This is yet another flick that has been unceremoniously slapped with Leonard Maltin's dreaded BOMB rating: it is not that I particularly disapprove in this case (though, as can be seen from my own assessment, I was not quite so dismissive) but the narrative here is somewhat busier than his a "jungle goddess saving a pilot" plot description would have you believe! Incidentally, this is one more case of a film whose print has been so ravaged over the years (presumably more through sheer neglect rather than overexposure) that the color has virtually faded away completely! I cannot think of any particular highlights in the film and any mild enjoyment to be had is down to star-spotting; disappointingly, neither is Eve's character really ever utilized as a form of female Tarzan, which is what I would have expected (curiously enough, the previous year saw the release of the Italian VIRGIN OF THE JUNGLE which did follow exactly that route)!
Anyway, the heroine is the grand-daughter of an eminent expatriate Englishman (played by Christopher Lee in an unconvincing aged make-up), who had survived a plane crash as a child and been raised like a wild creature (although by whom or what we are never really told)! She saves an American flyer (Robert Walker Jr.) from the clutches of both jungle beasts and native savages when the latter turns up the Amazon to look for his missing business partner. The obligatory villainous figure is portrayed by Herbert Lom who, although pretending to be on friendly terms with Lee, is really intent on defrauding him of the Inca treasure buried near his property!; in fact, Lee has a duplicitous Hispanic nurse in tow and, along the way, is about to kick the bucket
and maybe he does? – but not before reuniting with his long-lost heir.
The standard length of 96 minutes (though the IMDb lists its running-time as just 80!) is further padded out by a subplot which basically leads nowhere featuring another American presence, Fred Clark, as the proprietor of a saloon who, taking a leaf from Carl Denham's book, seeks to exploit Eve's exotic novelty to his clientele!; chanteuse Maria Rohm – as with a handful of my recent viewings, this is a Harry Alan Towers production – is Clark's star attraction and, at one point, she is seen nonchalantly crooning away as all hell breaks loose around her in the utterly gratuitous bar-room brawl!
