The Umbrellahead Awards: Night Screams Division

"Two entries in one day?!", you ask? Yes, dear readers: for now we have our fourth retrospective, and our 100th blog post, covering the 50 movies that comprise the Night Screams subset of our 250-film box set from Mill Creek. As it happens, Night Screams was 100% unchanged when it was incorporated into the big box, so this retrospective applies just as well to the standalone box.

And, dear readers ("Wait, you just called us that"), this one was a slog to get through. Night Screams is loaded with self-similar movies from the 1930s whose titles offer us little hope of differentiating between them; in fact, we had to add a whole new category just for pairs of films that resemble each other to an uncomfortable degree. But after some blood, sweat, toil and tears, we've come up with a slate of winners...

...and losers: Night Screams also has some of the very worst films we've seen on this box set.

As ever, some categories reappear from past awards ceremonies (see here, here, and here for those), while others simply didn't apply to this bunch: once again, we really couldn't come up with anything that deserved to be called "so bad it's good". This time around it's only been eight months since our last ceremony, which speaks more to our tremendous backlog (now resolved) than our overall work ethic.

Now, to quote Ultimate Spinach, behold and see our nominees:

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Actual Best Movie Award:

House of Danger

The House of Secrets

The Phantom Express

The Ticket of Leave Man

Wanted: Babysitter (aka Scar Tissue)

Winner: The Phantom Express

Not the strongest field for this category, and frankly House of Danger and The House of Secrets may be benefiting somewhat from recency effect here. In any event, when you account for the sloppiness of Wanted: Babysitter and the anti-Semitism of The Ticket of Leave Man, the only option left is also the movie we enjoyed most, The Phantom Express.

Is it the 1930s version of feel-good pap? Maybe -- but feeling good is nice sometimes.

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Actual Worst Movie Award:

The Crooked Circle

A Face in the Fog

The Ghost and the Guest

House of Mystery

The Phantom

Winner: The Ghost and the Guest

This category, on the other hand, was extremely competitive. ZaSu Pitts annoyed us to no end in The Crooked Circle, while The Phantom was torturously slow, A Face in the Fog assertively unfunny, and House of Mystery abrasively stupid.

But The Ghost and the Guest represented something very close to an all-time low in our film-watching career, had no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and was smirkingly racist to boot. Thus, it gets the aforementioned boot.

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Nicest Nautical Narrative:

Killers of the Sea

Manfish

Night Tide

A Passenger to Bali

She Gods of Shark Reef

Winner: Manfish

We wanted to pick Killers of the Sea here, since we quote it with some regularity, and K.'s picture review is probably P.'s single favorite thing about our site.

However, innocent animals were harmed in the making of that film -- so it's certainly not "nice" -- and it's barely a movie. So Manfish gets the crown, which isn't hard to do when your competitors are a miscast Dennis Hopper, an overripe retelling of the Flying Dutchman legend, and a half-assed "nubiles on an island" effort.

Still, we really did like Lon Chaney Jr. in Manfish, even if he's just doing a recycled Lennie act.

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The Eye Candy Award:

Carnage

The Embalmer

Kiss Me Kill Me

The Lion Man

A Scream in the Night

Winner (tie): Carnage and Kiss Me Kill Me

The cute extra in A Scream in the Night is only onscreen for a couple of seconds, while the also-nameless minor character who lights up the screen in The Embalmer gets little more, so we have to rule them out for insufficient data.

Meanwhile, Kathleen Burke is pretty in The Lion Man, but for us it really comes down to Leslie den Dooven in Carnage vs. Isabelle de Funès in Kiss Me Kill Me. Quirky selections, we suppose -- but since we're running a two-person operation here, and each of us has our preferences, let's call it a draw.

Honorable Mention: Mickey Hargitay in Bloody Pit of Horror. No wonder he ended up marrying one of the bombshells of his day, as he was a fine-looking man, handsome and unexpectedly agile.

