Jungle Girl (1941)

Expected more

Better Late Then Never

Awesome Movie

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

When the directing team of Witney and English names appeared in the credits, the viewer could be assured of a superior serial.Jungle Girl fills the bill.Francis Gifford is perfect as Nyoka. Tom Neal and Eddie Acuff share the hero honors and Gerald Mohr as the chief bad guy. Trevor Bardette plays a dual roll of Nyokas father and twin brother. The quest for treasure is the main theme. Early on, Mohr kills Bardetteand replaces him with the brother also played by Bardette. It takes fifteen chapters of great cliff hangers before Bardette and Mohr are brought to justice. Exciting score and production values make Jungle Girl a superior Republic serial. Stunt work by David Sharpe and other stunt team members, keep the action moving at a fever pitch.Ten big stars !

In 1936 Frances Gifford was chosen as a "Flash Lighter's Starlet" (others chosen were Cecilia Parker and Barbara Pepper) but apart from an introductory bit in "New Faces of 1937" nothing much came of it. She did marry James Dunn, who was past his cinematic prime and struggling with a drinking problem, and retired to be a housewife but returned to the screen in a couple of programmers playing opposite Dunn. Then Repulic selected her for the role of Nyoka in it's 15 chapter serial "Jungle Girl" and she revived the tradition of the serial queens like Pearl White and Ruth Roland. Republic were ecstatic with the public's reaction and planned to star her in the follow up, "Perils of Nyoka" but in the meantime Gifford's marriage had broken up and she signed with Paramount so Kay Aldridge got the plum assignment.This serial opened the way for Sheena, Queen of the Jungle and the like but Frances Gifford was the original Jungle Girl and with her dancer's figure and long shapely legs stood out in her skimpy tunic. This was a pretty thrilling story as Gerald Mohr is established as the villain within 10 minutes. Nyoka's father is the white witch doctor on a remote island, forced to live there because of the shame of having a murderer for a twin brother!!! Yes, you guessed it, by the end of episode one he has been lured back to civilization to operate on his brother who is perfectly well. "Bad" twin takes on the identity of his brother who is killed and returns to the jungle to plunder the diamond caves. This serial is a cut above the others that I have seen, in the first few episodes Nyoka is saved from a pit of fire, a cave that fills with water and becoming a human sacrifice at the altar of Nakros. Nyoka is sensible and no-nonsense and could teach Tarzan a thing or two about swinging on vines but jungle films decreed she must have a "mate" to help her. Her mate is Jack Stanton (Tom Neal), the pilot who flown Latimer (Mohr) to the island - he always has his gun at the ready (and is always running out of bullets at the wrong time) and is quick with his fist (just as Tom Neal was in real life).There are some super stunts - lots of swan dives from rocky cliffs, Nyoka, rescuing Jack from quicksand, goes down a vine head first. Plus a scary stunt where the floor started to disappear, threatening to plunge them into a bottomless pit. There were some howlers too - in one episode Nyoka so obviously plunges into a vat of boiling oil (complete with a bloodcurdling scream) but at the start of the next episode she has swung around onto a platform. Of course Gifford had a stunt woman (a couple in fact) but she looked athletic enough to make kids in the audience think it was her swinging through the trees!!!

This serial has very little to do with the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel "Jungle Girl," on which it is supposedly based. (The book was set in Cambodia, and the heroine was Asian, while the film is about a white girl in Africa.) But the movie does show that a good jungle picture doesn't need a man. Frances Gifford as Nyoka is both fetching and daring at the same time. There's something about the way she swings on those vines that makes you want to go climb a tree yourself. (I've read that the swinger was actually a stuntman in a wig, but I choose not to believe it.) The jungle theme music is better than anything in a Tarzan film. As Gifford fans know, she went on to play a Jane substitute in "Tarzan Triumphs," but it's plain she should have been Jane.

I was a grammar school student (grades 1-6) when this serial," Jungle Girl", was shown on Saturday afternoons in our neighborhood Fairfax Theater in Jacksonville, Florida. My friend Stewart and I loved this serial and we also were enthralled by the "The Batman" serial. A "Dick Tracy" serial was also shown around the same period. But Jungle Girl was the best of them all. Every adventure story needs a good villain and Slick Latimer, played by Gerald Mohr was outstanding. I never realized that he even had a first name until I saw the reviews here on IMDb. We kids just called him "Latimer" and we hated his guts. Each week for fifteen episodes this conniving snake would betray the beloved Nyoka and her friends Jack and Curley. Then the evil Latimer would slip us kids in the audience this sly smirk. It was a masterpiece of infuriation that made us so mad we were ready to chew the upholstery out of the arm rests. A few years ago I rented the original "Red Planet" movie which starred Gerald Mohr. After 50 years I had forgiven him. Well after all, he was now a good guy.