You won't get there for free

Going slightly out of order, we present to you two films about people who venture into the jungle to find a missing person -- but end up bumping into quite a (all together now) savage girl along the way.

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Queen of the Amazons (1947)

Grade: D

Where shall we seek the headquarters of the titular Queen of the Amazons? Certainly not Brazil, or else she'd be queen of the Amazon singular, right?

And, it seems, not Detroit either. (No word on whether the Hartz Mountains are still in contention.)

No, it seems that when you're on an expedition that will ultimately lead you to the Queen, your first stop is...

...India? OK, that makes sense in a chaturaṅga kind of way, I suppose.

In any event, it's here that our protagonist, Jean Preston (Patricia Morison), begins the search for her missing fiancé, Greg. She's accompanied by Greg's father Colonel Jones (John Miljan), an absent-minded entomologist (Wilson Benge), and a petulant rando who practically has FRIENDZONED tattooed on his forehead ("Keith Richards (I)", as IMDb calls him).

Cue about five minutes' worth of meaningful glances, shady characters, and menacing silhouettes.

Meanwhile the situation in Akbar is tense, and getting tenser. As voiceover narration from Miljan solemnly intones, "There's an undercurrent of hatred for their present ruler, in spite of the fact that they've done everything to quiet them...there's a revolution in the offing."

Heck, they're not even appeased by the spectacle of an elephant tug-of-war -- "like baseball or football in our country", claims the narration, made retroactively prescient by PED scandals of recent decades (don't tell us those mahouts didn't slip a little extra something to Jumbo before the big match).

Ultimately a hot tip from an Indian woman and her husband reveals the truth: Greg has departed for Africa. Now, some sources claim the real-life Amazons were from modern-day Libya, so that makes sense, right? We're on our way to the Queen!

And since the natives are getting, uh, restlesser, it's a good time to get out of Akbar. (Which apparently isn't in India but, eh, whatever.)

If you're expecting camels, kufiyas, and caravanserais, though...

It's never really clear where Queen of the Amazons would have us think we are, beyond "Africa" -- which is what they keep calling their destination, as though one needs no more precision than to name the second-largest continent in the world. The village where they arrive is called Kybo, but contrary to IMDb's "goofs" page, we don't think the filmmakers had an obscure Australian outpost in mind: it's probably just a made-up name, meant to stand in for some place in East Africa.

And the natives are "upset" here too!

Anyway, there's a guy who "hates women" (Robert Lowery), and a "white goddess" dreaded by the natives (Amira Moustafa), and an ivory-smuggling plot and a mysterious saboteur and a bit of cleverness involving feet and footwear --

-- and there's sexism addressed via markmanship (markswomanship?), and racism, and target practice, and monkeys -- 

-- and obvious stock footage, and silly fight scenes, and Queen of the Amazons is a silly movie. The end.

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Kong Island (1948)
(aka King of Kong Island)

Grade: D-

...though on the other hand, things can get a lot sillier. And, speaking of East Africa:

Kong Island opens with a clever gambit, as a holdup job turns deadly when one of the three robbers decides it'd be easier to just shoot everyone -- including his co-conspirators. As the only robber who objected to the massacre (before getting gunned down himself) lies in the sun, gravely wounded, the opening credits roll...

...and we abruptly cut to a four-minute scene of a microchip being implanted into a gorilla.

For this we get no explanation before cutting away again to a humid-looking villa in Nairobi, where we discover that the "good" robber Burt (Brad Harris) has indeed survived what Theodore (Aldo Cicconi) calls "that little accident of yours".

Turns out he's a gun-for-hire who just can't seem to stay away from Africa -- once again, invoking the whole continent! -- because "There's no work for us mercenaries right now." At least we know we're in Kenya, and soon enough we hear about "your mad doctor friend" Albert (Marc Lawrence), who Burt is aiming to find.

So some major plot threads seem to be coming together: Burt's revenge, plus Theodore's jealousy about the relationship Burt once had with his wife Ursula (Adriana Alben), and whatever this business is with the gorillas.

Like Queen of the Amazons, we get early gunplay from a female lead -- in this case Theodore's daughter Diana (Ursula Davis). She's all growed up now and would clearly like to boink the buff Burt, though her brother Robert (Mark Farran) isn't so thrilled about the idea.

And once again like Queen of the Amazons, our manly mercenary ends up getting drafted into leading an expedition. In fact Kong Island feels in many ways like a throwback to the "darkest Africa" movies of the 1930s and '40s. Sure, there are nightclub scenes with 1960s go-go/lounge music, and some comically awkward dancing from Harris --

-- who also gets off a good one-liner that'd never have made it past the Hays Code censors:

Ursula: "There's a guy who's been eyeing you. He's been watching you for a long time."

Burt: "Thanks, Ursula. Too bad -- he's not my type."

Once the gang goes on their expedition, though, we're soon thrust straight into the same sort of complicated-rescue plot we saw in Queen of the Amazons. At least the makers of Kong Island seem to have filmed some of their own nature shots, since it's impossible to imagine anyone paying for stock footage as ridiculously jittery and bumpy as this.

Soon comes a parade of corny tropes from a long-past era: the skittish natives afraid of a "taboo" area of the jungle; the beast on the loose -- which, given that surgery sequence, gets you no points for guessing what it is.

