So much average

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

This is another Jungle adventure starring Johnny Weismuller but isn't either a Tarzan or Jungle Jim adventure. Rather confusingly he plays himself in this film. Quite why that is I don't know but essentially he is the same character in all his movies. The plot is the usual greedy white bad guys seeking an ill gotten fortune in a jungle setting featuring some decidedly unrealistic natives. The Moon Men of the films title are dwarfs dressed up laughably unconvincingly to look like a jungle tribe. Almost certainly the least scary tribe ever committed to celluloid. Jungle Moon Men ticks every cliché in the Tarzan book but fails miserably to compare to the superior and much earlier Weismuller/O'Sullivan Tarzan films. The support acting is also sadly lacking.However despite it's numerous faults, I did somehow enjoy this film. Maybe it falls into the so bad it's good category, maybe it's just because I like Weismuller.

Jungle Moon Men (1955) * (out of 4) Johnny Weissmuller plays a character named Johnny Weissmuller who must take a female writer (Jean Byron) through the jungles where she's going to do a story about a tribe known as "Moon Men". These people aren't from the moon sadly but instead they worship a princess who just happens to be some sort of relation to an Egyptian Moon goddess. This next-to-last entry in the "Jungle Jim" series dropped that name for some reason and had Weissmuller playing a character with his own name but there's no question what series this film belongs to. I've read very few positive reviews to any of the Jungle Jim movies and many that I have read called this one of the worst. If this is just one of the worst and not the worst then I certainly hate myself for being a completest because I will still search out the other films in the series that I haven't seen even if that means having to torture myself with more madness. It's strange but on a technical level this is perhaps the best of the series that I've seen but this is the major problem. It seems like more money was pumped into this film and it's clear to see that the amount of stock footage has been reduced dramatically. The earlier films in the series at least had a camp value to them because of the amount of stock footage and how poorly it mixed in with everything else going on. With that missing here the camp value is pretty much missing and all we're left with is the bad acting and bad story that all of the films have. I must admit that I was constantly losing my attention span because nothing going on stuck me as the least bit interesting. The entire adventure was a joke because not for a second did I believe anything I was seeing. The so-called drama wasn't there because the entire set-up was just tired and silly. The comic relief was just downright poor and that chimp just gets more and more annoying with each new film. Weissmuller certainly wasn't an actor and his struggles to get lines out are quite apparent here. The supporting cast isn't much better but it's very possible they all realized they were in a Jungle Jim movie and decided to just take it easy. There's very little going on in this picture to make it worth viewing. At 70-minutes it's way too long and there just aren't enough fun moments to make it worth viewing. Certainly only recommended to those who must see each film in the series.

For all intents and purposes this is another in a string of Jungle Jim adventure movies, except that Johnny Weissmuller appears in this one using his own name. Most of the typical JJ scenarios are presented except for Weissmuller wrestling some hapless stuffed animal or underwater blow up creature. Otherwise it's pretty standard stuff, with Weissmuller guiding author Ellen Marsten (Jean Byron) into the jungle in search of book material. The moon men of the title turn out to be pygmies from the Baku country, with no connection to other worldly environs. If I didn't know better, I might have considered them as the inspiration for George Lucas's Ewoks, but with faces exposed and not as hairy. You might recognize their leader Damu as Billy Curtis who almost two full decades later appeared as Clint Eastwood's diminutive ally Mordecai in "High Plains Drifter".To give you an idea how much thought went into these flicks, consider an early scene when native Marro (Ben Chapman) is attacked by the band of pygmies in order to drug and capture him. He's struck by a poison dart on an area of his upper chest that was covered directly by his shield! Of course, there must be villains, and this time out Myron Healey does the honors as the evil Santo. He and his gang follow Johnny into the Baku country in hopes of discovering a large cache of diamonds. The trail ends at the cave of the high priestess Oma (Helen Stanton), revealed to have discovered the secret of eternal life. That gives one a pretty good idea of how Oma meets her demise - hint, she can't leave the cave into direct sunlight - Oops! In keeping with the Jungle Jim tradition, a North American mountain lion makes an appearance in the film, demonstrating that wild animals in pictures don't honor geographic boundaries. As for Johnny's sidekick, he's got a chimp named Kimba, who could have been Tamba from his earlier pictures, they all look alike you know. Or maybe not, Tamba was pretty adventurous, but in this picture, it seemed like Johnny carried the chimp around everywhere they went.

No matter what you expect "jungle moon men" to be, you'll likely be disappointed. Your imagination is probably better than that of the filmmakers. Johnny Weissmuller is playing a character named Johnny Weissmuller here, but twenty years as Tarzan and Jungle Jim doesn't seem to have taught him much about acting. At least Jean Byron as an intrepid author and Helene Stanton as some kind of high priestess are both attractive. That gives you a little something worth paying attention to in this dismal flick.