The jungle secret
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The jungle secret |
| Original title | Jungle mystery |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1932 |
| length | 240 in 12 episodes, 75 (version from 1935) minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Ray Taylor |
| script | Talbot Mundy based on the novel The Ivory Trail (1919), Ella O'Neill, Basil Dickey, George Morgan, George H. Plympton |
| production | Carl Laemmle / Universal Pictures , Henry McRae |
| music | James Dietrich, David Klatzkin, Sam Perry and Heinz Roemheld |
| camera | John Hickson |
| occupation | |
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| synchronization | |
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No | |
The Jungle Mystery (Engl. Original title Jungle Mystery ) is a twelve-part serial from 1932, which was shown in 1935 under the same title as a 75-minute feature film.
action
The original novel The Ivory Trail by Talbot Mundy from 1919 is extremely critical of German colonial policy, although Zanzibar , the scene of the adventure, was never a German colony, but was briefly under its influence. Nevertheless, the book the appearance was immediately after the First World War advertised with the note that it contained "gruesome details" ( gruesome details ) about the machinations of the German colonialists. In contrast to the book, two Russians are the villains in the serial who don't shy away from murder in order to find the legendary ivory treasure of a deceased slave trader. It is said to consist of 100,000 tusks and be hidden somewhere in the jungle of Zanzibar. The American big game hunter Kirk Montgomery (Tom Tyler) and his friend Fred Oakes (Noah Beery Jr.) are also there and meet Barbara Morgan (Cecilia Parker) and her father (William Desmond). The two are on the search for the missing brother Jack Morgan (Onslow Stevens) and quickly get support from their compatriots. They are all threatened not only by the greedy Russian Shillow (Philo McCullough) and his accomplices Krotzky (Anders Van Haden), but also by the downright seedy Belle Waldron (Carmelita Geraghty) and devious "natives". During the mutual chase, the eponymous, mysterious but apparently good-natured jungle creature Zungu (Sam Baker) appears again and again , half human, half monkey. The puzzling apparition takes the side of the Morgans.
Episodes
The twelve episodes, which, like all series, end with spectacular cliffhangers to motivate the audience to return to the cinema, bear the original title
- Into the Dark Continent
- The Ivory Trail
- The Death Stream
- Poisoned fangs
- The Mystery Cavern
- Daylight Doom
- The jaws of death
- Trapped by the enemy
- The Jungle Terror
- Ambushed!
- The Lion's Fury
- Buried Treasure
production
Apart from one sequence of scenes that was recorded in Bronson Canyon in Griffith Park near Los Angeles , the entire filming took place on the premises of Universal Studios. Numerous animal photos were incorporated into the plot, some of them at random. You can also see tigers that don't even exist in Africa . The sporty, but little talented lead actor Tom Tyler was a well-known western and B-movie hero in the 1920s and 1930s, but is said to have suffered from fear of horses. Noah Beery Jr. had only signed a contract with Universal in 1932 and had worked on the Serial Heroes of the West immediately beforehand .
The material was considered lost until the original negatives were found in the Universal archives. After a restoration in 2016 , the episodes and the film version were shown again at the Cineon Classic Film Festival in Hollywood on the first weekend in September 2016.
Television broadcast
The serial was broadcast in ten parts from April 12, 1972 on every Wednesday on Bavarian television in the original English with German subtitles.
literature
- Peter Berresford Ellis: The Last Adventurer: The Life of Talbot Mundy, 1879-1940 Hampton Falls (DM Grant) 1984
- Buck Rainey: Serials and Series: A World Filmography, 1912-1956 , Jefferson NC (McFarland) 1999
- Thomas Wendl: Africa screams: evil in cinema, art and cult , Wuppertal (Peter Hammer) 2004
- Tom Weaver, Michael Brunas, John Brunas: Universal Horrors: The Studio's Classic Films, 1931-1946 , Jefferson NC (McFarland) 2007
Web links
- The Jungle secret in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Wisconsin Liberary Bulletin , October 1919, page 215 [1]
- ^ Buck Rainey: Serials and Series: A World Filmography, 1912-1956 , Jefferson NC (McFarland) 1999, p. 128
- ↑ Geoff Mayer: Encyclopedia of American Film Serials , Jefferson NC (McFarland) 2017, p. 49
- ↑ Posters and scenes [2]
- ↑ Bayerischer Rundfunk, Summer Program 1972 , p. 159