Jungle Goddess

A couple of players known for portraying comic strip heroes George Reeves as Superman and Ralph Byrd as Dick Tracy play a pair of post World War II pilots who run a charter aviation company in Africa. Byrd sees a big opportunity now that the war is over for a big financial windfall if they can find a missing heiress alive or dead who was on a flight missing since the first day of World War II.

Wanda McKay turns out to be alive and living with a tribe where she's revered as a white goddess who healed the chief's daughter. That and the fact that blondes are scarce in the jungle make her an object of worship. Reeves and Byrd find her and after that they come to a parting of the ways.

Nothing much to recommend this film other than McKay's legs which are on ample display. She was a poor man's Betty Grable. As for Reeves and Byrd they act like a pair of idiots in heat, especially Byrd.

You'd better be a leg man to appreciate this turkey.

In this dystopian time, I have not made a lot of good choices with all the time I have not been working, and one of the choices was to gang watch all the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes. This movie was one of the episodes. So, I watched it. When it was over, I stopped watching. I am sure things happened but all I remember was a Mexican girl who seemed to have a lesbian or bisexual relation with a white goddess while a bunch of Black guys were acting very black for even that time. Oh, and in the end, you get to see a weird plane moving so slowly that it violated several laws of physics at the same time. It is not worth watching even through the eyes of two robots. And be sure to vote. May as well. THE END

This film was featured on the comedy riffing show Mystery Science Theater 3000 and is one of the more dull films to be featured on the show. The number one is the time they did Hamlet. This one was done by Lippert who had many of his films featured on the show and are mainly known for being extremely short yet somehow full of nothing. Usually lots and lots of padding which is strange that he would feel the need to put so much filler in when his films were always generally so short. This one has a couple of stars of note, the one that is most recognizable to me is George Reeves best known as playing Clark Kent/Superman. Other than seeing him, there really isn't a lot else to comment on. The plot is a bore and most of the movie is spent inside native's huts as the characters talk about how to escape. Just not a lot to recommend here.

The story has a couple of guys who fly a plane going to search of an heiress despite the objections of one of the pilots (Reeve's character). The other pilot is a bit of a jerk and he becomes more unstable as the film moves on though. They fly and look through binoculars to find the missing plane and of course are capable of seeing animals from an on the ground perspective. They find the wreckage and then trek through the jungle where they encounter the natives and the jerk immediately gets on their bad side. Soon they will learn the fate of the heiress and have to plan an escape before it's too late!

This film did not make a particularly strong episode of MST3K. A few good Superman references and jokes here and there, but there simply was not enough substance to it. There was literally nothing going on through most of the very short running time of this one. Most of the film is the hero and heroine talking and then the hero and jerk punching each other. Add some stoke footage and some angry natives and that is that. The big escape took a whopping few minutes to complete.

So overall a very dull film that plays out like most Lippert films do. Though, honestly, King Dinosaur and a couple of the other ones are a bit more exciting than this one. This film with its plot would have thrived during the 70's and 80's, however. Look at Zombie Holocaust where a blonde is inexplicably sort of worshiped at the end and she gets nude. Just add cannibals or make it a soft core and this one would have had something to it. As is, a bore where people talk in between stock footage shots.

Thats about the only point of interest of this turkey. To be honest, I've only seen the MST3K version, but it is still easy to deduce that this is a total clunker, with horrendous use of stock footage, dialouge that can induce a grand mal seizure, cheap, CHEAP cardboard back drops, and terrible acting all make this movie, one to avoid. Although, I do recommend watching the MST3K version.

In this low rent adventure, two aviators search for a missing heiress who vanished in the African jungle at the onset of World War Two. Our intrepid explorers discover she is alive and well and is being viewed by the local natives as some kind of "white goddess".

Many of these old time, low rent, ludicrous jungle flicks are quite entertaining when viewed in the right frame of mind and if the films are lively. However, JUNGLE GODDESS is just bad. It has a few campy scenes, but overall it is very uneventful. About half the film consists of scenes of the lead characters sitting around inside a hut and talking. There is also an overlong and dull flashback sequence. I was disappointed that there was nothing that really stood out as vivid. This film lacks the elements of the type that sometimes make these silly little pictures entertaining; ludicrous native rituals, the heroine being carted off by a gorilla, hero battling with a stuffed lion etc.

A FEW NOTES: George Reeves made two cheap jungle pictures the same year. This and JUNGLE JIM, where he played the villain. The set used for the pub at the start of this film, looks like the one used in UNKNOWN ISLAND, made the same year.