Captive Girl

1950

2/5

So a woman in a tiger print bikini with a pet tiger has been causing trouble for the head witch doctor of a certain jungle tribe, who is named Hakeem. No one knows who she is or where she came from, although everyone seems to know that her parents were also treasure hunters who were killed while searching a place called “Lagoon of the Dead.”Jungle Jim goes with the chief of the tribe, Mahala, to help Hakeem track down the jungle woman. Hakeem wants to track her down himself, so he leaves before Jim arrives to go searching for her. Jim goes after Hakeem, and along the way meets a snorkling treasure hunter, who also seems to know who the woman is and where she came from. The woman steals Jim’s canoe which makes Hakeem think Jim knows where she is. Hakeem makes Jim fight a rubber alligator to make him talk. Hakeem leaves after Jim demonstrates his superior animal stabbing skills. As Jim continues his search he gets attacked by the woman’s pet tiger, meets up with Mahala, and together they find the cave where the woman lives. They find evidence that confirms what everyone already knew about who she is and where she came from, and that her parents were killed by Hakeem. The treasure hunter shows up and tries to make a deal to split the treasure with Jim and Mahala, but Jim isn’t interested. Jim goes off searching for the woman again, on his own. Meanwhile, the woman’s pet tiger fights a panther for some reason. Jim finally finds the woman after she gets caught in quicksand. Hakeem meets up with the treasure hunters after they pull up a bunch of treasure from the lagoon. He half-heartedly asks for it back, but leaves to search for him and the woman because he’s more interested in covering up his murders. Hakeem finds Jim and the others, and pushes Jim off a cliff. He takes Mahala and the woman hostage and takes them to the lagoon to “sacrifice” them. Jim miraculously survives and arrives just in time to save the woman and Mahala, and Jim and the woman combine their jungle powers to summon a horde of monkeys to attack Hakeem and his witch doctor lackeys (deus ex monkeyna?). The treasure hunter dies because he gets caught in an underwater rope or something, and his cowardly friends run away rather than save him. There’s also a subplot about the chief Mahala being away for “a long time” because he went to “the white man’s school” seemingly against his will, but he says he can still use what he learned to greatly benefit his people. So colonialism is good actually! Also, Skipper the dog starts dating a chimp. Probably the best part of this movie.

I really don’t know which part of this movie is worse: the blackface, the anti-indigenous people sentiments, or the acting. I was uh… “impressed” by the fact that the tiger actually appears to do his own stunts in this one. He fights a panther and mauls a witch doctor, which is more than Johnny Weismuller seemed to do in this movie. If we could just take the people out of this and just have the animals it would be so much better. As it is, it’s pretty bad. Plus, the girl was only a captive for a very short time. A very misleading title.