S02E03 - Jungle Goddess

Plot

Short: A mad scientist plans on using his latest inventions - a giant robot and a newly discovered formula that can place people in a state of suspended animation - to become rich and/or rule the world, but his wife and a scientist who once worked with him plan to stop him by informing the government of his inventions. Undeterred, the mad scientist fakes his death and starts planning his means of covering his lie up.

Film: An arrogant pilot and his friend fly their plane to the continent of Africa to search for a crashed plane that carried the female heiress of a rich mogul, hoping to obtain a reward in exchange for her whereabouts. Upon landing near the site of a crashed plane, they are taken captive by a local tribe, where they discover that the heiress is alive and is considered a goddess by the tribesmen.


Movie Review

Another season, another serial short series. This time, instead of dull action of Commando Cody's Radar Men from the Moon, we get The Phantom Creeps, starring Bela Lugosi in yet another typecast role. Bela plays a mad scientist (big surprise) who wishes to use his inventions to (what else?) take over the world. Or is it get rich by selling his evil inventions to evil governments? I'm not exactly clear on his motivation, but then again, with writing this obtuse, neither is this serial short.

Because this serial is as generic as they come, many of the same tired cliches and tropes are employed here. We have the giant robot that's slow and lumbering and yet is expected to be a deadly threat on a battlefield (see also: The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy). We have Bela Lugosi hamming it up with his thick accent as a mad scientist with no clear motivation except vague sinister intention (see also: The Corpse Vanishes*). We get poorly defined protagonists who offer no screen presence and are utterly forgettable (see also: The Mad Monster). In addition, this serial episode ends on a cliffhanger that I swear is identical to two - count 'em, two - cliffhangers in Radar Men from the Moon. This serial isn't just generic, it's downright lazy.

*Is it just me, or does Bela like doing projects with the naming scheme "The [NOUN] [PRESENT TENSE VERB]"?

About the only thing worth talking about in this serial are the mad scientist's inventions, if only to highlight how ridiculous they are. The first one shown is a giant metal robot which, as mentioned, is meant to be a destructive weapon in great numbers in a war zone but moves so laughably slowly that the enemy would die from laughter before the mechanical thing got anywhere near them. The goofy-looking head only makes it look less threatening. The second invention is even more silly, and it's a spider-like creature that is "attracted" to a small disk that looks like a communion wafer. Upon reaching the wafer, the spider explodes and...I can't believe I'm writing this...and causes any living thing it touches to be placed in suspended animation. If that doesn't sound patently absurd, I don't know what is. But hey, this serial is running with this idea, so let's see where they take it in the next episode, where the heroes escape the plane crash with parachutes, I'm sure.

And now for the feature film, Jungle Goddess, the movie that does one thing and one thing well, and that's stereotypes. A preposterous artifact of the late 1940s, this film should be studied if only to show that yes, people once held these views without irony or shame (if, of course, a better print than the one that Best Brains have is found, preferably one that doesn't look like the sun is burning everything to a white crisp). From women to Africans to whites, no stereotype is left unturned in this piece of schlock.

The story itself is paper-thin: an arrogant pilot convinces his partner (a pre-Superman George Reeves) to help him search for a plane carrying the daughter of a Dutch millionaire that crashed before World War II. Upon finding the plane in the jungles of Africa, they are captured by a primitive tribe and find that the heiress is now worshiped as a god by the tribe. The arrogant pilot is to be put to death for killing a tribesman with his gun (of course), but the jungle goddess wishes to return home, so she hatches a plan to escape with the two pilots. Sexism and racism ensue.

Let's look at the racism first. Naturally, the movie takes place in Africa. Just...Africa. No need to name a country, since Africa is one big country, right? And of course the tribe is a typical Hollywood African tribe, where non-white actors dress in silly costumes and yell vaguely African dialects like savages. It would be comical if people back then didn't take these portrayals seriously. And I haven't even mentioned the tribesmen obviously seeing a white woman as a goddess (because white is better than black!), or the doting servant woman who's as thick as a brick, or the evil witchdoctor who wishes to control the tribe himself. Why should I bother mentioning these things, when they're pretty much par for the course!

The "white devils," or the male pilots, don't fare much better. Their racism is a lot more subtler than the exaggerated portrayal of the African tribesmen, though their actions make it clear that they see themselves as superior. The most hilarious example of their bigotry is when they discover that the land near the tribe possesses a radioactive element that is worth a lot of money. What is the purpose of this plot device? Nothing except that the white men can be rich when they return back to civilization and tell everyone about this untapped reservoir. Apparently, that ranch in Colorado is more important than the livelihood of the tribesmen.

Finally, the women portrayed in this flick are the typical weak, pathetic creatures that early cinema likes to indulge in. Funnily enough, there are only two women in the entire movie: the goddess and her servant. The latter is a stereotypical ignorant black girl who needs her white master to be someone important. The former is a girl who is meant to look tough (she's the goddess of a tribe with a witchdoctor who hates her, after all) but is so weak she ends up twisting her ankle upon leaving the village with the two pilots. Sexism at its best. Geez...

Normally I would by now point out something worthwhile about the film, but honestly there is nothing at all decent in this movie. The characters are flat, the story is barely there, and the stereotypes are too obnoxious to ignore. It's not as bad as The Mad Monster, but it is still a wretched piece of cinema that, outside of curiosity on how low Hollywood's standards sunk, deserves to be dead and buried.


MST3K Review

I liked this episode, for some reason. Many of the riffs weren't as good as some past episode, but many other riffs were gut-bustingly funny. At the least, I laughed out loud more times during Jungle Goddess than I did during The Sidehackers. Even the accompanying short got some laughs out of me, primarily thanks to Joel and the bots' overdone Bela Lugosi impersonations. I'm not sure how long it will take for those impressions to grow old, but at least for this episode, they did their job.