Johnny Weissmuller (Jungle Jim), Bob Waterfield (Bob Miller), Sheila Ryan (Ann Lawrence), Rick Vallin (Bono), Lyle Talbot (Dr Mitchell Heller), William P. Wilkerson (Maklee chief), and "Tamba", the chimpanzee.Director: LEW LANDERS. Screenplay: Samuel Newman. Based on the comic strip Jungle Jim by Alex Raymond. Photography: William Whitney. Film editor: Henry Batista. Art director: Paul Palmentola. Set decorator: Sidney Clifford. Music directed by Mischa Bakaleinikoff. RCA Sound System. Producer: Sam Katzman. Copyright 24 September 1951 by Columbia Pictures Corp. No New York opening. U.S. release: October 1951. U.K. release: 31 December 1951. Australian release: 1 February 1952. 66 minutes. Censored to 64 minutes in Australia in order to qualify for a General or Universal exhibition certificate.SYNOPSIS: A woman photographer enlists the aid of Jungle Jim in her search for an American who was lost in an Army flight over Africa nine years before. — Copyright summary. The story's about a sinister doctor who recruits slave labour from neighbouring villages to make synthetic diamonds. — Picturegoer. NOTES: Number 7 of the 16-picture "Jungle Jim" series.COMMENT: Surprise! Surprise! This entry doesn't start with the usual parade of stock library footage which a pretentious off-camera commentary tries vainly to make seem relevant and pertinent to the Boys' Own Paper adventures that follow. Instead we are treated to a bit of smart action footage employing quite a few native extras in a brisk attack scene. And after that follows the stock material — fishing — with Jungle Jim looking on and even waving to the library fishermen. The heroine then canoes into the picture via a process screen. Naturally, she falls into the water, thus enabling the producer to use the same underwater shot of Jim swimming to the rescue that figures in at least four of his other adventures. Rescue completed, the action stops dead for a long dialogue scene in which our heroine bores us all silly with much tedious filling-in of background information.Fortunately, once all this is out of the way, the picture regains momentum. True, we do take time out for a slow fight between two lizards — supposedly huge prehistoric beasts, of course — plus a more interesting encounter between a giant squid and a shark. But at least we're spared extensive monkey antics.Aside from the vigorous handling of the action spots, the direction is not only thoroughly routine but over-uses close-ups. All the same, production values are bit higher than the series' average, though it's a pity more was not made of the intriguing skeleton men.Johnny Weissmuller is his usual reticent self, Miss Ryan rates as a mildly pretty but unappealing heroine — and the same could be said for Waterfield's hero (admittedly, he doesn't have much of a role). Lyle Talbot's villain seemed to me somewhat unnecessarily restrained.

***SPOILERS*** Unintentionally funny, aren't they all, Jungle Jim, Johnny Weissmuller, movie where he together with news photographer Anne Lawrence, Sheila Ryan, are searching the jungles of darkest Africa to find lost, for some nine years, professional football player and the estranged husband of actress Jane Russell Bob Miller played by real football hero Bob Waterfield. It's during this time that a series of deadly raids are conducted against a number of native villages lead by a mysterious white man using men dressed up in Halloween skeleton costumes as his shock troops.We and Jungle Jim later find out that the white man doing all this damage is industrial chemist Mitchell Heller, Lyle Talbot, who uses the natives his men kidnapped as slave labors in his hidden cave in the jungle to create from igneous rocks synthetic diamonds! Diamonds that are so genuine that their easily mistaken for the real thing! The one drawback to this operation on Heller's part is that those working in his "Diamond Mine" don't last too long dying within a few days of deadly radiation poisoning. Always needing new manpower to get the job done Heller has his men raid the local villages to get him new recruits or workers.It's after being taken hostage by Heller's men it's non other then Jungle Jim's faithful jungle companion Tamba the Chimp who rescues Jungle Jim and makes it possible for him together with Bob Miller throwing, quarterback style, bomb laden coconuts and mango's to put an end to Heller's grandiose plans in his efforts to corner the worlds diamond markets! With Heller now on his own with his Skelton Men running for cover he makes a run for it himself, with a safe box filled with synthetic diamonds, towards the hill country surrounding the village. Only to end up falling some 200 feet, without a parachute, from a cliff he was hanging on by a branch, that broke, to his death.As usual Jungle Jim got the best deal in the movie in not only being the person,together Bob Miller, who saved the day and the native villagers from the evil Mitchell Heller and his feared Skeleton Men but also ended up with the real hero in the movie the cute and cuddly Tamba the Chimp. As for football hero Bob Miller he had to settle for second best in ending up getting the girl, not his real life wife Jean Russell, the sexy newsreel photographer Anne Lawrence.

