QUEEN OF THE AMAZONS (1947)
Article #1588 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-20-2005
Posting Date: 12-17-2005
Directed by Edward Finney
Featuring Robert Lowery, Patricia Morison, J. Edward Bromberg

A woman hires a party to go into the wilds of Africa to find her lost husband. She hires a guide who considers women a nuisance who is also searching for ivory poachers.

I was going to dismiss this one as a Double-Stuffed Safari-O, but frankly, that classification is too good for it. Rather, this is an example of what I think of as Stock Footage Clearing House Cinema. Now, I can understand the use of stock footage to flesh out and add atmosphere to a movie in a cost-effective way. However, when a movie seems to only exist to make use of stock footage, you have the cart ahead of the horse. Yet, that seems to be the case here; the movie is filled with bits that seem designed to set up the use of stock footage. Certainly, the scenes of exposition and plot development are shot in such an uninvolving way (characters stand still and talk to each other) that I never felt that anyone cared about the story, and this is only enhanced by the fact that there’s very little in this hackneyed compendium of cliches to care about. As a result, the best part of the movie is, unsurprisingly, the stock footage. The fantastic aspect is little more than the mild fantasy value of having a tribe of Amazons on the loose.