Last night (since my stupid dish network is still out), I watched Jungle Goddess. It starred George Reeves, who played Superman on the TV show. The original black and white one that used to be on Sunday mornings before Church when I was a kid.
Anyway, this movie was about two guys living in Africa that owned an airplane. A reward is offered to anyone that can find some guy’s daughter, dead or alive, who was aboard a plane en route to Johannesburg when it crashed (okay, that’s plausible). This was about six years in the past, just before WWII started.
Now it’s just after the end of the war, and our two intrepid entrepreneurs are off to collect on the reward. They find her six year old downed plane almost immediately (not so plausible), then execute a landing on the ground through trees and everything (totally not plausible). You could see the model plane knocking the miniature trees over as it was “landing.”
They head off to find the girl, are intercepted by spear-toting natives (plausible, but stereotypical), and one of the guys shoots one of them. The natives then take them prisoner and deliver them to their “white goddess” (guess who that is?) to pronounce judgment. She condemns the death of one of the natives by sentencing the shooter to death in 8 days, at the next full moon. In the meantime, she makes plans with Superman to escape the African jungle and return home. She had some really weak reason for not trying this on her own during the six years she lived there, but I forgot what it was.
Anyway, the shooter stowed a pistol that the natives didn’t search him for, so he shoots another one during a scuffle with the Man of Steel, who tries to take the gun away from him because he shoots people all the time and it makes the jungle goddess antsy.
Jungle Goddess sends the natives off on a hunting expedition, then runs off with Superman and his sidekick back to their plane. Sidekick goes crazy, beats up Superman, takes the gun and their only compass to find the plane on his own. Superman laments the fact that the compass is gone, because it was the only way they could get back to the plane. I can only assume this is because it is magnetically charged so strongly that it overrides the Earth’s magnetic North pole. They do get there, however, by following the sidekick’s trail. Sidekick jumps them, tangles with Superman, but the natives find them all at this point and sidekick takes a spear in the back for his karmic reward. Superman and jungle goddess escape on the plane and the movie finishes with jungle goddess wondering what feminine hat fashion has been up to.
I really can’t recommend this movie, but if you read this review you can pretend you saw it. I rate it two empty seats—one for each dead native killed by sidekick guy.
2 Responses to “Jungle Goddess”
|
Quoth Ellie
February 29th, 2008 at 7:11 pm oh my gosh- I can’t stop laughing at that movie box description… almost makes me want to watch it! How the heck did you stumble upon this film.??? oh- and when are you guys coming over for Rock Band??? give us a call… |
|
Quoth Webmonster
March 1st, 2008 at 7:59 am I’ve been watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 from the beginning. Jungle Goddess was from the second season, episode three. If you click on the mst3k tag at the bottom of the review you can see all my reviews to date. I’ll give you a call about the Rock Band shortly. |