User Reviews

Face it. Ann Corio ain't Tondaleyo, the half caste siren of the same year's "White Cargo", which, while not a great film, remains a camp classic. This PRC jungle programmer is dull in every way possible, and that makes it nearly possible to get through. Buster Crabbe, the "Jungle Man" of the previous year's PRC jungle entry, is stuck in an even worse cheapy, surrounding a shell of a plot involving Nazi's in Africa trying to stir up a native rebellion, and Corio coming out of nowhere to help him. "Jungle Siren" bombs out quickly, and slugs along like a swamp river.

Corio's performance is inconsistent throughout, at one point emulating Betty Hutton in a bad wig and phony accent, then being sultry and protective, and all of a sudden turning into Lupe Velez with her spitfire personality. Static photography, creaky sound, poor editing and a sloppy script makes this one a jungle non-adventure to avoid. Even the comic sidekick's mirror observation reeks of desperation.

I lower myself to even write about this one, but it did occur to me while watching it that it may have been the cheapest PRC film I've ever seen, and that took a lot of effort, even for PRC. With the exception of one scene where Ann Corio is bathing and I imagine they had to find a river, the three or four jungle sets all look like they were set up on about a half-acre of land. No matter where the actors roam, and they don't roam very far, they always seem to be more or less in the same place. The two villages seen, one being Carraby, which houses a couple of German spies and which Crabbe and Bryar are making for, are almost hilarious. Here's the town, and by golly, there is an actual side building to be seen and about ten feet of space in the middle of what appears to be a street, which Crabbe and Bryar walk down as though they were looking at Times Square for the first time. The spies own a little (I guess you'd call it) restaurant and hotel, but for who? Knowing the Nazi mentality, they are certainly not going to entertain the black villagers (all of whom seem to do nothing but carry the White Man's paraphernalia around) there, and there's nobody else to be seen except a drunken doctor (who seems to have his own place) and Ann Corio - and only God knows where she's living. The other village is where the villainous black chief is trying to enlist natives on the Nazi side of things - like anyone there would have the slightest idea of what a Democracy or National Socialism could offer them. Corio is pretty, but not overly so, and has a nice schoolgirlish shape, but she certainly doesn't look like the Queen of American Stripteasers, which she certainly was in the 1940s (where was Jane Russell when we really needed her?), and her acting is fairly appalling - but it's hard to tell here, since the only people in the film with any reasonable acting ability are Crabbe and Kibbee (the Doctor). Paul Bryar, a sergeant to Crabbe's captain, is amazingly annoying, and would have been stood up and shot for talking to a superior officer the way he does throughout the entire film. Oh yes, my Summary comment: If one ever wanted to see a Hollywood film where the criticism of it might be "Black Lives Matter", this could be the one. The natives are treated as little more than cattle here, and if one or two die here and there, or are poisoned to further the plot, or whatever, no objection need be taken, nor need they ever be mentioned again. At least, that's how it appears. At one point, Corio draws her bow and arrow (you read that right) to kill the evil Nazi-leaning chief (who had killed her parents 20 years earlier) and instead shoots her arrow into the back of a totally innocent native standing in front of the chief. Is there sorrow? Is there explanation? Is there anything that might indicate that an innocent black man has just been murdered by the film's heroine? Not on your life. He just disappears from the scene. Meanwhile, the chief, acted by a rather gigantic black fellow named Jess Lee Brooks (who died in 1944, possibly from terminal embarrassment over his scenes in this film), seems to care even less about such things. But he is so busy sounding utterly un-Chiefy and more like a refugee from OTHELLO, that it isn't surprising that he can't bring himself to give a damn about his followers. At one point, he even poisons two of them to gain a temporary advantage over his adversaries. Doesn't work though, because Buster Crabbe's pistol is more powerful, and better-aimed, than Ann Corio's arrow, in a finale that is so underpowering that it makes you wonder why they just didn't kill Brooks right away and all go home for a delightful day watching Miss Corio do her thing.

Captain Hart and Sergeant Jenkins come to somewhere in Africa to survey land in order to build a runway for Allied planes. He is distracted by the local Nazi Lukas and his flirtatious wife Anna, a local chief Selangi sympathetic to the Axis and the titular jungle siren Kuhlaya who is the real hero of the film, dizzy with love but ruthless as well. Ann Corio as Kuhlaya may not be a great actress but can certainly enhance a sarong. Buster Crabbe (Hart) is his usual amiable self but doesn't do any swimming. It all seems filmed in one location. As jungle pictures go it's not that exciting. My favourite character was Greco the chimpanzee whose look of ennui summed up my reaction to the film.