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The Scorched Earth Award:

Death Warmed Up

Grave of the Vampire

Sisters of Death

The Tell-Tale Heart

Winner: Sisters of Death

Though we don't want to spoil them, let's say that the survival rate for the principals of these films, and the level of moral purity they're able to maintain, could both be described as...sub-optimal. Given those criteria, the laurels have to go to the titular Sisters of Death, whose monotonic incantations give way to a symphony of mayhem, with a 1970s style that seals the deal.

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The Hoist with Their Own Petard Award:

Bloody Pit of Horror

Death Warmed Up

Frankenstein 80

Son of Ingagi

Winner: Death Warmed Up

Again, we don't want to spoil anything, but it's not a big surprise to note that -- at least in the movies -- scientists (and other aficionados) who experiment on non-consenting subjects sometimes find themselves on the receiving end. Death Warmed Up plays the longest game in that regard, so this sprawling, incoherent, occasionally fun New Zealand horror epic is our pick.

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The IWGIHs Award:

A Face in the Fog

The Invisible Killer

The Phantom of 42nd Street

Strangers of the Evening

Winner: A Face in the Fog

A Face in the Fog is what led us to name this category in the first place, so it's no surprise that it wins -- but it doesn't do so on the basis of seniority alone: more than any other film on this list, it's seriously afflicted by a total failure to differentiate between the identical-looking, similarly-dressed (and -hatted) white men who make up its character roster.

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The Rich Are Not Lke You and Me Award:

Green Eyes

Murder at Midnight

The Savage Girl

Winner: The Savage Girl

Elaborate masquerade parties, and putting on a one-act play for the sake of a game of charades -- those things are weird. But being able to say on a moment's notice "Hey, I feel like going to Africa...oh, you want to go too? Cool, come along and bring your taxicab"? That's on an entirely different level.

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The Know-It-All Award:

Green Eyes

The Midnight Warning

The Thirteenth Guest

Winner: Green Eyes

"Stage" Boyd and Lyle Talbot are a bit insufferable in their respective roles as all-knowing detectives (especially Talbot), sure. But Charles Starrett, who already looks a hell of a lot like John de Lancie, is so appallingly cocksure and omniscient that it's literally as if Q himself is making a cameo in Green Eyes, right down to his ridiculous outfits.

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The "You're, Like, the Same Movie" Playoffs:

Anatomy of a Psycho vs. Buried Alive

In these tales of capital punishment and bitterness, Buried Alive gets the nod for its far more engaging plot and DT love story.

City of Missing Girls vs. The Devil's Sleep

Oh, no contest here -- in these sordid tales of vice and blackmail, we'll take H.B. Warner's spry wit in City of Missing Girls any day over Mr. America and The Devil's Sleep.

Bloody Pit of Horror vs. The Dungeon of Harrow

Mickey Hargitay, plus at least Bloody Pit of Horror can pronounce its own protagonist's name.

The Ghost and the Guest vs. Ghosts on the Loose

Newlyweds, zany characters, spooky old houses, and confusion, but one of these movies should be thrown in a fire. The other one has Béla Lugosi. Guess which one we liked better?

I Killed That Man vs. Midnight Phantom

Nobody leaves this room until we find out which film is better! Well, that's easy: I Killed That Man was sort of fun, Midnight Phantom was a structural disaster, so the movie with the silliest pajamas wins.

The Face at the Window vs. The Ticket of Leave Man

While we prefer our Tod Slaughter films to be free of anti-Semitic caricatures, The Ticket of Leave Man is still a better effort than The Face at the Window, which depends too much on woo-woo science and stupid protagonists for its own good.

Drums of Africa (Jungle Man) vs. Nabonga vs. The Savage Girl

Despite a good one-liner (and a couple of well-placed meaningful glances) in Jungle Man, it probably has to be The Savage Girl, which makes the best use of its inevitable stock footage and moves along at a nice clip.

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Special Awards for Special Campers:

Best Spoonerism Award:

We've been waiting for, like, years to note this: Daughter of the Tong makes for a truly extraordinary spoonerism -- and a readymade title for a very blue film.

(Bonus points for singing it to the tune of the Underdog [sic] part from The Doors' "The Soft Parade".)

