intrigue, and a truly dreadful, convoluted script in a film that turns both deadly in the threats that Jungle Jim faces and deadly boring in the way it presents its overly convoluted and unbelievable story. The film opens on the attempted sacrifice of a native tribesman and Johnny Weismueller's interference and discovery that this cult like African tribe is worshiping the effigy of the Asian tiger, more or less making us believe that this cult is turning the cursed into the ferocious wildcat.
Jungle Jim's life us spared at that point by the film's villain James Seay who spends the remainder of the film trying to kill him along with native leader Charles Horvath. It's interesting that a mysterious jungle woman is named Shalmar, the name of Bela Lugosi's villain in "Chandu the Magician". It's not the serial like plot that bothers me, just the snail like pacing and the fact that it heads way past silly into completely insipid. The film seems to take plot points of old serials and other comic strip like twists to become beyond comprehensible. The film's photographer female lead (Jean Bryon) is presented without motivation or purpose, simply a combination of every Jungle Jim leading lady up to that point. Jean Dean gets a silly native dance that doesn't do anything to hide the fact that she's about as jungle born as tubby Weismueller himself.
Jungle Jim's life us spared at that point by the film's villain James Seay who spends the remainder of the film trying to kill him along with native leader Charles Horvath. It's interesting that a mysterious jungle woman is named Shalmar, the name of Bela Lugosi's villain in "Chandu the Magician". It's not the serial like plot that bothers me, just the snail like pacing and the fact that it heads way past silly into completely insipid. The film seems to take plot points of old serials and other comic strip like twists to become beyond comprehensible. The film's photographer female lead (Jean Bryon) is presented without motivation or purpose, simply a combination of every Jungle Jim leading lady up to that point. Jean Dean gets a silly native dance that doesn't do anything to hide the fact that she's about as jungle born as tubby Weismueller himself.