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Morgan's (Charles King) trading post, somewhere in nowhere, Africa: Steve
Collins (Crash Corrigan) returns heavily injured to the post as the sole
survivor of the Bradford (Frank Merrill) expedition, and when asked by the
others at the post, he spins what have to be 2 different tales of what happened
(and it was 2 different tales, see below). The first story is that of the
fabulous white gorilla (again Crash Corrigan), who, because of being an outcast
of his own tribe, attacks every living being, and for some reason Steve has
become his personal enemy, and Seve only escaped him with the greatest of
efforts. The second story is the story of Bradford, who with his guide Hanley
(Albert Smith) has set out to find the treasure of the cyclops, but, as it
happens in these jungles, they are captured by some evil natives and about to
be sacrificed when, riding on the trunk of an elefant, the mysterious jungleboy
(Bobby Nelson) comes to save them. As soon as they are free the boy disappears
again and Bradford, when searching him, stumbles over the beautiful jungle
girl (Eugenia Gilbert), whose blind father has the map to the cave of the
cyclops ... and this is what makes Hanley angry, and he uses many a trap to
get rid of both Bradford and the jungle girl to claim the treasure of the
cyclops for himself, but every time the jungleboy - who has mysterious powers
over animals as well - comes to save them. Finally, Bradford and the jungle
girl arrive at the cave, and see a tribe of natives called the tiger men
ruled by a white priestess, the mother of the jungleboy, but when the natives
want to sacrifice Bradford and the girl to the cyclops, the priestess sees
her grip over the tribe vaning, and it's only when jungleboy has the nerve to
climb into the idol of the cyclops to control its movements manually that ...
this story has suddenly come to an end since Steve could no longer watch the
proceedings as he again was attacked by the White gorilla. However, the men
of the trading post decide to go look after the rest of the Bradford expedition
and only the injured Steve and lovely Ruth (Lorraine Miller) stay behind
... but then Ruth decides to wander off into the jungle alone and of course
is no sooner attacked by the White Gorilla, who is now finally shot by Steve. The
men return and state they have found no trace of the Bradford expedition ... If
this movie (and even my synopsis) gives you a kind of schizophrenic
impression, you are of course absolutely right, as large parts of the story
were not shot especially for this movie (the whole Bradford and the jungleboy
subplot) but were parts of a 1927 silent serial called Perils of the Jungle (also
produced by Louis Weiss/Artclass), and it shows as the acting styles of the
silent era differ vastly from the sound era for obvious reasons, and also
make-up and costumes are of a quality that made perfect sense in the 1920's
but were terribly outdated in 1945. To - rather poorly - bridge the gap between
old and new footage, Crash Corrigan's voice-over always explains some
ridiculous reasons why he couldn't interfere. But to add even more to the
schizophrenic feel of the movie, Crash Corrigan plays not only the hero in the
new segments but also his opponent, the White Gorilla (as he was in his times a
noted gorilla-actor), meaning they could not appear together in one shot. So
to sum it all up ... this one is great fun and mustn't be missed.
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