User Reviews

... and the only one released by AIP. When a hot new Hollywood starlet is murdered, the cops think it may have been off-duty detective Lawrence Tierney. Larry was blackout drunk, so he's not even sure if he's guilty or not, and decides to investigate the case himself. This mirrored problems Tierney was having in his own life with heavy drinking, which tanked his leading man acting career at RKO. Featuring Burt Kaiser (who also produced and co-wrote) as a sweaty artist, Kathleen Crowley as his wife, Jayne Mansfield (in her movie debut) as his girlfriend, John Carradine as a creepy publicity columnist, Bruno Ve Sota (who also directed and co-wrote), and a handful of actors using pseudonyms: Duane Gray (as Rex Thorsen), Cornelius Keefe (as Jack Hill), Davis Roberts (as Robert Davis), and Alan Jay Factor (as Alan Frost).

This was shot in 1954, but sat around until Mansfield made a name for herself. Co-star Crowley was reportedly assaulted (off set) during production and left the movie, so they cut her role and used a stand-in. The whole film is a bit clumsily edited and shoddily filmed, but it adds a little seedy flavor to things. It's also a bit too talky. I liked Carradine, with streaks of silver hair and large glasses, nattily dressed. He scares Crowley with his state-of-art home stereo system on which he plays classical music too loudly. Mansfield looks good, too.

Female Jungle is a fairly good and at times noteworthy low budget indie feature. Produced by star Burt Kaiser, who plays a down on his luck sketch artist with the longest 1950's hair this side of Elvis, the film also features Lawrence Tierney, who sleepwalks through his role as a drunken cop trying to win back the respect of his sergeant by helping solve a murder mystery. Tierney's career was entering crisis mode at this point thanks to his own drinking problem, and though he's obviously trying his best here, it shows. The story is fairly feeble, but the fine cast--which also includes John Carradine, Attack of the Giant Leeches man Bruno Ve Sota, an unglamorous looking Jayne Mansfield, and Davis Roberts--is worth watching. For a poverty row cheapie the film looks quite good--a testament, perhaps, to the effective work of DoP Elwood Bredell, who always did good work with little money on 'B' classics like Man Made Monster and Phantom Lady.

I imagine the sole reason for most people to want to see this movie is for the screen debut of 50s cinema sex goddess Jayne Mansfield. However, the film itself stands up reasonably well after fifty years.

The plot, as you are probably already aware, concerns the hunt for the killer of a Hollywood actress, murdered after she leaves a bar. An off-duty cop is in the frame as the killer and sets out to track down the real culprit.

This movie was obviously done on the cheap but has a gritty edge to it and more than enough action and suspense to fill its meagre running time. Shot entirely at night the film has an oppressive feel and has good performances from all concerned. Jayne Mansfield, in her film debut, is very impressive as a slutty broad and performs well without her trademark squeal. Although obviously very attractive she isn't at all glamorous here and acts very well. For anyone in doubt of her abilities then Female Jungle proves that she definitely had something.

Cheap, short and in the long term, forgettable, this is still an entertaining way to spend an hour. Don't break your neck to see it but if the opportunity arises, don't pass it by.

Having seen this movie recently for the first time I found it surprisingly arty. The classification cheap indie doesn't do the picture justice. The photography in sharp black and white – well, far more black than white -, the quirky camera angles and the editing are almost as good as in more famous film noirs of that period like, for example, Kiss Me Deadly.

The story has a really uneasy feel to it. I am not sure if all that surrealism is intentional or mainly caused by a low budget, I just know that is is damn effective. The action unfolds in one dark night and feels like a claustrophobic nightmare. There are several similarities to Otto Preminger's Laura, the ever effective John Carradine is cast as a rich, arrogant art critic in the line of Waldo Lydecker. And he delivers all right. But who is Laura? There are three different women who occasionally pop up, dead or alive, in photographs on billboards, in sketches or framed paintings. They are not real but rather like figments in a man's imagination. Maybe they are the same woman altogether? Very confusing. And who is the man who imagines those women? Is it the caricaturist who thinks he is a failure as an artist? Or the alcoholic policeman? I could not help assuming that they were one and the same person, too. Just think of David Lynch's Lost Highway! It is not really clear, what is going on in this picture. People do strange things. Sneaking up to an apartment at 3 a.m. asking urgently, hysterically for a caricature, entering another apartment at 3.30 a.m., having a discussion with a woman in her bedroom while in the background the woman's husband tosses uncomfortably, desperately trying to sleep, entering a third apartment at 3.45 a.m. putting a head on the bosom of Jayne Mansfield who's reclining there - without any explanation. The police detectives refuse to take people to the precinct and want to conduct the investigation into a murder in a sleazy bar near where it happened. These strange scenes are not cheap - they work in a way that you start feeling slightly feverish.

