THE JUNGLE (1952)
Article #851 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-14-2003
Posting Date: 12-11-2003
Directed by William Berke
Featuring Rod Cameron, Cesar Romero, Marie Windsor

An expedition is made into the depths of India to investigate reports of mammoths.

Title check: Since it does take place in a jungle, it’s appropriate enough, but it’s also vague enough that it could have been called any one of a number of other titles; THE MAMMOTHS, THE COWARDLY HUNTER, THE PRINCESS, THE PRINCESS’S BOYFRIEND, THE KNEELING ELEPHANT, THE WRESTLING BEAR, THE PYTHON IN THE TREE, etc.

This movie has helped me to concoct a new movie term; THE DOUBLE-STUFFED SAFARI-O. This movie is like an Oreo cookie in that it consists of exposition at one end, denoument at the other, and is filled in the middle with an overly generous helping of safari. Unfortunately, unlike most Oreo cookies, the stuffing is hardly the best part.

Actually, I take that back; the stuffing may be the best part of this lame little movie. Despite a certain science-fiction angle in the plot, the movie is predictable fare; it’s something like MONSTER FROM GREEN HELL with mammoths instead of wasps. If there is anything really novel about it, it is that it takes place in India rather than Africa, and it actually looks like it was filmed on location. Consequently, there is a novelty to the scenery that sets it apart from most other jungle movies, so I’d have to say the movie works best as a travelogue.

Oh, and what are cold-weather creatures like mammoths doing in the sultry climate of India? The answer is perfectly clear; there were plenty of elephants present to wear those heavy shaggy coats to make them look like their prehistoric relations (you’ll notice that you never see the mammoths in the same shot with the humans so you can do some comparison of the sizes).

JE T’AIME, JE T’AIME (1968)
Article #694 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-7-2003
Posting Date: 7-7-2003
Directed by Alain Resnais
Featuring Claude Rich, Olga Georges-Picot, Anouk Ferjac

A man who survives a suicide attempt volunteers to be the guineau pig in a time-travel experiment. When he is sent back, he loses himself in the timestream, and begins hopping back and forth between moments in his life from the last few years.

The movie definitely has a fascinating concept underneath it, and in that way is similar to Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. The story is fairly linear until the experiment gets underway, but as you might expect, once he starts popping back and forth in time, it loses that linearity. It’s fascinating to watch, though you do have to let the events in his life wash over you in the random peeks you are given. Nonetheless, it works pretty well, and though the ending is a little confusing, there was something very satisfying and very sad about it. This one is recommended for anyone not put off by French artiness.

JACK THE RIPPER (1958)
Article #574 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-10-2002
Posting date: 3-5-2003

Four stories that pierce the veil of human existence.

When I covered the movie THE VEIL some time back, I pointed out that it was four stories from an unsold TV series hosted by Boris Karloff stitched together to make a movie. This anthology of four stories is cut from the same cloth. In fact, it’s a little too much the same; the first story in this one (about a man that foresees a murder before it is committed) was the third story in that one. It’s also interesting to note that the description of the above story also fits the fourth story in this one, about a man who foresees some of the details of the murders committed by Jack the Ripper (hence the title), and it seems like many of the stories in the series deal with precognition in one form or another. This may also explain why watching them strung together gets a little repetitive. To vary things, the two middle stories are not about precognition; they’re about ghosts intent on righting injustices of one sort or another. Karloff, as well as serving as hosts to each of the stories, has small roles in the first two stories, a major role in the third, and does not appear in the last, which does feature an excellent performance by Niall MacGinnis (Karswell from CURSE OF THE DEMON). It’s probably best taken an episode at a time.

JASPER (1942-1946) – short films
Article #369 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 3-19-2002
Posting date: 8-5-2002

The listing in the book I was using just said JASPER, and referred to a series of shorts directed by George Pal in the forties, so I decided to watch a handy sampling of them, specifically JASPER IN A JAM, JASPER IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE and OLIO FOR JASPER. These puppetoons are not likely to show up on TV these days, what with the broadly played black characters therein being quite stereotypical. Still, there is a real surreal charm to these things; they’re certainly more like cartoons than full-length movies, and the jazzy music is a real treat. It’s worth a look for anyone interested in the early years of George Pal.

***NOTE*** Since I posted this entry, I made the decision not to review whole series all at once, so this one is an anomaly.

JUNGLE WOMAN (1944)
Article #367 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 3-17-2002
Posting date: 8-3-2002

A scientist recovers the body of Paula Dupree, the ape woman, only to discover that she is still alive.

Universal must have made this one for lovers of CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN; in fact, they must have figured that lovers of that movie would like to see a lot of the same footage again, so a good part of the first twenty minutes of this movie (which runs just over an hour) is made up of footage from that movie. They obviously weren’t investing a lot of money in the series. I think the makeup for J. Carrol Naish was very good; I had to double-check the credits to make sure that was him at first. They also give far too much dialogue to Acquanette, who is more effective when she doesn’t say anything. Mostly, the movie wastes its time having people wonder if Paula is actually the same as Cheela, the ape; we already know this is true. Ultimately, the movie is a rehash and a waste of time.