The Most Contrived Catchphrase Award (tie):

If only ZaSu Pitts had kept boasting "Smooth as silk!" in The Crooked Circle, and Lon Chaney Jr. had repeatedly lamented that "Something always happens to somebody!" in Shadow of Silk Lennox, both films would have been immeasurably improved. As it stands, we're stuck with what we have.

The Bury the Lead Award (tie):

Screenwriters who use the "And the name of the killer is...(hurk)" device that shows up in A Shot in the Dark and I Killed That Man need to be cattle-prodded in the buttocks. Friends, if you're ever calling out a murderer, lead with their name.

The "And Loosens Up Our Pecs" Award (tie):

A Shot in the Dark and The Phantom of 42nd Street have a weird correspondence with each other: both films have a hanged man depicted in silhouette, and a character with a particularly deep, resonant voice. (The two actors in question even look fairly similar.) So maybe that Ren & Stimpy song was right?

The Holy-Crap-How-Long-Has-It-Been? Award:

We watched (and reviewed) The Wasp Woman back in 2009! Two-thousand-freakin'-nine, for pity's sake! How on earth can it have been that long? We remember an interesting face, "royal jelly", murder by barbell, and not much else about what turns out to have been our first foray into Night Screams.

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So, after nearly a decade on this project -- and a heroic effort to overcome our backlog -- we're now down to the last 50 or so movies. It's more like 44, actually, since we've already watched the likes of Eegah and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.

Will we finish 50 Sci-Fi Classics in time for its awards ceremony to coincide with the 10-year anniversary of our site? Well, p'têt ben que oui, p'têt ben que non: we don't like to make those sorts of promises here at the Umbrellahead Review. But we'll see.

Paging Dr. Cuddy

No bonus points for guessing the theme: someone at Mill Creek no doubt felt very clever when they noted all three of these films' titles have Hugh Laurie in a genitive construction, and so grouped them together on a single DVD side (Disc 48, Side B, if you're keeping count).

That DVD side also represents a milestone, since it marks the end of Night Screams -- or at least the Horror Collection 250-pack's incorporation thereof -- which means we only have one subset left to review, 50 Sci-Fi Classics.

(Of course, a good 25% of those "sci-fi classics" are actually peplum, but we'll cross that bridge...)

Anyway, on to the Houses!

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House of Danger (1934)

Grade: C+

In a nutshell, House of Danger is basically House Dark the at Crimes -- that is, Crimes at the Dark House in reverse.

Instead of an evil-minded, mustachioed impersonator seeking to usurp the place of a man he murdered while working thousands of miles from home, we have a benevolent, mustachioed impersonator (Onslow Stevens) desperately trying to avoid usurping the place of the man whose life he saved (James Bush).

And it's not as if House of Danger is coy about any of this; as another reviewer points out, this is a crime story, not a mystery story. But House of Danger is also a romance, as -- unlike The False Sir Percival Glyde -- the false Ralph Nelson most certainly inspires the passion of Sylvia (Janet Chandler), the woman who's been waiting for "him" ever since they made a half-serious promise of engagement a decade ago.

Now, this requires some serious suspension of disbelief, since Onslow Stevens and James Bush don't resemble one another to any meaningful degree. Here's Stevens:

And here's Bush:

So it's hard enough to believe that Sylvia is fooled, let alone all of Nelson's family and friends. But to the film's credit, one person immediately smells a rat:

As Mr. Weatherby, Nelson's uncle (by marriage) and attorney, Howard Lang is one of the film's jewels. Clever and droll, he reminds us a tiny bit of the intrepid Captain McVeigh from City of Missing Girls, though Lang never has occasion to be as spry as H.B. Warner. But he gets off a few good one-liners of the I-guess-you-had-to-be-there variety, as when the two leading men inevitably bicker over Sylvia and he intervenes:

"Well, why not let the girl decide what she wants to do? She will anyway! Bet you hadn't thought of that."

When paired with a chagrined look on both men's faces and a perfectly timed fade to black, it got a big chuckle from us. (Shades of Vernon, Florida too.)