The set design is very good. Several fifties interiors and gadgets are nicely displayed. I admire all those movies in which great effect is created with little means. One reason why I like film noir where this tendency at times results in real art.

There's a persuasive argument to be mounted that the end of the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood movie-making can be ascribed not to the studios' divestiture of its theater chains but to the explosion, in the motorized society of the 1950s, of drive-in theaters, where the main attraction was not on the screen. Up to that point, even the lowliest second feature was apt to show at least a modicum of craft and plausibility. The exploitation movies changed all that, ushering in an era when just about anything goes – or, often, nothing.

American International Pictures was the outfit that pioneered fodder for the teenage popcorn-and-petting trade. In 1956, it released one of its few features that might be considered even marginally noir – Female Jungle (also called The Hangover). Neither title quite fits, though the second has a bit more claim to legitimacy than the first, which was simply a ploy to pack 'em in.

After the gala premiere of her debut film, a starlet leaves a seedy bar and meets her quietus at the hands of a strangler. For the next hour or so, Lawrence Tierney, John Carradine, Jane Mansfield and half a dozen other characters go racketing around through the night on a series of wild-goose chases. Tierney plays an off-duty policeman whose long evening bending his elbow resulted in a blackout; he thinks he might have been the killer. Carradine plays a gossip columnist whose helped the dead starlet's career, only to be jilted. Mansfield (in her screen debut) seems to be playing a call-girl who's in love with an out-of-work caricaturist whose wife might be the next victim of….

All that said, Female Jungle remains watchable, if barely. It was AIP's policy to engage a few actors on the way up and a few more on the way down, filling up the rest of the slots with whoever was handy (both the producer and director have parts in the movie). But Tierney, by this time seriously on the skids and persona-non-grata in the major studios, exudes some of his rough magic while Carradine, looking particularly suave, gives it his old-trouper's all. And Mansfield, of course, has her own morbid fascination. There's a peculiar allure to some of this late-50s sleaze; if you're into it, this is the movie for you.

Even at 73 minutes this film began to drag, which is a shame because as B-movies go it had quite a lot of promise. The 1950's were better known for the sometimes laughable sci-fi offerings - it was often only the cheap special-effects which caused derision though and the films had lots of good ideas and storylines. The film noir rip-offs from the same period didn't rely on effects and most are worth watching - they are certainly better than the straight-to-video junk churned out in the 90's.

'Female Jungle' begins with the murder of a glamourous blonde actress outside a bar. Having immediately grabbed our interest the narrative steadily falters and ultimately the good work is undone by a confused plot and characters who elicit little interest.

Lawrence Tierney plays the central character, a drunken cop who may be involved in the crime, but he only serves as a dull vehicle around which the minor, but more interesting, characters can operate. These are primarily John Carradine as the suave but sleazy agent of the murdered actress and Jayne Mansfield who plays Candy Price, the mistress of a down-on-his-luck artist who knew the victim ( the artist is played by one Burt Kaiser who also wrote and produced the film, but seems to have done nothing else at all - wonder what happened to him ).

The action seems to take place over one night - there are certainly no daylight scenes - but there is a disjointed feel to proceedings and I kept getting lost towards the end as to what was exactly happening.

If you take away the great title, the opening 5 minutes and Jayne Mansfield then there is not much here. B-Movies don't need a great deal though and these 3 elements make the film just about worth catching.

An actress who climbed into the bed of every man who could help her finally becomes a star..... and is promptly murdered. The police investigate, but disgraced sergeant Laurence Tierney wants in on the case.

It's a solid noir from American International, just before they went entirely to cheap movies made for teen-agers. It's not like they spent a lot of money on this one: an unknown director, a cinematographer who spent most of his career on Poverty Row, fading actors like Tierney and John Carradine, and Jayne Mansfield in her movie debut -- she got paid $150 for her part, then went back to selling popcorn at a movie theater. Yet like all good noirs, it's very atmospheric, and the ambience of a bar after closing, where the bar man and the janitor want to go home is just right.

A Surprise, Grungy Watch Courtesy of the Iconic Cast of Hollywood B-Movie Legends.

Carradine Surprises the Most.

Almost Unrecognizable as a "Dandy" Newspaper Columnist, ala Waldo Lydecker.

