Liane, Jungle Goddess (1956)

Touches You

People are voting emotionally.

Boring

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

"Liane, Jungle Goddess" is a slight film but one that pubescent boys would generally love. This is because in this Tarzan knockoff, the queen of the jungle is a good looking teenage girl from runs around topless (and wearing little else) during the first portion of the film. It's the sort of film that they simply couldn't have made in the US at the time due to censorship laws and I wasn't surprised that it was a German film (dubbed into English).When the film begins, you see the usual stock footage of Africa--for the most part. It is less grainy and looks good, but it's also random--with Toucans (a South and Central American bird) and natives with blowguns (they use them in the Pacific and South America) in Africa! This sort of thing isn't that unusual in a 1940s and 50s jungle epic--and as I mentioned above, the quality of the footage is pretty good otherwise.A group of explorers learn that there is a white teen living in the jungle amongst 'those savages', so they kidnap her and take her back to civilization. A problem arises, however, when an unscrupulous man contemplates harming Liane because she might be the heir to a family fortune--and he's counting on having this money for himself. For this sort of movie, "Liane" is actually pretty good. While it's not a must-see or even a very good movie, it's a mildly enjoyable B-movie that has slipped into the public domain (and can be downloaded from the link on IMDb). My only serious reservation is that the actress playing Liane was only 16 and I worry that pervs might watch the film for all the wrong reasons. 12-18 year-old pervs are welcome...old creepy guys watching it are not!By the way, I was really surprised when one of the characters was referred to as 'Mr. Goehring'. Considering it was made only a little over a decade after the war, I certainly was not expecting to hear this name in a German film!

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).

An expedition discovers young topless Liane (Marion Michael) cavorting around the jungle, where she is worshiped by the locals as a goddess. They bring her back to Germany, where her rich grandfather lives. There, she must remain fully clothed, as another relative intrigues and murders to prevent Liane from inheriting the family fortune.I saw this movie at my neighborhood theater around the time it was released in the USA (1959). It was on a double bill with "Plan 9 from Outer Space," which was the only reason I was in the theater that day. Imagine my surprise and fascination when Liane first made her appearance, swinging on that rope flashing her bare breasts! I was eleven years old, and it was the first time I had ever viewed a woman's breasts. I'm guessing that they were only on screen for a few seconds, but to me it seemed like forever. Once removed from its jungle setting, the movie becomes rather pedestrian and uninteresting. Still, because of its promising beginning, "Liane Jungle Goddess" has made a lasting impression on my life. Indeed, it has made me the man I am today. I would rate it "5" for the cinematic experience and "10" for the breasts.

German expedition to Africa's darkest jungle region stumbles upon topless blonde girl whom natives revere as a goddess. Is she possibly the long-lost granddaughter of wealthy Hamburg industrialist? (Would there be a movie if she wasn't?) Well, then, let's take her back to the BRD and reunite her with her family. But will she ever be able to adjust to a world of cars, tap water, and wearing a bra? Therein lies the conflict.This was strictly adults-only US release of the 1950s and played for years as a "special". The NYT critic of the day declared it virtual pornography, though the exploitation material consists of some seminude Africans in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC-type footage and a few peeks at the bare breasts of heroine Marion Michael, a fresh-faced German teenager. Her long fake hair, and the lion cub she frequently carries around, protect her modesty considerably. (Compare Tanya Roberts in SHEENA, which showed more and drew a PG from the MPAA.)If, and I'm not naming names, you were too young to see this in the 50s or even the early 60s, when it played your nabe, and you always wondered what kind of positively adults-only thrills you might be missing, LIANE is available in a not-bad (but not-great) print from Sinister Cinema and you can satisfy your curiosity.The storyline is pretty thin and is laid out point for point in the IMDB synopsis above. Marion is cute as a button and looks a lot more like a 1950s SEVENTEEN covergirl than a denizen of the tropischer Urwald. Sinister describes this as its best-selling Jungle Thrills entry, so apparently I'm not the only one who was waiting for this to hit video. Like so many other long-deferred delights, the anticipation was rather more rewarding than the fulfillment.