The crime in House of Danger is offscreen, and is also the engine that sets the plot in motion: Nelson's father recently fell off a cliff, and Mr. Weatherby thinks it was murder. Again, it's not as if there's any doubt about who did it; the question is just how to prove it.

There's a certain amount of cleverness in how this unfolds, but the ensuing narrative isn't exactly taut with suspense -- and the ultimate resolution turns out to be something of a deus ex machina.

You may have detected a whiff of stock footage in a couple of these screenshots, and that's one of House of Danger's flaws, though a very minor one. More jarring is the set-piece in which Sylvia serenades a gathering, with strange, dubbed contralto vocals and obviously-pantomimed piano playing that make the sequence teeter dangerously into the realm of the ridiculous. Perhaps we ought to praise the scene for its modest realism, but since Ms. Chandler is already treading in DT territory as it is, it's too big a risk.

Still, House of Danger is -- by our steadily-lowering standards -- a likable little film that neither insults our intelligence nor wastes our time. Tightly plotted and thoughtfully directed, it's two minutes longer than the next movie in this post, yet seemed to go by twice as fast. It's just a pity the image is so dark and unstable, leaving some scenes almost unintelligible, while others teeter on the edge.

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House of Mystery (1934)

Grade: F

Graze through reviews of House of Mystery and you'll find the usual stock lines: "Fans of the old dark house genre will certainly enjoy this one" says one reviewer, while another dubs it a "definite recommendation for all Poverty Row fans", and a third opines that "the screenplay is rather good". We just need someone to call it a "fun romp" and it'd make for a complete set of received opinions.

All this reminds us of our observation a few entries back -- that many people watching 1930s movies don't actually seem to see the actual movie in front of them, but instead the signifier that it represents: old-dark-house-ness, or old-timey-ness, or (less charitably) when-men-were-men-and-minorities-were-servants-ness. Whatever it is.

You see, House of Mystery is utter garbage -- a loveless, mirthless exercise in the laziest sort of filmmaking. It's cynical enough to pull the worst kind of bait-and-switch, opening with a pair of scenes in an Indian dive bar and temple that lead us to believe we're in for a "Hindoo" adventure. And to be fair, these sequences, whatever their flaws, are not unatmospheric.

But the script endeavors to lie, to tease the viewer. (See what I didn't not do there?)

For, after the first 10 minutes, House of Mystery reveals itself to be the worst sort of old dark house movie -- with thick servings of talky exposition, thoroughly unlikable characters devoid of humanity, pointless hints at backstory that never get fulfilled, and "comic" relief that leaves us staring at the screen in shell-shocked dismay, wondering how something so joyless and empty ever got made.

Oh, and it's got gorillas.

The most aggravating thing about House of Mystery is probably its tone-deaf stupidity, particularly when it comes to other cultures. Look, we're hardly the sort of people to be quick on the trigger with Tumblr denunciations, but would it have killed them to find out the name of the Hindu goddess of death isn't pronounced "Kay-lie" -- as though Elmer Fudd, having just completed his speech therapy class, decided to buy some lube and overcorrected?

Worst of all is the séance scene that repeatedly invokes the spirit of...Pocahontas. No, we're not kidding! Strangely the offensive absurdity and over-the-top stupidity of this seems to have escaped almost everyone who's written about House of Mystery, with the only exception being the one reviewer who writes:

"Pocahontas? The Native American princess? Well, apparently one type of “Indian” is the same as the other back in the 1930s."

(Unfortunately that reviewer's credibility is a bit shot by his next sentence -- "Yet, silly as it sounds, the picture is complex and suspenseful". Err....)

And wait, holy shit, is that the exact same crystal ball from the screenshot we linked earlier? Too funny.

Anyway, you'd really have to stretch to find something to enjoy in House of Mystery. We suppose the cinematography isn't too bad, with a couple nice shots here and there; shame this print looks so much better than House of Danger, though a few early sections are ripped to shreds with little cuts.

And as the ill-used dancer/servant Chanda, Joyzelle Joyner does what she can with a thankless part. If her heaving shoulders and flashing eyes are more indicative of "acting" than acting, well...at least she's trying.