But that Uncanny Voice is Forever Recognizable.

Tierney gives a Solid and Unwavering Turn as a Dipsomaniac Cop Trying to Get Off the Booze Wagon and Back Riding the Police Wagon.

Jayne Mansfield, in Her First Film, makes a what will Become Type She would Hug and Kiss for the Short Time Allowed in Life and in this Movie.

The Film is Held-Back from Grind-House Greatness because of one of the Most Irritating Bar-Tenders in the History of Movies. He Intrudes Incessantly.

Jack Hill and Bruno VeSota, two "Names" Associated with Drive-In and Exploitation Flicks Add some "Spice" to a Movie that Offers Fun and Sleaze on a Level that All Films on this Budget should Aspire.

It's a Murder Mystery, that Signals a Late Film-Noir with its Night Shoots and Quirky Characters.

Prostitutes, Movie-Stars, Cops, and Struggling Artists are Noir Fodder that's Ripe for the Exploiting and Exploit they do.

For Your Cheap Viewing Pleasure, this one Delivers.

This movie is great. Starlet gets snuffed in the first two minutes. Alcoholic cop Lawrence Tierney was at the scene of the crime but was too boozed-up to remember what happened. He tries to piece it all together but everyone around him is a weirdo, liar, or a scuzzball. With Jayne Mansfield and John Carradine. Everybody's younger than I've ever seen them before. It's dark and fast and vicious. Killer grungy noir.

Starts out okay but man it drags. The Jayne Mansfield nympho stiff is quickly annoying. It is hard to see where it is going but when you find out, it is sooooo stupid. The stuff with the wife and John Carradine is labored. The "comedy" with the bartender is sooo annoying. For those of you who love garbage, this is not for you.

Lawrence Tierney was given numerous low-life/tough-guy roles throughout the 40's in such noirs as BORN TO KILL (1947) and THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE (1948), until he gained himself a bad name in Hollywood for his constant bar-brawls and arrests. The Tierney architype was resurected in the 50's when minor studios decided to milk the one-time noir icon for what he was worth. His only 50's come-back films I know of are THE HOODLUM (1951-United Artists) and THE FEMALE JUNGLE (1956-ARC), directed by the very under-rated Bruno VeSota right after DAUGHTER OF HORROR.

Lawrence plays a bum alcoholic detective who investigates in the murder of an actress committed outside the same bar he was drinking in. The plot unfolds itself from flashbacks. Producer, Burt Kaiser plays an alcoholic and unemployed artist, married to waitress, Kathleen Crowley. Kaiser is asked one night by a mysterious gossip columnist (the wonderfully sinister John Carradine, looking suave as ever in white tie and tails) to have his characature painted. Kaiser and Tierney both have affairs with Candy, a deliciously slutty bombshell (Jayne Mansfield, looking stunning in her film debut). Other suspects include George, the black janitor, James Kodl providing some intentional laughs as Joe, the bar owner and Cornelius Keefe (billed as Jack Hill!) as the Chief.

During World War 2, anyone who went to the movies had no choice but to pay money and view low-budget black-and-white quickies beacuse of the restrictions. Bottom-of-the-barrel studios like PRC and Monogram were in their element turning 'em out faster than they ever did before. This also gave film noir (considered lowbrow entertainment back then) an opportunity to be shown to wider audiences. The 50's saw just about every cinema-goer heading for the 70mm CinemaScope epics and big-name blockbusters leaving all other kinds of films to be viewed by nonexistent crowds at either art-house or drive-in theatres. It also saw the very last of the film noir echoeing it's way through the minor studio system. FEMALE JUNGLE, a great noir by many standards, was sold to Sam Arkoff and James H. Nicholson for ARC (pre-AIP) in 1956 and was dumped on a drive-in double-bill with OKLAHOMA WOMAN, a western directed by Roger Corman! I still don't think that FEMALE JUNGLE has got the appreciation it deserves. It is a superior film noir full of interesting low-life characters and dimly lit side-streets which all of us noir-lovers crave for in a film.

In an interview, Jayne Mansfield said that FEMALE JUNGLE "was filmed in two weeks and led to nothing". She was paid $150 for starring and then returned to her job as a popcorn-girl in a cinema before returning to the screen again in WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER? Lawrence Tierney wound up driving a taxi cab in Central Park before being resurected again (!) to play his tough-guy role in John Huston's PRIZZI'S HONOR (1985) and again in Tarantino's RESERVOIR DOGS (1993). Bruno VeSota later directed THE BRAIN EATERS (1958) and INVASION OF THE STAR CREATURES (1962), starred in numerous drive-in features throughout the late-50's and 60's (TEENAGE DOLL, A BUCKET OF BLOOD, THE CHOPPERS...) before dying of a heart attack in 1976 aged 54.

