DEVIL GODDESS

Billy Griffith

DEVIL  GODDESS (1955). Director: Spencer Gordon Bennett.

In the last of the "Jungle Jim" movies -- or the last non-JJ movie, since star Johnny Weissmuller plays himself and not Jungle Jim, more or less -- our hero encounters Nora (Angela Stevens) who is accompanying her father, Professor Carl Blakely (Selmer Jackson) on a search for the missing Professor Dixon (Billy Griffith). Turns out Dixon has gone a little crazy and become the strange Fire God of the Mountain, but he is actually on a mission to get a tribe to give up the practice of human sacrifice. Sarabina (Vera Francis) is to be one of the sacrifices, and her lover Teinusi (Abel Fernandez) gets Johnny to help him save the gal. The natives are especially restless and the mountain is about to blow its top. Naturally there are bad white guys looking for treasure. One sequence is lifted straight from Savage Mutiny, the Jungle Jim feature which also starred Angela Stevens. The exciting fight between Weissmuller and a gorilla on a rope bridge was taken from Pygmy Island. The best scene in this has chimp Kimba and his simian buddies getting drunk! After this Weissmuller did Jungle Jim, the TV series, which lasted one season and twenty-six episodes. There is no actual "Devil Goddess" in the picture.

Verdict: Barely acceptable jungle adventure with familiar elements. **.

WITHOUT WARNING!

Adam Williams

WITHOUT WARNING! (1952). Director: Arnold Laven.

A pretty young woman with blond hair is stabbed to death in a motel room. No, it's not Psycho, it's Without Warning!, a thriller/police procedural that follows cops as they search for a man who murders women with garden shears. The killer, who is revealed early on, is gardener Carl Martin (Adam Williams), and Edward Binns [Young and Dangerous] is Lt. Hamilton, the chief investigator on the case. Carl tries to form a friendship with Jane Saunders (Meg Randall), the daughter of a guy who owns a nursery from where Carl gets his supplies. Although the film's climax is too protracted to be entirely effective, many other scenes are quite suspenseful, such as when Carl tries to get away when his car -- with a dead blonde inside -- is caught in the mud of an underpass as cops drive by. Adam Williams [Fear Strikes Out] was a busy actor of this period and this, his fourth film, was a rare starring role for him; he is excellent. Angela Stevens plays another victim. Only one of the murders is depicted, but not in a sensational or bloody manner. Arnold Laven also directed The Monster That Challenged the World.

Verdict: Moody and absorbing. ***.

SAVAGE MUTINY

SAVAGE MUTINY (1953). Director: Spencer Gordon Bennet.

Jungle Jim (Johnny Weissmuller) is apprised of a government operation "X" that will take place on the island of Talunga. The natives of the island are to be temporarily relocated so that -- get this! -- atomic tests can be conducted to see how they affect the plant life. One supposes that the natives will be protected from dangerous radiation by inoculations given to them by the very pretty Joan Harris (Angela Stevens), who wears a tight skirt in the jungle and almost loses the serum she needs when some animals engage in warfare. Meanwhile some nefarious characters are hoping to maneuver the natives back to the island so they can be destroyed when the bomb drops and the U. S. government will be blamed. Savage Mutiny is gleefully clueless about atomic fall-out as people were back in those days, but it wouldn't be long before radiation would be blamed for everything from mutants to giant grasshoppers. The attractive and competent Angela Stevens mostly appeared in TV shows. Timba the chimp is as funny as ever, but Weissmuller is beginning to look a little weather-beaten despite his only being forty-nine.

Verdict: One of the duller Jungle Jim movies. *1/2.