Bomba, der Dschungelboy

When I sat down to watch "Bomba: The Jungle Boy" I thought I was in for a fun, goofy hour. Instead I sat through a painfully dull movie. This is my second Bomba movie and I don't want to be mean but Johnny Sheffield is deadwood on screen. He brings nothing to the table. On the plus side, Peggy Ann Garner is cute and appealing. So the stars kind of balance each other out. "Bomba: The Jungle Boy" will only stay in my memory bank for about another ten minutes.

On safari in Africa, pretty teenager Peggy Ann Garner (as Patricia "Pat" Harland) photographs animals with father Onslow Stevens (as George). For better pictures, "glorified game warden" Charles Irwin (as Andy Barnes) and "native" Smoki Whitfield (as Eli) lead them deeper into the wild, where they meet "Teen Tarzan" Johnny Sheffield (as Bomba). The popular "Boy" from the faltering "Tarzan" movies was a natural pick for this unofficial spin-off series. While successful, it's nothing special. The first outing finds Mr. Sheffield and Ms. Garner in a tame "Tarzan and His Mate" (1934) mode. Best scene is when Garner tears her dress and Sheffield offers her his loincloth; she declines as the always-obvious stock footage inserts two chimps kissing.

**** Bomba, the Jungle Boy (3/20/49) Ford Beebe ~ Johnny Sheffield, Peggy Ann Garner, Onslow Stevens, Charles Irwin

Bomba, the Jungle Boy is the first of the Bomba movies with Johnny Sheffield (Boy from the Weismuller Tarzan movies) as Bomba.

In this first movie, a safari in Africa including a girl and her dad are photographing and filming the wildlife when the girl, Pat gets lost and Bomba finds her. They become friends and he helps her to look for the rest of the party, facing several dangers along the way including lions, leopards, a huge swarm of locusts and unfriendly natives. She is reunited with the others at the end and Bobma disappears back into the jungle.

Joining Johnny Sheffield in the cast is Peggy Ann Garner as Pat, Onslow Stevens (Them!) as her dad and Bomba regular Smoki Whitfield.

Bomba, the Jungle Boy is worth watching if you can get hold of a copy.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

I discovered BOMBA in the late eighties, thru my US VHS provider. Never heard of it before, the same with JUNGLE JIM character and movie series too. If you love TARZAN, you should,I say YOU SHOULD, like this cute series of movies, and not episodes, unlike JUNGLE JIM, which existed both in movie theaters and on TV. So back to this series of films made of course in Monogram studio lots, and certainly not on locations, it is fun, full of animals, natives, villains, celluloid jungle. OK, when you have seen one, you can consider you have seen the other ones, but for your kids, even now, in 2023, it would be better than Iphone silly and disturbing, insane games.

Bomba, the Jungle Boy (1949)

** (out of 4)

When MGM decided to take their Tarzan series into a different direction, Johnny Weissmuller headed to Columbia to start the Jungle Jim series while his son, Boy, went to Monogram and began production on another Tarzan rip- off, Bomba, which would end up running for twelve films. The series opener has Pat Harland (Peggy Ann Garner) and her father (Onslow Stevens) are in Africa trying to take photos of some rare animals when she ends up in the jungle lost. Soon Bomba (Sheffield) shows up to show her some of the finer, less appreciated things in life. There's no question that this series should have been called TARZAN, JR. and there's no question that what brain cells the MGM series had are pretty much gone here. This isn't a horrible movie but at the same time it's doubtful too many are going to find it completely entertaining and this is due to several factors. One is that the screenplay really doesn't offer us anything new, original or really all that entertaining. I thought for the most part we got one boring sequence after another and in fact it takes nearly thirty-minutes before Bomba shows up, another ten-minutes for any sort of action and it takes yet another fifteen-minutes before Garner finally gets into her leopard-skinned outfit. As with the Tarzan films and the countless other rips, this film gets the benefit of many stock footage shots of the wildlife in Africa. We get to see a wide range of animals but it's obvious the footage was shot for other movies as it looks quite poor and even for stock footage the stuff isn't that good because the shots are so far away from the target and out of focus that at times you struggle to even tell what you're looking at. For some reason the film is pretty light on action as there are only a few fight sequences and even these are pretty tame. The first time Bomba fights a fake leopard it all happens off camera. The one saving grace to the film are the performances. Sheffield does a nice job playing the lead character and Garner adds up some nice support. The two feature some nice chemistry together and fans of HOUSE OF Dracula will enjoy seeing Stevens in his part. At just 70-minutes the movie goes by at a decent pace but it's just too bad they didn't try something fresh or original to throw a little life into the picture.