Otherwise, though -- wait, did we mention it's got gorillas? Two gorillas, for reals.

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The House of Secrets (1936)

Grade: C

When it comes to this Anglo-American tale of conspiracy and hidden treasure, full enjoyment probably depends on one's ability to tolerate that creakiest of plot devices, the remarkable coincidence.

Two big coincidences feature in The House of Secrets, and it's quite upfront about the first. When toothy traveler Barry Wilding (Leslie Fenton) rescues a beautiful woman (Muriel Evans) from an awkward situation on a boat, she's appreciative but pointedly refuses to give her name before she departs, leaving him lovelorn and at a loss.

So isn't it remarkable --

-- that she turns out to be Julie Kenmore, a tenant in the spooky old English house he's just inherited? What a curious incident!

But this appears to have been standard practice for the author of the source material, Sydney Horler, who's unfamiliar to us but from all reports was a "nasty little man", racist and anti-Semitic and generally unpleasant.

(By the way, that link claims that Wilding rescued Kenmore from a "masher", but that's not quite true -- close attention to the dialogue reveals the man's interest had something to do with drugs.)

The House of Secrets uses another trope we recently encountered in The Midnight Warning -- namely, the close friend of the protagonist who also happens to be ace detective Tom Starr (Sidney Blackmer).

This kind of thing can be disastrous for a story -- the equivalent of dropping a Level 10 ranger into your entry-level D&D campaign -- but to its credit, The House of Secrets mostly keeps Starr out of the action, leaving Wilding to unpack things on his own.

It's hard to say much more about The House of Secrets without spoiling it, though quite frankly the basic outlines of the plot are pretty obvious before long: with early references to drugs, the sound of maniacal laughter, and portentous warnings from every corner about how Wilding can't possibly be allowed to know what's going on in the house he just inherited and really ought to sell it posthaste? Not too hard to put the basics together.

For most of its 70-minute running time, The House of Secrets is remarkably brisk -- so much so that at some point we looked at each other and were astonished by just how much had happened over the course of the movie: the film felt long in a good way, i.e. from its own cohesion and propulsion. OK, perhaps it has one too many IWGIHs, but the margin of excess is slim.

However, by the 45-50 minute mark, our destination had become obvious enough that other characters' endless evasions and deferrals started to get irritating: yes, we know all will be made clear in the final scene, but maybe it's better to put some pieces in place first, so it's more satisfying when those last few are snapped in.

We also can't claim the ultimate conclusion really grabbed us. Once again, we could tell a Midnight Warning-style denouement was more or less inevitable -- was there a vogue at one time for "So now you see, we had our reasons" plots? -- but everything's a bit too pat, with one-time adversaries turned newfound friends with no time to catch our breath. Can you really make fast friends with someone who recently held you at gunpoint?

Well, The Phantom thought so, and I guess The House of Secrets does too: must have been a 1930s thing.

Anyway, The House of Secrets is a fine way to wind up the Night Screams set -- not least because it actually has some night-time screaming, which is always nice. (It also has a fuzzy, VHS-dubbed print that makes some of the darker scenes more or less inscrutable in their details, but such is Mill Creek life.)

By the standards of this box, it's an above-average suspense tale that kept us more or less engaged throughout its running time -- even if our laughs at the end owed more to resigned incredulity than to real satisfaction.

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And to our pleasure and astonishment, that brings us to the end of Night Screams. 12 months ago it seemed inconceivable that we'd ever work through our backlog, whereas now we're spoiled for choice:

Do we immediately continue on to 50 Sci-Fi Classics? (From which we've already reviewed 5-6 movies anyway, mind.)

Or take a detour into one of our other, shorter box sets, like Grit 'n' Perseverance from whence our beloved Beartooh [sic] hailed?

Or wrap up some unfinished business from the Nightmare Worlds subset that begins the 250-pack, and with which this whole project started out -- in more ways than one?

Dunno. But first we have an awards ceremony to convene!

