User Reviews

***SPOILERS*** Blond beautiful and topless, this in 1956 when the Hayes Commission was still in effect, Liane played by German actress Marion Michael has been having the time of her life swinging on vines and living rent free in her jungle tree-house for the last 18 years after she was washed up on the coast of Kenya and adopted by the local Botos tribesmen and worshiped as their jungle goddess. This all came to an end when she and her pet baby lion Simba was captured by a number of white Europeans, Germans, hunters lead by handsome blond and Aryan, like herself, looking Thoren, Hardy Kruger, and brought back to civilization in Hamburg Germany for study & observation. It soon becomes apparent that Liane, all the facts about her checks out, is the grand daughter of German shipping tycoon Theo Amelongen, Rudolf Forster, who had given her and her shipwrecked parents up for dead 18 years ago.

It's Theo's nephew Viktor, Reggie Nalder, who's to inherited his shipping business who feels that Liane is a threat to his career and does everything to discredit her as being old man Theo's biological grand daughter. Try as he does all the evidence to Liane's relationship to Theo stands up and Viktor in an act of desperation ends up murdering the old guy and pins the blame of his murder on Liane's manservant Boto tribesman Tibor Teleky, Peter Mosbacher. It doesn't take long for the smart as a whip Thoren Aka Thor to see through the scam and expose Viktor as Theo's murderer. That's when in a fit of insanity, in fear of being caught, Victor really goes off the deep end and ends up sleeping with the fishes. That after a wild car chase in the streets of Hamburg that rivals the great car chase scenes in both "Bullet" and "The French Connection" that were in fact made some 15 years later!

****SPOILERS**** After all the action in the movie that took place in Hamburg Germany in the end Liane not wanting what the civilized world offers her as well as the late Theo's shipping business is back in the jungles of Kenya with her pet lion Simba swimming in the nude with the now, he doesn't care for civilization either, jungle man Thoren as the film ends.

"Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald" is a West German German-language movie from 1956, so this one has its 60th anniversary this year already. But it is really not too accurate to say German-language as all the versions I found of this slightly under 90 minute movie were dubbed in English. This was certainly done to make the film more appealing to foreign (American) audiences. And it must have turned out successful enough as several sequels followed in the years afterward. But for as much as I care, not a single sequel was justified as this film here was extremely mediocre already. It is not a complete failure, but I can really only appreciate it for the unintentional comedy. It does not work as a drama, as an erotic film or as an adventure story. The action is as generic as it gets. For people who prefer brunettes like myself, they brought in Irene Galter as a young stunning scientist. Blonde lovers can go for (the late) Marion Michael playing Liane. The biggest name in the cast, however, is certainly Hardy Krüger. All in all, the writing here was simply too bad to let me recommend it. I am not sure who is the one to blame, the original author or the people who adapted her novel. But it's weak television material at best. Watch something else instead.

I need to write this review as an offset to the drivel others have posted. LIANE gives the audience more than you'd expect. Much better than "Greystoke" and much better than most 2010 movies where "stupid" reigns supreme.

Of course we expect a sexy blonde with lots of leg; not just for 10- year old boys but for old geezers as well. Not to give the plot away but there are two short scenes taking place in Hamburg, Germany where the legs get covered up by a dress! Ugh!Still, the entire movie is strictly G rated in spirit and content.

Very nice scenes of the African jungle, lots of animals, including the lake where all the flamingos (usec to) flock. Hardy Kruger is the handsome young hero who has to contend not only with Liane but with a pretty cute female doctor who's set her eyes on him.

The thin plot is never boring and will keep the interest of the kind of audience that loves good movies but wouldn't waste 5 minutes on Kick-Ass or Iron Man 2.

LIANE is now in DVD, in color, doubled with another good B movie (about Devil's Island). Recommended.

