Pygmy Island (1950)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

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

The dog tags of a Woman's Army Corps officer are found in the jungle along with a few other items by our hero Jungle Jim with the body of a dead pygmy. Our government has taken an interest in finding and maybe rescuing Ann Savage because with those dog tags is a piece of rope made of a substance grown only in the jungle. It's strong and it doesn't burn. Of course there are other and unfriendly governments also interested and in 1950 that could only mean the Commies though they are never identified by name. In the film that would be Steven Geray and William Tannen who want to find Savage for their own nefarious purposes.So it's Johnny Weissmuller and David Bruce for our side and Geray and Tannen for the bad guys going to look for Savage in pygmy country. A lot of stock jungle footage, an elephant stampede, and Jungle Jim battling a gorilla or a guy in a gorilla suit in unconvincing fashion.When the Jungle Jim series ended, Weissmuller took the series to television where it was better suited. Still it only lasted a season there.With King Solomon's Mines and The African Queen on the horizon, the movie going public would little tolerate films like Pygmy Island. It's not tolerable now.

I can just imagine the 1950 help wanted sign from Columbia's Z unit, "Calling all dwarfs! Must be white!" Yes, this Jungle Jim series focuses on a white Pygmy tribe in Africa, under investigation for murder, and dealing with villains disguised in gorilla suits, as other weird looking supposedly native African tribe costumes, and adventuress Ann Savage ("Detour") aiding in the investigation by hiding on a leaf covered raft as she floats down stream with a very enthusiastic little person. Jungle Jim and his friendly baby chimp have an encounter with the bad guy in the gorilla suit on a swinging bridge that collapses with Jim attached, little white pygmy's swing from tree to tree, and really bad backdrops of waterfalls where the water looks frozen decorates the set. This is worse than the lower budget Bomba the Jungle Boy series, laughable in every manner. David Bruce and Stefan Geray are the stereotypical bad guys, and all of the white pygmy's seem to be over caffeinated and over exercised to give them muscle bulk to go along with their enthusiasm for being cast in a big Hollywood epic. This one makes "The Terror of Tiny Town" look like "High Noon".

***SPOILERS*** Jungle Jim, Johnny Weissmuller, gets recruited by the Unitate States Government to find this Ngoma plant that only grows on an island off the coast of Africa that produces fibers that are indestructible. It''s a foreign and unmanned power or government, take you pick, who want's to get it's hands on that plant and use it for evil purposes. Like in bankrupting the US as well as other Western textile industries and causing a major depression in the commodity stock markets!With secret US Government agent Captain Ann R. Kingsley, Ann Savage, lost in the jungle, she's actually being protected by a group of white Pygmys, looking for the plant it's now up to our hero Jungle Jim, or JJ for short, to both find and rescue her before the bad guys lead by the double dealing Leon Marko, Steven Gray, find her and where the valuable Ngoma plant is being grown. Jungle Jim does his usual thing in he movie "Pygmy island" including fighting and killing a man eating but rubber crocodile as well as slugging it out with a man in a monkey suit who seemed to have gotten the better of him until his pet chimpanzee Tamba came to JJ's rescue. Tamba not only ends up whipping the big hairy gorilla silly but also makes a monkey out of the guy as well.It's Marko and his cut throat cohorts who disguised themselves as the notorious Bush Devil tribesmen who terrify the Pygmys into deserting their villages that contains the soil where the Ngoma plant grows in. Once it's reviled by Jungle Jim that the Bush Devils are nothing but a gang of puny, in the Pygmy's eyes, white men it doesn't take long for them to get on message and with the help of Jim put and end to their reign of greed and terror on Pygmy Island.The fifth installment of some dozen Jungle Jim movies that by now seems to be following the same storyline with Jim and his jungle friends doing in the bad guys who are mostly greedy foreigners who are up to no good. Being made in 1950 when the Cold War was heating up, with the Korean War breaking out that summer, the bad guys in the film were obviously eastern block USSR communists but for some strange reason the makers of the film kept their identities or loyalties secret. Maybe it was done in not giving the Reds a reason, in being made to look like a bunch of buffoons and complete fools on the silver screen, to make things for us,the nations free world, worse then they already were!

I can't believe how much fun Jungle Jim movies really are! I stayed up very late to watch this one and it's a real gem! Anything with... Johnny Weissmuller, Billy Curtis (wearing a black long wig), jungle settings, tons of stock footage, Johnny fighting a rubber crocodile and a guy in a gorilla suit (is that Crash Corrigan? Looks like his suit.)...is well worth it. This is one that should not be missed! Too bad Johnny only made 16 Jungle Jims.