And then there's this:

Yes, once again we have that character beloved of schlockmeisters past: the wild white woman (Esmeralda Barros) who can communicate with jungle animals, yet has a mysterious aptitude for tasteful makeup and dental hygiene. She also, inevitably, has a certain affinity for our protagonist.

It's about at this point that we realized Kong Island was completely bananas -- an incoherently meandering, weirdly anachronistic product of filmmakers who seem to take trash films like Jungle Man, The White Gorilla, and The Savage Girl as their point of departure. It's as if you took a couple of Italian kids whose exclusive cinematic diet was watching B-movies set in sub-Saharan Africa on UHF stations, and then gave them carte blanche to script and direct a film.

The problem is that Kong Island's ambitions -- and its stylistic decisions -- get in the way of what little fun is to be had. There are too many subplots and peripeteias, too many minor characters not worth caring about, and the movie has a nasty, gritty edge (including an implied marital rape scene) that keeps it from earning that term beloved of lazy reviewers, the "enjoyable romp".

Add to that the clumsy, stupid denouement, and the verdict's in: Kong Island may be bananas, but by the end it's an overripe Cavendish -- and who wants that?

Well, some people do, apparently.

The Old Scold and the Sea

In these two aquatic tales, our protagonist has found the object of his desire and the feeling's mutual, but both are hounded by some sex-negative femme d'un certain âge who -- contrary to the original connotations of the phrase -- believes il faut qu'on bloque le coq.

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Night Tide (1961)

Grade: C-

Dennis Hopper: a good actor, sure. A great actor? Maybe. But what he isn't is right for the part of Johnny, the ingenuous sailor smitten with mysterious carnie Mora (Linda Lawson), who may or may not be the mermaid she impersonates for a living.

Johnny insistently presses his attentions on Mora, who's standoffish at first but eventually caves and joins him for an awkward oceanside meal, complete with unexpected gull-stroking.

Soon enough the couple are lounging on the beach, with hugs, kisses, implied sex, and a bit of ass-gazing to boot.

But rumors of trouble persistently swirl around Mora, and local girl Ellen (Luana Anders) is only too happy to pass those rumors along, seeing as how she too wants to get some of that sweet Hopper ass.

Funny to see Anders, so sexy in Dementia-13, play mousy here, and quite convincingly too: whatever sensuality Ellen has is latent and implicitly mired in subservience.

Night Tide has good bones, but Hopper hits all the wrong notes, sorry to say. Instead of wide-eyed and open-hearted, he just seems confused and vaguely distracted -- like a stoner, or a recent TBI patient.

Or if he's trying for brooding and obsessed, that intensity isn't exactly apparent in his body language or line reading, so maybe the guy just needed better direction and more time to hone his acting chops. And if Hopper's Johnny is just meant to be yet another emotionally stunted child of WWII and the Fifties...well, who cares?

In the plus column, Night Tide is equipped with attractive scenery, evocative set-pieces, a decent script, and a plot which isn't altogether predictable. With one or two exceptions, it never embarrasses itself in the many ways such films often do.

But if it's trying to be one of those understated, haunting films whose imagery and characters stick with you for years afterward -- like, say, a Carnival of Souls -- well, that just didn't happen for Night Tide. In a way, it's a good reminder that plausible ingredients don't always yield a compelling result; not every record with Fender Rhodes and funky drums was a winner, after all, nor does every dish with truffle oil, crème fraîche, and chipotle win its chef a James Beard award.

But if blame for Night Tide's non-classic status has to be assigned, it must go squarely on Dennis Hopper's shoulders. His manly, massageable, yet curiously expressionless shoulders.

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She Gods of Shark Reef (1958)

Grade: D-



For its first few minutes, She Gods of Shark Reef conjures some real interest. The opening set-piece -- which features, among other things, an impressive-looking assassin who clutches his blade between his teeth as he swims toward his target -- is taut and intriguing, though a bit hard to make out.

Alas, these things don't often last in the land of Mill Creek box sets, and soon a bit of voiceover narration -- that dreaded saboteur of all things action -- escorts us to the small Pacific island where the remainder of She Gods of Shark Reef is to take place. True, we still have POC adroitly transporting blades in the water: 

But Corman et al. decided this Shark needed a WASP injection, provided in the form of recently shipwrecked brothers Chris and Lee Johnston (Bill Cord and Don Durant, respectively). No points for guessing that the blond is the good one!

This idyllic Pacific island -- which definitely isn't Hawaii, how dare you even think that? -- is populated exclusively by moderately attractive, intermittently Polynesian women of marriageable age. When they're not making a living as pearl divers for "The Island Company", they sing, dance, do crafts...

...and practice religious ceremonies involving various combinations of gods, sharks, human sacrifice, and underwater statuary.



If all this sounds like paradise, you haven't reckoned with the presence of Queen Pua (Jeanne Gerson), a hatchet-faced woman who makes some effort to accommodate the unexpected visitors, but whose dedication to the blockage of cockage is nonpareil.

Why, in the midst of all this swarth, she's also as white as baking soda is -- as far as we could tell -- left unexplained.



Does one of the natives (Lisa Montell) fall in love with the "good" brother? Of course she does!



Does Queen Pua do her best to raise a red flag against the indecent writhing of hips and commingling of fluids? Of course she does!



Is there pearl thievery, breaking of taboos, and other trouble in paradise? And is the fattest character the target of humor and/or comic violence? You'd better believe it!

Do these and other events lead to mounting tension, and ultimately violence, between the brothers? Of course they do!

And did we care? Eh, not really. Have a shark.