ThiefHott Too much of everything

FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

MartinHafer During the 1930s and 40s, Johnny Weissmuller starred in a series of excellent Tarzan films for MGM. However, by the late 40s, Weissmuller's handsome good looks were giving way to middle age and MGM tired of the films. So, Weissmuller went looking for work and was hired to essentially play Tarzan in some very low-budget films. But, since they didn't own rights to Tarzan, the films were marketed as Jungle Jim films--Jim being a comic character which was much cheaper to license! Plus, Jim isn't exactly a jungle savage-- allowing the now paunchy Weissmuller to wear more clothes. While I love Weissmuller's Tarzan flicks, the Jungle Jim ones are not especially good...but at least they helped the aging actor to pay the bills.Here in "Jungle Jim in the Forbidden Land", our hero is approached by a sexy scientist to go to some legendary land where there are giants. Jim knows better and refuses--especially since it involves ivory. But then he eventually is forced to go on this expedition-- one where you'll see all sorts of stock footage and crappy 'creatures'. One of my favorite is just before he agrees to go--- when Jim struggles with a vicious hippo--a hippo that clearly is rubber AND while he's supposed to be under water, Weissmuller clearly isn't and footage of water is superimposed over the scene! Talk about crappy!! There's also a wolfman sort of guy! Why? Who knows?! And then there's the Indian elephants (in Africa) with tusks taped onto it (you can see them wiggling about). The bottom line is that if you like crappy jungle films, then you will like this one. If you think it in any way approaches the quality of the classic Tarzan films, then are you in for a rude awakening! Rather awful overall...and a bit dull.

bkoganbing Jungle Jim In The Forbidden Land is about Jungle Jim refusing to take anthropologist Angela Greene to a place in the jungle where living evidence of the fabled missing link is supposed to be. At the same time another woman of less character played by Jean Willes is looking to drive elephants through the jungle pass that goes through the missing link country. So a pair of agendas send Johnny Weissmuller into the forbidden land.Weissmuller is doing the humane thing, let these people alone. And one look at them when a man and woman get out of the jungle and start wreaking havoc on all around would convince most anyone that's a practical policy. Still both women want to get that hidden valley where Mr.&Mrs. Missing Link come from. And both are checking out Weissmuller too, for the specimen he is.Put all that together with Jungle Jim being framed for a murder he didn't commit and you have all the ingredients for this Jungle Jim feature. This one is done a bit more tongue and cheek than some of the others so it's bearable for adults.

lemon_magic "In the Forbidden Land" seems to me to have a weaker and less focused screenplay compared to the other JJ episode I've seen (the one where he goes looking for a missing football player). Or maybe seeing another one helped me realize just how perfunctory and by-the-numbers this series really was. But the performances were about the same, and the effects and sound stages and liberal use of stock footage and white actors was about the same. Johnny himself still looked reasonably fit (for a 1950s actor who didn't know anything about modern theories of resistance training or nutrition) in his one extended shirtless scene, which is always good for a viewers' morale.Goofy mistakes and second rate production elements abound, of course. A hippo attacks a canoe and eats one of the paddlers (aren't hippos herbivores?).Jim alternates fighting a stuffed panther with stock footage shots of a real one snarling at the camera. "Giant people" from a lost tribe turn out to resemble werewolves (rather than "missing links"). Asian elephants are outfitted with tusks and ear prostheses in an effort to resemble African elephants (at least they knew the difference). There's random footage of "Tamba" the chimp being "cute" that has no connection to almost anything else in the plot and is just there because, hey, people expect a chimp sidekick for Johnny. And every one in the plot is rock stupid. The final third of the plot involves Jim being framed for murder (apparently the commissioner was supposed to think that Jim shot himself full of pentathol and clubbed himself unconscious) but not being allowed to explain what happened because they've gagged him. (The stated reason is that they don't want him to "call for help from his animal friends". The real reason is that the plot twist wouldn't last for 30 seconds if Jim was allowed to speak).Still, if you choose to watch a "Jungle Jim" adventure in this day and age, you either want to relive the experience of being 8 years old and watching a Saturday afternoon matinée, or else you are an archivist and collector of all similar things from that era. In either case, you parked your brain at the door at the beginning of the film. (I'm not sneering - I enjoy certain pop culture items from my childhood far more than they deserve on their actual merits.) So here you are: enjoy!

jim riecken (youroldpaljim) The Jungle Jim movies produced by Sam Katzman and starring Johnny Weismuller were all low grade jungle adventures made strictly to fill the bottom half of a double bill. Unless you watch them out nostalgia or, are like me, a fan of Weismuller, they are pretty rough going. None of them seem to have been made with idea of making something good. The concurrent Tarzan films at RKO with Lex Barker, and the Bomba the Jungle Boy series at Monogram starring former "Boy" Johnny Sheffield, while not great, were at least reasonably well produced.JUNGLE JIM IN THE FORBIDDEN LAND is slightly enlivened by the presence of the strange "giant people." They are not giants, just very tall. They are supposed to be some kind of missing link. The makeup by Clay Campell is surprisingly good for such a cheap picture, but the only problem is that the "giant people" look more like werewolves than some kind of "missing link". Otherwise, JUNGLE JIM IN THE FORBIDDEN is just another Jungle Jim movie with the usual perfunctory performances, light skinned Africans, Columbia backlot jungle, stock footage, Tamba's hijinks etc.