I first learned of this film in the 1980s while looking through hundreds of random movie stills for sale in a movie memorabilia store in Hollywood. One of those stills was of a young lady with a cute Hayley Mills type face, a lady labeled as Marion Michael, squatting down in her jungle outfit while performing a dance, her long blonde hair covering her breasts. "She's gorgeous!," I thought, "Who is she?" I later looked up the movie title mentioned on the still, along with her name, and tried to obtain the movie but it simply wasn't available back then. (I did find a few more stills of her and of this movie, however.) It wasn't until 2014 that I was finally able to see the movie on YouTube, and I wasn't disappointed.

The movie left me with a good feeling, the same kind of homey jungle feeling I used to get as a kid when seeing Tarzan family movies from the '30s, and I thought about the movie the rest of the day. Admittedly it's clearly a B movie with a predictable, trite plot, and shallow, stereotypical characters, but the combination of several elements made it work well, in my opinion: a beautiful young lady in scanty clothing, pretty (California) jungle scenery, cool jungle drums, wildlife footage, a '50s style family movie feeling, amusing character foibles, downplayed violence, and a happy ending. There is a lot of atmosphere: a treehouse, a toucan, a cute lion cub, tikis, natives attacking with blowguns, several topless black tribal women with jiggling breasts as they beat on drums or dance, some fragments of spoken Swahili, etc. It has the look and feel of Adventureland in Disneyland, with jungle tents, a bicycle-powered generator for a Morse code radio, British pith helmets, rifles with scopes, palm-thatched native huts adorned with antlers, etc. I think it would be a great film for boys who are Tarzan fans if only parents weren't so prudish about breasts. Kudos to Germany for being less prudish than Americans regarding the human body, then and now: Marion Michael must've been only 16 or 17 when this was filmed.

Some minor oddball weaknesses... The footage was oddly sped up in some places, especially to make it look as if Liane could climb a tree faster. (Old Tarzan films did the same thing, however.) Liane's treehouse is in a disappointingly barren tree with all its limbs cut off. The cranes-alligator-snake scene sequence was used in both the beginning and end, in absolutely identical footage (would it have been that difficult to at least show those same animals a few seconds later?). Toucans such as the toco toucan shown perched in the tree near the beginning aren't found on the African continent, only in tropical America. The pronunciations of Liane, Jacqueline, and Vodos/Wodos shifted constantly throughout the film.

Some miscellaneous observations... Liane still looks great in shorts, abbreviated blouse, and swimsuit while living in civilization. It's clear by the plant species--pampas grass, Washingtonia palms, Canary Island Date Palms--that most of the jungle scenes were shot outdoors in some Southern California studio set, but I felt that added to the feel rather than detracted from it, since California vegetation is denser and more picturesque than African veldt vegetation, and it captured the feel of those great old Hollywood jungle sets of the 1930s. Most likely the native tribe (described as Vodos/Wodos) with its dances, drums, and food preparation wasn't authentic, but if not, it certainly looked very authentic to me. Nowadays it looks funny to see men and women lighting up stinky cigarettes right next to each other during romantic scenes, but this was made in the 1950s, and we've matured a lot since then, except that some of us men still prefer "pretty little bubbleheads," all the same!

If you liked this film, films with a similar character you should check out are: "Sheena" (1984), "Tarzan and His Mate" (1934), "Little Indian, Big City" (1994), "Jungle 2 Jungle" (1997).

*Spoiler/plot- Liane, Jungle Goddess 1956. An African expedition consisting of Germans find a blonde native girl in the jungle. Research proves that she is the heir to a German billionaire's industrial fortune. The heir is brought back to civilization only to get involved in family drama.

*Special Stars- Marion Michael, Hardy Kruger.

*Theme- Kindness and help will benefit the weak.

*Trivia/location/goofs- German, B&W. Very early screen appearance for actor, Hardy Kruger. Some suggested jungle nudity in swimming and dancing. Many 50's & 60's German character actors are included.

*Emotion- A wonderfully naive plot and theme for a foreign jungle film. It's fairytale story keeps you wondering where the drama will start. It does and keeps you interested till the final scene. Simple film with easy virtues.