Trisecting the line

The thing about these next three films is, any two of them have a great deal in common:

• The Lion Man and The Phantom of 42nd Street both involve divorce as a significant plot element;
• The Phantom of 42nd Street and The Savage Girl both have cab drivers as major characters;
• and The Lion Man and The Savage Girl are both firmly in that dubious tradition one might call "white people gone native in exotic lands (plus stock footage of the animals with whom they communicate)".

But try as we might, we couldn't come up with something that would bridge all three. Le sigh.

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The Lion Man (1936)

Grade: D-

One can only guess how many studios rolled their own version of the Tarzan legend, wherein a noble boy abandoned in a savage land grows up to become a fierce and principled warrior defined by his rapport with animals. The Lion Man at least bases its yarn on another, similar story by Edgar Rice Burroughs, "The Lad and the Lion". It transports the Tarzan archetype to an unnamed and dangerous Arab region, somewhere on the border between French- and British-controlled areas, where Sir Ronald Chatham (Eric Snowden) seeks to negotiate mining rights for tungsten with a local sheik.

Does Chatham bring any colleagues? Does he go with a group of powerful allies or mercenaries? No, he does it more or less alone. But since he just got divorced --

-- he also carts his young son along to the Middle East, for...reasons. (Allegedly the aim is to raise him in the Arab way, but that may just be speculation by his colleagues.)

So it's down the hatch --

-- and off to the land of camels and tents -- 

-- where, sadly, there are no good times to be had with this particular (and murderous) sheik.

Before long peril lurks for the poor lad, and only the brave sacrifice of Sherrifa (Finis Barton) keeps doom at bay -- well, that and shots so blown-out, we assume their pursuers simply couldn't see anything with all the white. (The cinematographer of Cheers struggled with similar issues.)

We wouldn't have much of a story if there weren't a Ben Kenobi-like figure who emerges to harbor and preserve the boy -- in this case, Hassan El Dinh, or as two tribesmen fearfully call him, "The Lion Man! Beyond this point we cannot go!"

The Lion Man tries to dazzle us with sandy set-pieces, a blaring soundtrack of Wagner's greatest hits (especially "The Ride of the Valkyries"), and a female love interest (Kathleen Burke) who -- if you're into that sort of thing -- is certainly easy on the eyes.

However, the lead character (Jon Hall) is irritatingly stupid, while the film's action sequences are horribly choreographed with bad sound.

Worst of all -- save for a very brief bit of footage toward the middle -- there are no lions in the movie! It's in the title of the movie and the book, right? We kept waiting for a pride of wrathful lions to emerge, Valkyrie-like, and descend upon the evil sheik and his followers. But no, we just get this as our penultimate shot:

"Lion man" indeed. Pshaw.

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The Phantom of 42nd Street (1945)

Grade: C-

Pity poor Anthony Woolrich (The Devil Bat's Dave O'Brien), a theater critic who just wants to work his usual gig -- and really, really doesn't want to get stuck with the task of investigating the recent death of a prominent actor: "The only murders that interest me are the ones on the stage!"

But that mean old editor of his insists, you see. "Don't you realize you had the jump on an exclusive story!"

At least Tony has Romeo (Frank Jenks), the stalwart cab driver who's more than happy to help in the "moider" investigation. On the other hand, there's the obligatory cop (Jack Mulhall) who warns Tony in no uncertain terms to stay out of the way...which naturally makes him all the more determined to keep digging.

And is there a love interest? Of course there's a love interest (Kay Aldridge)!

K. liked this murder-mystery more than P. did, though neither of us were smitten. It's certainly efficient, clocking in comfortably under an hour. And whoever handled the sound clearly knew what they were doing, as the film almost sounds like a radio drama; O'Brien's resonant voice comes through as though he were speaking directly into a microphone, with rich bass and proximity effect galore.

Maybe they went to the extra expense in hopes of optioning the broadcast rights to radio? It's certainly a wordy script, with very little unremarked upon.

We also found ourselves wishing we'd watched this right after Wanted: Babysitter (or Scar Tissue if you prefer), since both films share a theme of actors wearing silly period costumes.

