Female Jungle (1956)

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

***SPOILERS*** After a night of drinking and partying actress Monica Madison,Eve Brent, while leaving the Can-Can nightclub is attacked and strangled as her diamond brooch is stolen by her attacker. Coming or staggering out of the club to check out things is police Sgt.Stevens, Lawrence Tierney, who's so smashed that he doesn't know what world he's on. With Sgt. Stevens's boss Capt. Kroger, Jack Hill, spotting him he lets Stevens have in in being drunk on the job even though he's actually off-duty. Ther's also the suspicion by Capt. Kruger that Stevens's in being totally out of it as well as being at the scene of the crime may well be Miss. Madison's murderer! The movie takes a hard right turn when all of a sudden out of nowhere this weirdo Claude Almstead, John Carradine,shows up at the Voe's Alex & Peggy, Burt Kaiser & Kathleen Crowley, apartment in the dead of night-200:AM-to have Alex a professional cartoonist sketch a caricature of himself!You would think that with a stranger showing up at his door in the middle of the night after a murder was committed just blocks away Alex would be a bit suspicious and throw the guy out but he doesn't! Not only does he invite Almstead into the apartment but has his wife Peggy, who's barley awake, to boil up a cup of coffee for him? Eevn crazier is that Alex soon leaves the apartment for a hot date leaving the creepy looking Almstead all alone with his wife Peggy!***SPOILERS**** It soon turns out that with Sgt. Stevens doing the legwork that there's a link to Monica Madison's murder that connects to both Almstead and Alex who both turned out to be her lovers! And that link had to do with a drawing or caricature that Alex did of her as well as Almstead being at the Can-Can nightclub just hours before she was murdered! What can actually be called a 100% film noir style movie with it being filmed in almost total darkness, to save on budget costs, without a single ray of sunlight in it. The movie "Female Jungle" also has the distinction of being buxom blond Jane-Man O Man-Mansfield's film debut as Candy Price as well as having it's star Kathleen Crowley raped, for real not in the movie,that held up production for some three days!

Female Jungle (1955)** (out of 4) Det. Jack Stevens (Lawrence Tierney) gets chewed out by his boss after he's in a bar dead drunk while a famous actress is outside being murdered. Stevens is so drunk and after a witness sees him leaving the bar with a blonde, he begins to feel that perhaps he's the murderer. He starts an investigation to try and see what really happened and soon we get more suspects including the woman's press agent (John Carradine), a man (Burt Kaiser) who did her portrait and his wife (Kathleen Crowley). This "B" noir has a terrific cast that do what they can with a lousy screenplay but in the end there's not enough anyone could have done to recover from the very weak story. I think any mystery or noir film is going to be in deep trouble whenever it can't even make the viewer interested in any of the events going on and that's exactly what FEMALE JUNGLE does. There wasn't a single frame where I was interested in who the killer was. I didn't care if it turned out to be Tierney, Carradine or anyone else who happens across the screen. The screenplay makes very little sense and often times it appears none of the pieces really add up until the end when we get the majority of the characters in a single room where we're told what happened. You know a film is in trouble when actors are given long scripts to read at one time just to make sense of everything. Another problem is that director VeSota doesn't really know how to build up any drama or make anything energetic. The movie's pacing is an issue because everything seems to happen at a very slow pace and even worse is the fact that there's just not any life to anything you're seeing. VeSota will always be remembered for his various appearances in Roger Corman films but his director's output didn't really add up to much as he followed this film with THE BRAIN EATERS and INVASION OF THE STAR CREATURES. Tierney does what he can with the lead role but that's not too much as his character is pretty much the worst written. Some might be surprised to see him playing a level-headed guy but he does what he can. I thought both Kaiser and Crowley were decent in their parts but Carradine has fun playing one character who seems to have at least three different personalities. The majority of the film points the finger at Carradine and depending on what the script is trying to do at the time will depend on what type of performance the actor gives. Jayne Mansfield made her film debut here playing a sexy blonde with a few secrets. The performance isn't that good but she was certainly striking to look at.

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.

Even allowing for the fact that it was a low budget, quickly made picture (like many film noirs were), this picture for me was more bad than good. First the bad, the film suffers from some stilted acting by the supporting players and so-so dialog. The film even manages a couple of moments of unintentional humor. It is about a murder that takes place outside a bar where an off duty cop is drinking heavily. The cop is played here by Lawrence Tierney (who looks more like his younger brother, Scott Brady, than he has in any other role of his I've seen). The cops on duty browbeat Tierney into helping out with the investigation. I did not understand why they expected Tierney's character to help, he was off duty after all. Now for the good, after a few false leads and dead ends, the killer is revealed. I must admit, the killer's identity was unexpected. I was fooled. The leading performers here are competent but the one person that really stands out, literally, is a young temptress played by Jayne Mansfield. It is easy to see why she ended up with a Hollywood career playing Marilyn Monroe type parts. This film was released as the second half of a double feature. That is where it belongs. The western it was released with, Oklahoma Woman, is a much better film.