OVERLOOKED MOVIE: JUNGLE SIREN (1942)

You say you want a bad jungle flick?  You say you want Buster Crabbe go against the Nazis?  You say you'll settle for a film shot at the Santa Anita Park Race Track Botanical Gardens rather than Africa?  You say you want a white jungle goddess in the form of famous striptease artist Ann Corio (who gets top billing over Buster Crabbe)?  You say you want a no-talent chimpanzee companion named Greco who does nothing to lighten the already bad script?  You say you want to see the younger brother of famous character actor Guy Kibbee act?

Well, lucky you!  I've got all that for you in Jungle Siren, a 1942 stinker directed by the legendary B movie king Sam Newfield (Queen of Burlesque, The Monster Maker, The Terror of Tiny Town).

Buster plays Captain Gary Hart, who -- with Sergeant Mike Jenkins (Paul Bryer, who had a 45-year career as a bit player in films and television, such as Card Player #1 in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) is attached to the Free French during World War II.  The two are sent to a small African village to build an airfield, but the natives are restless.  The natives are controlled by the evil chief Selangi (Jess Lee Brooks, Two-Gun Man from Harlem, Dark Manhattan, Drums of the Congo), who, in turn, is controlled by a married pair of nogoodnik Nazis.  Arno Frey (Arizona Gang Busters, Secret Agent X-9, They Came to Blow Up America) and Evelyn Wahl (who had only one other credited role, in Parachute Nurse, also 1942).

Enter Ann Corio as Kuhlaya, the Jungle Siren -- a white girl brought up by natives after Chief Selangi killed her parents.  Kuhlaya is a female Tarzan and it is she who has that miserable chimp Greco.  She is watched over by kindly Doctor Harrigan (Milton Kibbee, who surprisingly had three times the film credits than his more famous brother).

Anyway, you know what's going to happen and who is going to prevail over whom, so...

"You can't go wrong when you see Ann in a sarong, in a back-to-nature romance, she meets the Perfect Man -- and life begins for both in the African jungle!"

Enjoy.


https://archive.org/details/JungleSiren1942