| Welcome to In The Balcony. We hope you enjoy your visit. You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free. Plus, you'll be eligible for the monthly $1 million prize. (Not really.) Join our community! If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features: |
| Bomba and the Jungle Girl (1952) | |
|---|---|
| Topic Started: Jul 13 2007, 07:29 AM (387 Views) | |
| Laughing Gravy | Jul 13 2007, 07:29 AM Post #1 |
Revered in the UK
  ![]](http://209.85.122.85/static/1/pip_r.png)
|
Y’know, nothing says “movie thrills” like Monogram Pictures Corporation, and as ya’ll hopefully know, www.inthebalcony.com is the official home of the annual Monogram Week each February, wherein every screen in the nation’s theatres show fine Monogram pictures. Give or take a screen. Anyway, more about that later. For now, I feel like some jungle fun, and that can only mean Bomba the Jungle Boy, the long-running Monogram series that starred a post-Boy (and post-puberty) Johnny Sheffield, late of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan series, as Roy Rockwood’s immortal teen literary hero. So, courtesy of our pal Trevor at http://www.downunderdvd.com/, who offers a whole box o’ these things, as part of our 24-hour Balcony marathon, I enjoyed a 1952 entry in that series entitled Bomba and the Jungle Girl, directed by Ford Beebe and starring Karen Sharpe, Suzette Harbin, and a whole bunch of other people I’ve never heard of… We got four minutes into the Bomba movie before a line of dialog was spoken, unless you count the monkeys’ chatter, which come to think of it sounded stilted and obviously scripted. Anyway, Bomba is sad because all of the animals in the jungle have mamas and papas except for him. “I don’t even know who I am,” he laments. He has an old journal he has found in a cave; he takes it to the local gaming commissioner for deciphering. This sets him on a quest to find his parents, and along the way he saves a pretty young girl from a crocodile courtesy of stock footage that surely was used in every Bomba film. When I was a kid, Bomba, the Bowery Boys, Charlie Chan, Blondie, Sherlock Holmes and other series were all over TV. I recall them as Sunday afternoon fare, for the most part. Johnny Sheffield, with all due respect, ain’t much in the looks department, but the guy was built like the proverbial Brick Shithouse. (There IS something about brick shithouses in the book of Proverbs, isn’t there?) By the way, this is a pretty good little movie. I appreciate that the African natives are treated with respect; they all speak much more coherently than, say, Tonto in The Lone Ranger. It turns out that Bomba’s parents, John and Laura Hastings, were murdered by Gombozo, an evil African who overthrew the infant who was s’posed to be the REAL leader of the tribe. Bomba sets everything right, finds his parents’ graves, deposes the fake king, saves all the animals in the jungle from a fire, and then swings off on a vine, satisfied. The climactic battle, with Bomba battling Gombozo and that cute li’l Jungle Girl cat-fighting Gambozo’s evil daughter, was pretty well done. More exciting was a duel to the death between a water buffalo and a leopard. Yes, really. Can’t we all just get along? |
 | |
 |
 
|
| shelbyvinje | Jul 9 2008, 08:39 PM Post #2 |
Balcony Gang, Foist Class
|
I just finished watching all 12 of the BOMBA movies on a train ride out West. (Great way to pass the time on a train.) They are mindless entertainment, but the first three are not bad. I purchased the set from Rodney off his web-site and if you never saw any of them, I recommend disc one with the first two movies and if you enjoy them, grab the rest of the set. Compared to JUNGLE JIM, it's a mixed feeling. The early JUNGLE JIMs are better than BOMBAs, but the later JUNGLE JIMs (the ones where the name of the character is dropped from the title and just referred to as Johnny Weismuller) are not as good as the BOMBA movies. I understand there was a TV pilot of BOMBA made? I'd like to see it if anyone can direct me to a source. |
|
|
| rodney | Jul 10 2008, 04:42 AM Post #3 |
Charter Member
|
I have the TV pilot. Give me a call if you want one. |
| Raise a toast to St. Joe Strummer! | |
|
|
|
| Barcroft | Aug 11 2008, 04:40 PM Post #4 |
Charter Member
|
Rodney: Who stars in the Bomba TV pilot? Thanks!!! Barcroft |
|
|
|
| Black Tiger | Aug 11 2008, 06:44 PM Post #5 |
Charter Member
|
Barcroft: Here's a link to a Bantu the Jungle Boy unsold tv pilot: http://www.tarzanmovieguide.com/bomba.htm BT |
|
|
|
| « Previous Topic · Jungle Boogie! · Next Topic » |
8:28 PM Nov 26