I had long been curious about the "Jungle Jim" movie series after reading about it in the Leonard Maltin movie guide. So when Turner Classic Movies scheduled three of the movies one afternoon, I decided to give them a look.After watching them, I can understand why there's been little effort to resurrect this series into the minds of modern moviegoers. To be sure, there are some unintentionally hilarious things about this series. There is the frequent use of stock footage, which may not have been obvious to '50s viewers, but is very obvious today. Much of the outdoor footage is obviously not shot in the wilds of Africa, but on the desert landscape of California. Jungle Jim, on the flimsiest of excuses, goes swimming at least once in every movie, and the underwater footage is obviously filmed through the glass window of a tank. I saw the same stone staircase in *all* of the Jungle Jim movies I watched.While there are some laughs to be found in these movies, there are also some unlaughable parts. Weissmuller was starting to show his age, sometimes looking significantly older than the age he actually was. And there's the treatment of natives in the movie. Despite the fact that the movies take place in Africa, the natives are played by Caucasians! (Though considering their simple-minded nature and willing to be bossed by Jungle Jim, people of African descent might actually be thankful.) As for THIS particular Jungle Jim adventure, like the others I watched, I found it to be (overall) somewhat dull and talky, though the use of stock footage from ONE MILLION B.C. and a shark/octopus fight (in a river in Africa?????) did provide some needed laughs. But at the end, I felt like I hadn't seen anything new. As I said in my summary line at the beginning of this review, if you've seen one JUNGLE JIM movie...

I was getting a little worried, almost an hour into the picture and Jungle Jim (Johnny Weissmuller) still hadn't tangled with a wild animal yet, but at 58:08 he makes short work of a shark - no battle actually, he just stabs it! That was right after the shark beat up on an octopus, so maybe he was too tired to fight. What's curious to me was how a shark and an octopus found their way into an African river. Besides the battle of sea creatures, we're also treated to a tussle between a pair of dinosaur impersonating lizards, one of which had a dimetrodon fin attached to it's back. Pretty cool stuff for a kid watching this stuff back in the 1950's, because after all, I was one of them.As for the movie's main plot, you really have to pay attention to let the whole thing sink in. An evil scientific genius (Lyle Talbot) discovers that boiling igneous rock will release the liquids and gases in it's magma composition, and when common sugar is added, a residue of carbon from the burned sugar is held suspended by the magma. Then when the whole solution is immersed in cold water, what's left is re-crystallized into synthetic diamonds - Whew! When I tried it, I only got a hot, wet rock. You know, I think they made all that up.There must have been a reason each Jungle Jim movie offered a different female lead, this time it was Sheila Ryan as spunky photographer Ann Lawrence. They're out to find a former All-American football player who went missing in the jungle some nine years earlier. The opening film credits state 'Introducing' Bob Waterfield, a real life pro player and coach for the Los Angeles Rams. The 'introduction' tag is usually meant to herald an up and coming new star, but in this case, Waterfield's performance was decidedly less successful than his football career. At least Rick Vallin turns up one more time as yet another tribal chief named Bono, causing me to wonder where the current rock star Bono's name actually came from - Hmm. And say, you know who else gets an opening film credit - Tamba The Chimp!! I got a kick out of an early scene when Miss Lawrence first meets Jungle Jim when he saves her from drowning. Admiring his features, she asks him to 'turn your head to the right', to which he turns his head left! Having seen about a half dozen Jungle Jim films recently, I have to admit that once viewed, they're largely forgettable, but at least when they're on they offer a lot of fun, even if some of it is just plain goofy. This one though, I must say probably had the best ending of one so far. Not only does Ann Lawrence get to kiss Jim's co-hero Bob Miller (Waterfield), but Tamba gets to plant one on Jungle Jim himself!