***SPOILER*** It's when "Bomba the Jungle Boy", Johnny Sheffield, spots a fatally wounded lion in the African bush he's forced to put the big cat down, with his spear, in order to take it out of its misery.
Knowing that the lion, who was shot, was the victim of big game hunters Bomba tracks down the campsite where a number of captured wild African lions are being held captive in bamboo cages. It's then that Bomba does what he does best releasing the lions into the wild. But what Bomba did was also outrage big game lion hunter Marty Martin, Douglas Kennedy. A mad and determined Martin now plans to put an end to Bomba rescuing his fine furry friends as well as Bomba himself.
The collegiate looking Bomba despite his living in the wild all his life is no fool in knowing what Martin is planning to do and stymies him at every turn. Bomba also gets very friendly with Martin's partner Tom Forbes', Morris Ankrum, cute and adorable 19 year old daughter Jean, Ann E. Todd, who despite her dad hunting and trying to capture the big cats, and put them in cages for the rest of their lives, sees Bomba's attempt to rescue them as the right and only "human" thing to do.
With a frustrated Martin getting nowhere in capturing the big cats, by Bomba always turning them loose, he decides to use the local Massai Tribesmen to get the job done for him. That's after the Massai Chief Lohu's, David Richards, nerdy 16 year old son in trying to prove that he's a man ends up getting mauled by a charging lion who in return gets shot by Martin together with the fleeing for life young man!
It's then that Martin tries to pull a fast on on the dead son's dad, the Massai Chief, by tricking him into letting him capture all the lions in the area in order to prevent them from devouring his entire tribe! Of course all this backfires on Martin's part with the lions set on him and his safari by the Massai Chief after finding out that it was Martin not the lion who killed his son. With Martin together with who he still has left, most of the natives on his safari deserted him, having their guns and rifles stolen from them by the Massai's their left to take on the Kings of Beasts with only their bare hands!
Average "Bomba the Jungle Boy" flick with the boyish Johnny Sheffield at the top of his game swinging from jungle vines fighting hand to paw combat with a ferocious lion and spending most of his free time, when he's not saving his jungle friends from game hunters, sitting on a tree branch and shearing a banana with his monkey companion. Bomba also goes so far as saving the villainous Martin's neck from being snapped off by a crocodile which in fact still doesn't get Martin to see Bomba's way; In him leaving the jungle animals, mostly lions, alone. Martin finally gets it, and gets it good, when he's forced to take on the lions that he's been hunting by the Massai tribesmen letting them loose on him in the final moments of the movie!
P.S If there were any two actors who were ever meant to co-star with each other in a movie it had to be Johnny Sheffield and Ann E.Todd. Both Sheffield and Todd were born within three months of each other in 1931 and who's careers spanned, Todd from 1938 to 1954 and Sheffield 1938 to 1955, almost the exact same time period!
