La selva negra

I only started watching serials 3 or 4 years ago starting with 'Spy Smasher' and was over-joyed when I recently unearthed a copy of this 1945 cliff-hanger.

Produced by Sam Katzman, the man behind the majority of Columbia's entire serial output, this one is yet another lacklustre, low-budget effort that I have seen so many times before from this studio.

Serial veteran Kane Richmond stars as the son of a doctor who's discovered the miracle drug of the century, but who's vanished in the jungle and may be a prisoner in a lost city!! And that's where my problems with this serial start, there is NO jungle, only the usual familiar rock and boulder strewn background used in so many of Katzman's movies,(there's not even one fake palm tree) and secondly the lost city seems to be just a short car ride from a trading post, run by the black hearted but stupid Jake Raynes.

Carol Hughes plays Zara, the evil high priestess, who with just a few exotic waves of her hands can manipulate people & volcanoes, who along with the witchdoctor has ideas above her station.

The actual cliff hangers are you basic kind, pits filled with daggers, crocodile infested rivers, molten lava and the like but you never feel that our hero is ever in any real danger, with even the fist-fights lack vitality and punch!!

Recommended for serial enthusiasts only.