Lost Jungle (1934)

Cast:

Clyde Beatty is Clyde Beatty
Cecilia Parker is Ruth Robinson
Syd Saylor is Larry Henderson
Warner Richmond is Sharkey
Edward LeSaint is Captain Robinson

What the box says:

Clyde Beatty portrays himself, an animal trainer and circus star in this action film. Beatty leads a search for his missing girlfriend and her father who were on an expedition looking for a lost tropical island. Using a dirigible as his mode of transportation, Beatty and his band head off in search of the missing explorers only to crash their airship on the same island their friends are located. Battling wild animals and a gang of greedy men searching for gold, Beatty and his party must rescue his girlfriend and her father all the while trying to escape their jungle island.

Plot:

At animal training, Sharkey is training lions and tigers. Clyde Beatty, his boss, stops Sharkey from beating the animals.

I get the last cup of coffee...

Professor Livingston and his daughter, Ruthie, stop by the circus Ruthie has been seeing Clyde for a couple of year and waiting him for to propose her to marry him.

Lion trainers don't always train animals rather than propose to their girlfriends. However, Clyde is so dense to realize Ruthie and is more interested in his animal training.

Larry later tells Clyde about how Ruthie is is going with her father to search for the lost city, Kaymor. He tries to drive up and catch Ruthie's ship before leaving. Unfortunately, he misses the ship. 3 months later, Clyde has started a new training act with a number of lions and tigers in the cage at the same time.

Didn't I take you to a circus?

On the ocean, the ship gets tossed during a storm and crashes on a small island. It will take them months to repair the ship. They release one of thie messanging pigeons.

The pigeon is found, and the message is sent throughtout all over the world. At the end of circus season, Clyde learns about Professor Livingston, Ruthie and the ship's crew. He decided to go on the blimp, Victory, to help rescue them.

Back on the island, Livingston heads off to search the lost city of Kaymor.

Dr. Livingston, I presume?

The blimp runs through a storm. Sharkey sneaks off with a parachute before the blimp crashes. Clyde and Larry barely reach to crash land on a small island.

Sharkey searches the island and discovers the city of Kaymor and finds the mortally wounded Professor Livingston. He looks around and is ecstatic once he finds the treasure.

Clyde and Larry run into some stock footage of animals while examining the island.

I'm the goofy sidekick for the hero?!?

The sailors want to mutiny with the Captain. He refuses to abandon Professor Livingston and stay to find him. Ruthie looks for some animal outside the camp. A lion heads to attck her. She's saved when Clyde rushes up and drives the lion away. Let the romantic reunion ensue until Ruthie learns that Clyde came to the island to do more than rescue by recruiting some new lions and tigers.

The captain tells Clyde about Livingston is missing and how the sailors want to leave. All are terrified by the lions on the island. Clyde will help catch some of the lions from the island.

Clyde starts setting up some traps and quickly catches a tiger in the pit. Sharkey sneaks into the samp and lets the tiger out of the cage.

Clyde has to trick the tiger into another pit. Elsewhere, a lion jumps into the camp and mauls Sharkey. Clyde manages to lasso that lion. They find Lingston's diary with Sharkey.

Later, the sailors cage the animals and take them to the ship. Clyde and Ruthie realize their love.

What I say:

Another of the forgotten types of 1930s movies is the jungle adventure movie. The adventurer typically is hired to go into the jungle to lead an expedition of a headstrong girl's boyfriend or father or to search for them when they've not returned by allotted time (AKA Treasure of King Solomon's Mine-Provisio). This one isn't quite that way. An animal trainer must go out into the jungle to rescue his girlfriend, and if he can get a new stockpile of animals for his act at the same time. That's just a good opportunity for a animal trainer who 's got either a whip or a chair to teach those animals.

Today, Clyde Beatty may be better more for being on the Abbot & Costello movie: Africa Screams. First, he was a big game hunter, before moviing into animal training in a circus. Clyde starred in a few movies and even had a syndicated radio show "based" on his real life adventures: Clyde Beatty Radio shows.

Lost Jungle was taken from being a serial and cut down to a movie. Take a 243 minute movie serial down to a 68 minute movie version which could probably be turned into half of a double feature. With only seeing the movie version, it seems to run pretty coherently for a B-movie. Remember this is coming from someone who's idea of confusing is trying to logically keep track of the action in those badly edited 1970s martial arts movies. Professor Livingston is never mentioned after reaching the lost city. Not even a single line from his daughter about her father's tragic accident or "how it was lucky we found him just in time."

This movie has plenty of stock footage of lions and tigers besides all the animal training bits, too. For being in a jungle so much, it doesn't have any gorillas to terrify the characters. Unfortunately, that means there are guys in gorilla suits like in other jungle moviesWhite Gorilla or White Pongo be.

This jungle adventure is missing the fearsome tribe that wants to eliminate the newcowers to their area. In fact, if it weren't for Sharkey acting slimy and greedy a couple of times through the the movie, They'd be very low on any kind of villains. This movie is more concerned with having the animal training bits every few minutes rather than Sharkey.

Quotable Dialogue
"Get up there...Get up there, or I'll break every bone in your body!"
"I'm not scared of that lion tamer..."
"Nero, you naughty boy, come back here."
"Isn't there anything in this worl you want in this world besides lions?!?"
Morals of the Story
Lions don't like neckties.
Cars love to be driven in front of rear projection screens.
Animal trainers should be uniformed like marching band majorettes.
Tigers always want to fight lions.
Bela Lugosi eyes can hypnotize a tiger.