JUVE VS. FANTOMAS (1913)
(a.k.a. JUVE CONTRE FANTOMAS)
Article #357 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 3-7-2002
Posting date: 7-24-2002

A police detective matches wits with a master criminal.

I’m not even sure this should be included, as it is very marginal to say the least. My book lists a serial called FANTOMAS, which is supposed to come in five parts. Each part has a separate listing in IMDB, and as far as I can tell, each of these parts is made of smaller episodes of the serial. This is the second of the five movies, and it looks as if it was made up of several episodes of a serial strung together; it starts seemingly in the middle of a story, and ends on a cliffhanger, so I can’t really say much about the arc of the story as a whole. Still, the set pieces where Juve (the detective) tries to outwit Fantomas (the criminal) are amusing indeed; it would be nice to see this in its entirety someday.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1959)
Article #231 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 11-2-2001
Posting date: 3-18-2002

When a scientist discovers an artifact from a long-vanished explorer, he embarks upon a journey into the bowels of the planet.

It was nice that the Disney version of 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA caused a revival of interest in Verne, and this is one of the movies that appeared in its wake. It features James Mason doing his usual very good job. It also features Pat Boone, who does all right except he does feel the need to remind you he’s Pat Boone when a song comes around. It also features Arlene Dahl as a strong-willed woman quite willing to stand up to Professor Lindenbrook, and this is quite refreshing. I also found it quite interesting and unusual that the big Scandinavian with the duck never learns to speak English; it’s not a choice that would usually be made in a Hollywood movie. On the down side, it does have some of the same problems that bothered me with 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA; namely, it runs on a bit long, and it has some of the same incessant cuteness that plagued that movie, which goes a long way to explain the presence of the duck (though the duck’s fate in the movie is a big surprise). It’s a fairly good movie, but I have to admit to preferring my Verne served up with less cuteness.

JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN’S DAUGHTER (1965)
Article #230 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 11-1-2001
Posting date: 3-17-2002

Jesse James and Hank Tracy team up with the Wild Bunch to hold up a stagecoach, but it turns out to be a trap in which Tracy is shot. Jesse takes him to a monastery inhabited by the granddaughter of Dr. Frankenstein to heal his wounds, but she has other plans.

I think this movie is a tad bit better than it sounds, but not by much; it has a nice soundtrack, anyway. The much-maligned William Beaudine directed this movie, but I don’t know of any director who could have really done much with the concept. This is the companion movie to BILLY THE KID VS. DRACULA, which at least had the presence of John Carradine to give it that little extra touch; the only name I recognized right away from the credits of this one is Nestor Paiva, the captain of the boat from CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. Chalk it up to another one of those failed attempts at that most elusive of genre crossings, the horror-western.

JUST IMAGINE (1930)
Article #207 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-9-2001
Posting date: 2-22-2002

A man struck by lightning in 1930 is resurrected in 1980 to take in the wonders of the future. He helps a man to win the hand of the woman he loves by getting him to perform a brave feat: taking the first trip to Mars.

There are definite reasons for science fiction fans to catch this forgotten movie; the sets are absolutely stunning, and watching past visions of the future are always highly entertaining, even when the future in question is now the past. 1980 was never like this, at least not where I come from, though they did get the bit about the automatic hand driers right. However, it’s a little disconcerting to realize that the first science fiction epic produced by the United States was a romantic musical comedy, with really bad music and really lame comedy. Most of the comedy revolves around liquor having been replaced by pills, thereby getting around prohibition (remember, it was still in place at the time the movie was made); there’s even a whole song about it. The sequence on Mars manages to sneak in a bunch of humor that would have never gotten past the censors after 1934, especially in the matter of the sexual preferences of one of the Martian guards. Ultimately, it’s the curiousity value that makes this movie fascinating; it’s so surreal and bizarre it’s hard to believe this movie was actually made, and you find yourself glued to the screen despite the comedy and music (and the fact that the print was in such poor condition). I bet this movie is just waiting to be rediscovered. And it is one of the few science fiction movies of its time to give us a full-blown vision of the future on Earth AND a full-blown look at Martian life.

JUNGLE CAPTIVE (1945)
Article #206 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 10-8-2001
Posting date: 2-21-2002

A mad doctor decides he needs the body of Paula Dupree, the ape woman for his experiments.

When I saw this lame little movie many years back, my first reaction was to observe that Rondo Hatton was not much of an actor; like Tor Johnson, he was a human special effect. Seeing it again recently, I haven’t really changed my opinion as much as amended it a little; at least I get the feeling that he was actually putting forth some effort and expending a little energy, which is more than I can say for some of the others involved in this one. The story is dull and never picks up any steam. I’ve also never had more of a feeling that someone is just walking through his role as I do from Otto Kruger here; I don’t get the impression he cared for the role at all. And though Acquanetta wasn’t a great actress, she did a far better job than the somnambulent Vicki Lane in this one. All in all, I consider it far and away the weakest of the Universal horrors I’ve seen to date.