But the muddled denouement of The Phantom of 42nd Street doesn't live up to the professionalism of its first 45 minutes, denying us the satisfying feeling of inevitability with which a good murder-mystery finishes the job.

Ah, well: at least we have a batty waitress as comic relief. Who doesn't love that, right?

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The Savage Girl (1932)

Grade: D

A couple minutes of exposition got hacked off the front end of Mill Creek's print of The Savage Girl, leaving us a bit uncertain as to why drunken millionaire Amos P. Stitch (Harry Myers) is so intent on hiring intrepid explorer Jim Franklin (Walter Byron) for an expedition in Africa. Tracking down other copies on the Internet reveals that the missing minutes detail Franklin's affinity for wild animals, his policy of non-violence towards them, and his fondness for invidiously comparing them to women:

"One is safer in darkest Africa than in many a speakeasy or nightclub in this city. As a matter of fact, gentlemen, the baby-blue eyes of some of your glorified Follies beauties conceal more hidden dangers than many a savage beast I've met in the bush!"

Can any woman capture the heart of this cynical adventurer? Well, the more pressing problem for Franklin is extracting himself from Stitch's sloppy monologue.

But money talks, and soon enough the pair is preparing to leave for "darkest Africa", with Franklin already having to rein in Stitch's impulse to buy an arsenal. And when the cab driver who drops them off at the shipyards (Ted Adams) laments their departure -- "Jeez, can you imagine that? All my life I've wanted to go to Africa" -- then, with the self-involved spontaneity of the super-rich, Stitch brings him too.

Upon arrival they partner with the seedy Erich Vernuth (Adolph Milar), a lusty and unscrupulous German who warns them of the "jungle goddess" worshipped by the natives, in tribute to whom they torture and sacrifice unwary travelers. And, as we soon discover, that goddess is...

...a feral girl (Rochelle Hudson) with good legs, immaculate makeup, and some sort of leopard-skin outfit. (And she talks to the animals, which makes you wonder how exactly she came by the leopard skin.) Hudson was apparently all of 16 years old when this was filmed, which makes her inevitable romance with the 33-year-old Byron -- more than twice her age! -- seem a bit skeevy.

But Jim Franklin is, all told, a perfect gentleman. No points for guessing that it's Vernuth who has carnal designs on "the girl" (she never gets a name), and no scruples about attempting to force his affections on her. When caught in the act, he offers to "share" her with Franklin: yikes.

Anyway, you can guess most of the rest, complete with demeaning bunga-bunga portrayals from innumerable black extras, stock footage of jungle animals, and that awful squeaking sound effect we heard in Jungle Man. Hudson almost literally spends all of her screen time repeating whatever word Byron just said, with a quizzical expression:

"Talk?"

"Sleep?"

"Stay?"

If she were to bust out with "Brain, brain, what is brain?" it would hardly have surprised us.

When comparing Mill Creek's print of The Savage Girl to the YouTube copy we checked out, there's about an 8-minute difference in running time, which is a lot for a 54/62-minute film. Most of the cuts are tiny edits that might pass unnoticed, but occasionally something significant is lost -- as in the scene where Hudson observes Byron plucking a thorn from an injured monkey's paw, which goes some way toward explaining her affection for him.

There's also a loopy subplot in which Stitch, the chauffeur, and expatriate Harlemite Oscar (Floyd Shackelford) conduct the same experiment the Mythbusters tackled decades later, seeing if an elephant gets spooked by a mouse. (Spoiler: it does.)

But Stitch's diversion isn't enough to keep him from getting homesick. The treatment -- a nice "a-roo-ga" on the car horn, to remind him of the city -- turns out to be a semi-logical plot point, which is sort of cute.

The Savage Girl spares us a tedious backstory for its title character (which is sort of refreshing), and it moves along at a good clip and uses its stock footage with some intelligence (also refreshing). But it's still the same "darkest Africa" storytelling that trades entirely in stereotypes and caricatures -- and even if that doesn't particularly bother you, it has little else to offer beyond jail bait, "How Dry I Am" humor, and Walter Byron repeatedly looking like he'd rather be anywhere else.