I'm not into old flicks from the 50's and even the 60's but still, I have to buy some to complete my collection. But it came clear after this one, I don't like horrors from that era but crime stories I do like. The reason is very simple, they don't use cheap effects. But still, they have to give you a special reason to watch them. This one still stands after those years due the perfect editing, what I mean is that they use single camera to make those flicks, so when you see a cut it's been taken from another take. Mostly faults are visible in expression of faces or drinks that are for example empty and suddenly they're full again. Another reason to watch it is to see sex symbol Jayne Mansfield in her screen debut. Already in some sexy outfit and as seducer. A strange life she had dying at age 34. All acting is well done, of course no nudity in it but the use of blood dripping from one's hand is impressive for that era. When one is killed due gunshots, the close up and the blood running was also well done. It's not a master piece but it surely is still enjoyable.

John Carradine and Lawrence Tierney star in "Female Jungle" from 1955 which features Jayne Mansfield.

I will say upfront that if you got anything out of this film, I'm happy for you. And I guess you're smarter than I am. I thought it was awful.

In the beginning, a glamorous blonde film star is murdered. She was apparently in the Can Can Club which is just across the street. The outside of this place looks like something like a House of Horrors, yet supposedly, she went there.

The police arrive; the two waitresses are questioned and finally get to go home. There is an off-duty cop there (Tierney) who was too drunk to remember much who is also at the club.

One of the waitresses, Peggy, is married to an artist named Alex Voe, who does caricatures. It's 2 am and a man named Almstead (Carradine) shows up and says he wants his caricature done. Alex winds up having a fight with Peggy and leaves his wife alone with this total stranger. At 2 a.m.

Now, I realize people put things down to "it was a different time," but I lived in that time, and I don't remember it being normal for a strange man to show up at 2 a.m. and then left alone with your wife.

Peggy, supposedly exhausted from her job, seems to rally when Almstead invites her out for a drink. She winds up at his apartment. Spotting the swimming pool, she says she'd like to take a swim. Again, it wasn't really the practice to go to a stranger's home for a drink and a swimming session back then.

Tierney then arrives at the other waitresses' apartment - it's now probably 3 a.m. No problem. He comes into her bedroom (her husband's asleep) and questions her. One gets the impression that he's afraid he might have killed the actress and just can't remember.

Jayne Mansfield is having an affair with Alex Voe. As it turns out, she gets around.

I won't bother with the rest of the plot. The film was something like 1-1/2 and felt as long as Gone with the Wind.

I'm not a fan of Lawrence Tierney. Every time I see him, I want to pull that hairpiece off. With the exception of John Carradine, the acting ranged from awful to horrifying.

I see here there's talk of the wonderful photography. I changed the brightness on my ipad twice so I could see something. I still couldn't.

Sorry but I am a film noir fanatic, and I fail to see anything worthwhile in this.

Film noir with a brief part for Jane Mansfield.

A starlet is murdered in front of a club containing a drunk off-duty police officer who blacked out and can't account for a chunk of time. The police officer, concerned that he might be the murderer rushes to fill in his missing time and find out who committed the murder...which leads back to a wealthy gentleman and a caricature artist.

The story does come together but is not very in depth.

Classic film noir cinematography, Jane Mansfield and that's about it.

Maybe slightly noteworthy, but a watch and delete for me.

Now way.

This is a great movie. The dialog is sharp, diverse, beckoning, and funny. OMG is it fun to watch.

Cinematography is great

Carradine, Mansfield, Tierney in a low budget independent psych thriller.

The diverse unusual comedic dialog is excellent - comparable to 'The Thing from Another Planet", "Kiss of Fire", etc - other 1950's noir.

Watch it. Then watch Tierney's magnificent role in "Hoodlum"

The film begins with an actress being strangled outside a bar. Inside at the time is a drunk cop who is off duty (Tierney). Also inside are a variety of odd characters including a sketch artist, a weirdo (John Carradine) and a blonde dame (Jayne Mansfield).

"Female Jungle" is a poor murder mystery. Despite starring Lawrence Tierney, who was fantastic in 1950s film noir, this film suffers from a bad script, some poor acting and lousy direction. What makes it worse, after the murderer is discovered and stopped, the film goes on for another ten minutes or so in order to explain what has happened and why!! To make things worse, it's not particularly interesting or engaging and is a bit of a disappointment....even for a cheapo crime film.

