Liane, Jungle Goddess (1956)* 1/2 (out of 4)A German expedition through Africa turns up a beautiful blonde girl (Marion Michael) who the locals think is a goddess. The crew kidnap the girl and take her back to the press who has a field day with her and soon it turns out she might be the long lost daughter of a very important man.This is a pretty strange film that I'm sure was loved by teenage boys back in the day. This Tarzan-wannabe was filmed in German but it was sold throughout the world and in many locations it played matinees to where kids could watch it. They would have loved that because of the beautiful blonde in the lead plus the fact that she wasn't very many clothes and at times we see a few slips of nudity. Obviously, it's easy to see why so many teens from this period have such a fondness for the film.As it stands today, the film is pretty weird because it starts off as a Tarzan rip-off but then it quickly turns into some weird drama where people are fighting over who actually owns the title character. I'm really not sure why they decided to leave the jungle because that's where all the fun was. These early scenes contain shots of the wildlife and it was rather fun seeing the young girl in her natural location.All of the fun gets sucked out once we get back to civilization and the girl get taught how to speak English and how to be proper. This stuff is just told in such a boring way that you can't help but wish they were back in the jungle. Michael certainly has the appropriate look for the role and she's certainly fun to watch. Hardy Kruger is fun as the lead male and we also get Reggie Nalder playing a bad guy. LIANA, JUNGLE GODDESS really isn't that good of a film. I'm sure when you watch it in life will determine how much entertainment you actually get out of it. For me personally, the film is harmless fun at the start but it slowly grows more boring as it moves along.

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).

*Spoiler/plot- Liane, Jungle Goddess 1956. An African expedition consisting of Germans find a blonde native girl in the jungle. Research proves that she is the heir to a German billionaire's industrial fortune. The heir is brought back to civilization only to get involved in family drama.*Special Stars- Marion Michael, Hardy Kruger. *Theme- Kindness and help will benefit the weak.*Trivia/location/goofs- German, B&W. Very early screen appearance for actor, Hardy Kruger. Some suggested jungle nudity in swimming and dancing. Many 50's & 60's German character actors are included.*Emotion- A wonderfully naive plot and theme for a foreign jungle film. It's fairytale story keeps you wondering where the drama will start. It does and keeps you interested till the final scene. Simple film with easy virtues.

"Liane, Jungle Goddess" is a simple German Tarzan clone. Clearly aimed at the Saturday matinée market, it remains a worthwhile family film.It is a straightforward adventure story and was obviously made quite cheaply. There are few twists in the plot and there is a distinct lack of artistry in the storytelling and direction but it remains quite watchable after sixty years.The story tells of how white girl is found living amidst an African tribe and is rehabilitated to her family. As is so often the case in these stories, it emerges she is the granddaughter of a wealthy tycoon so, fairytale-like, she is set to inherit a fortune unless a jealous antagonist's plot is successful.The African tribes-people are initially treated as a marginalised "other" and have no voice in the initial stages of the film. It is only when one of them travels back to Germany with Liane does he gain a voice and he is shown to be an honourable protector. Nevertheless, throughout the black people are shown to be subservient to the white girl who leads them which is interesting given the film was made in a German still coming to terms with the horrific racial policies of its recent past.The early colour in the film is badly faded now. The sets are limited but emphasise the contrast between the rich western world and the jungle life but it condemns neither. Implicitly, though, there is the feeling the white girl belongs with the white people and that a return to civilisation is a better place for her.The initial mystery of Liane's origins is staged in a very rudimentary way, as is the plot at the end. More fun is seeing how she adapts to life in Hamburg and uses her jungle knowledge on her family estate.Marion Michael's acting is passable in a brave performance. Some other reviewers have raised the question of the nudity in the film. It is completely non-sexual in nature so conservative parents need have no concern. Indeed, there is no offensive material in this film at all, apart from possibly the representations of race mentioned above.Overall, this is a very workmanlike film and, on one level, it is sad to see how the German film industry had declined since the heady days of Fritz Land and the Weimar Republic. On the other hand, in its simplicity and wholesomeness, the film is clearly trying to capture something of innocence, an innocence that had been lost in the horrors of the Third Reich. Marion Michael herself was a refugee from Königsberg, evacuated as a child as her city was annihilated around her, so the fact that she was able to survive that absolutely horrific situation and find success in the film industry by personifying a character displaced yet holding onto a hopeful innocence, perhaps gave the German populace and, indeed, all of us a hope for humanity that the civilian victims of war may survive and overcome the trauma to create something so good and so wholesome.