One night outside a seedy LA bar, a sexy blonde Hollywood starlet is strangled to death by an unseen, shadowy figure. Naturally the cops are baffled, and one cop in particular is having the queasy sensation that he himself might be the killer. That cop has good reason to suspect himself because he's played by Lawrence Tierney--and Detective Tierney spent that very evening in that very bar drinking himself into Blackout Land (an uncanny nod to the particular problem that sent the actor tumbling down to poverty row). After being summarily dressed down for his repeated drunkenness, Tierney is then inexplicably asked to lend his questionable expertise to solving the murder.

What then begins is a bizarrely claustrophobic nightmare chase to the end of the line, offering up a host of potential other suspects. Could it have been the sinister Hollywood gossip columnist (John Carradine) who helped make the starlet's career and was then casually dumped by her? How about the oddball caricature artist (Burt Kaiser) who had recently drawn the starlet's likeness and was one of the last people to see her alive? And what about the caricaturist's wife who just happens to work at the bar? Let's not forget about Tierney's drunken cop who staggers his way through this nocturnal labyrinth with all the conviction of a man staring down at the bottom of an empty bottle. And how does Candy, the gorgeously voluptuous call girl (Jayne Mansfield in her screen debut) who's been sexually involved with both the artist and the cop figure into all of this? Perhaps it's best to not to be overly concerned with the storyline, which is deliriously beneath pulp trash, and relish the demented visual poetry of cinematographer Elwood "Woody" Bredell, himself no stranger to the dark confines of the noir universe, with 1940s classics like PHANTOM LADY, THE KILLERS, SMOOTH AS SILK, and THE UNSUSPECTED lurking on his resume. (Bredell was 70 when he shot FEMALE JUNGLE, which would be his final feature film. He died in 1976 at age 91.) And this is precisely why FEMALE JUNGLE is such an important film, for it relentlessly discards any use for logic in favor of the inhabitation of its own deranged nightmare world. Bredell invests the film with such strikingly abstract imagery that it's impossible to attribute its surreal look and feel to the accidental good fortune of its nearly non-existent budget--as many of the film's detractors have done. Rather, it is a pure distillation of the totality of the noir ethos and much more resonant with the thrill of death and doom than any other 1950s film outside the realm of Nicholas Ray.

FEMALE JUNGLE was the first film directed by Bruno Ve Sota. And despite having directed only two others (THE BRAIN EATERS (58) and INVASION OF THE STAR CREATURES (62)) his career was fairly deep as an actor, appearing in such disreputable (and legendary) films as DEMENTIA (55, aka DAUGHTER OF HORROR, which he also co-produced and allegedly co-directed), a bunch of classic 50s Roger Corman films, namely THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS, ROCK ALL NIGHT, WAR OF THE SATELLITES, BUCKET OF BLOOD, THE WASP WOMAN and ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES as well as the Arch Hall, Jr. teen trasher THE CHOPPERS (61; Leigh Jason), and the tres obscure beatnik noir THE CAT BURGLAR (61; William Witney).

Shot in 1955, FEMALE JUNGLE was picked up for distribution by Sam Arkoff and James Nicholson's fledgling American International Pictures (then briefly known as ARC) and released in early 1956 as the second half of a double bill, beneath a Roger Corman western THE OKLAHOMA WOMAN. Ve Sota, oddly enough, has a small role in that film, too.

But it is FEMALE JUNGLE, an imaginatively ambitious and unapologetically naked excursion to the darkest regions of film noir, that we will remember Bruno Ve Sota for—and deservedly so.

This highly recommended film is not available on a US DVD (a UK one does exist, though). It came out on a VHS tape from RCA / Columbia in the early 90s and turns up on eBay every now and then. Jump on it when it does.

Despite the title, don't expect Sheena, or even a bunch of juvenile babes running wild. This is a 70-minute mystery, with Lawrence Tierney as a drunk cop who is found near the scene of a murdered blonde. Since he can't remember much, he considers himself a suspect. Other characters include Kathleen Crowley as the wife of a caricaturist, played by Burt Kaiser. Kaiser also produced, and wrote the story, but does not seem to have had much of a career in films. John Carradine plays an unusual role (even for him) as a columnist. Of course, the main attraction is a young Jayne Mansfield, who elevates both the movie and the male actors. Worth a look.