Reviews

I can't believe there's any stock footage of elephants anywhere that I haven't seen now. It's all in this movie. I mean *all*. "Jungle Hell" isn't a descriptive title by any means. "Elephant Hell" might be better. This is where bad elephants go when they die. This movie contains more stock footage than any movie I've seen - even more than "Devil Monster".

Here's the plot. Dr. Paul Morrison works alone in a small village in the middle of the Indian jungle. For some reason he has running water and electricity in his office. Doc's buddy Sabu (a grown man in a diaper-like loincloth) believes in his modern medicine, which creates some conflict with the local medicine man, Shankar. When Morrison cures a local boy of what appears to be radiation burns (all it takes is a little salve), he cables London for some help investigating the source of the burns. A Dr. Ames comes to his aid and *gasp* she's a woman!

Once this awkwardness is sorted out - she's pretty good-natured about it - Morrison gives her some spare women's clothes he has lying around. She lost hers in a plane crash, but why does bachelor Morrison have women's clothes in the first place? Then they're off in search of the "burning rocks" that may or may not be uranium ore. That's not really how radiation works, but it's just a Sabu movie so I guess it's close enough. Dr. Ames lost her scientific instruments in the crash along with her clothes, but they show up again when they finally find some more rocks. Oops.

Another explorer wants to find the rocks as well, but only for the potential profit. A friend of Shankar's helps him in exchange for a bag of gold. A mysterious and poorly drawn flying saucer seems to have something to do with the rocks, which are buried beneath trees. Both groups battle wild animals while they do their best to avoid the myriad elephants in the neighborhood. I have to admit the stock footage of the tiger jumping into the water and killing the crocodile was pretty cool. I didn't know they did that.

SPOILERS

Nothing gets resolved, and the movie ends the way it began - with Sabu narrating against a backdrop of stock footage of crowded mother India. He reveals that Morrison and Ames get married, that the flying saucer was controlling the tiger and the elephants, that its mysterious beings were using the Earth as "incubating grounds", and that to wonder why is "distraction". The End.

Wait. Did he say "distraction" or "destruction"? His accent is kind of thick, so I'm not really sure. I played it a couple times and couldn't figure out which it was. Either way, it's rather bewildering. If they weren't able to show the ending, at least they could've written a better one for Sabu to read. I don't get it.

Now, if they had replaced the elephants with dinosaurs this would've been a movie to reckon with!

Why doesn't TV make movies out of cool ideas anymore? There were a bunch of them made in the early '70s - "Haunts of the Very Rich", "Kolchak: The Night Stalker", and "The Love War", to name a few. I saw these as a youngster and they made a big impression on me. Thanks to the magic of video and the internet, I can watch them again.

SPOILERS FOLLOW!

"Haunts" starts out with a great idea - they're dead and they don't know it. Perhaps my early viewing of this movie is what later drew me to films like "The Matrix" and "Dark City", both of which execute a similar theme with greater force.

It's funny how memory works. The most vivid image I had of this film is the scene where they find the dead fish floating in the water. Yet when I watched it again this week for the first time in 30 years, there were far fewer fish than I remembered and the scene was only on-screen for a split second. But that's the scene that led me to rediscover the title, thanks to the IMDB Message Board's "I Need To Know" section.

My only complaint is that the ending seems more comical than scary to me now. If I were to remake this movie, I might rearrange things to make Robert Reed's return from the peyote ceremony the end. His vision of ultimate nothingness is far scarier to me than Lloyd Bridge's eternity with his codependent wife. Watching him and Cloris Leachman run off into the solarized jungle for a full minute or more did not achieve the affect in me that the writer probably wanted. It almost seems like an attempt at a Twilight Zone twist. After the revelation of their true status, another twist wasn't needed.

SPOILERS!

This is a horror movie that attempts to build suspense but doesn't quite get there. A group of amateur spelunkers get trapped in an old mine for weeks. They somehow survive on one canteen of water for that entire time, but finally hunger gets the better of them. They decide to draw lots and eat someone's arm. Not everyone agrees, but they do it anyway. Sure enough, no sooner do they eat the arm and they are rescued. The group decides to keep the deed a secret. Any accusations by the unwilling victim will be dismissed as the babbling of a madman who was injured in the cave-in. The cave-in is blamed for his missing arm.

Five years later the leader of the group receives a severed arm in the mail. The group reforms to discuss the event. One by one they are attacked by a hatchet-wielding killer. Some are maimed; others are killed. Soon we meet the one-armed man's daughter, whom we assume is the real killer. It becomes apparent that she isn't, but we're pretty sure it isn't the obvious choice. At the end we find that we were right - it's the one-armed man's son, whom we never knew about until now - with the help of the daughter. The one-armed man is in a catatonic state because of his arm. Seems unlikely, but that's the way it is. Rather than maim or kill the last survivor of the group, they lock him up in a small room with nothing but a knife. When he gets hungry enough, he will eat his own arm. The end.

This is the darkest movie I have ever seen. I don't mean dark noir; I mean dark no lighting. Over 99% of this thing was shot at night or in the dark - even the majority of the interior scenes are dark. It's really frustrating not being able to see.

Some bad movies are amusing to watch. This one is just bad.

SPOILERS! (As if it were possible to spoil THIS movie...)

I'd like to add some fun details to what's already been posted. The four "Major-Generals" captured by the Japanese are French Major-General Pierre Latrec (Lautrec?), English Major-General Robert Foster, American Major-General Abraham Lincoln(!), and African Major-General Guvoyise Secallo (sp?) I can find no information about Latrec/Lautrec. There was an Air Marshall Chief Robert Foster attached to a British squadron immediately after WWII, so it's possible he was in the service during the war as well. However, if he were a war hero I think info would be more readily available. Lincoln looks more like General Sherman - gray uniform and all! I wonder if the American actor playing him knew he was in a WWII film. He clearly mouths "Abraham Lincoln" when he introduces himself. I'm sure I'm misspelling the African Major-General's name (he represents ALL of Africa?) so I can find nothing on him.

The four Major-Generals are captured by the Japanese somewhere between Alaska and the North Pole! Then for some reason they are taken to Luxembourg for holding. This is where the Fantasy Mission Force must find them because in four days they will be taken to "Tokyo City" for "propaganda". I'm not sure if the movie is set in Hong Kong where it was made, but it seems that Luxembourg is a long way off. Why not wait until they get to Tokyo City? In the end, the FMF DRIVES to Luxembourg! I'm pretty sure more than four days pass before they get there.

The people considered to lead the FMF have their pictures shown via overhead projector. They are "007" (an illustration of Roger Moore as James Bond), the "Bald Detective" (another illustration), "Snake King" (I'm pretty sure it's an illustration of "Snake Plissken" - Kurt Russell's role in "Escape from New York"), and "Captain Black Bart (a photograph of a woman with an eye patch and Russian fur hat). 007 is on assignment in South Africa, the Bald Detective has defected to the enemy, Snake King has been dead three years, and Captain Black Bart has retired to raise a family. So they settle on Lieutenant Don Win.

After many adventures they finally get to Luxembourg. The POW camp has two Nazi flags, one green, one yellow. The Major-Generals are gone because other Nazis driving Mad-Max cars have taken them. The cars are all late '60s/early '70s American models. When the FMF finally prevails, Major-General Robert Foster is missing. This is never explained, so I can only assume it is a continuity error.

I also don't understand about the money. The whole incentive for the FMF to rescue the four Major-Generals is half a million dollars. I assumed this was a reward, but in the end it turns out that it's modern American money hidden in the POW camp.

I paid $.97 for my copy (DVD). I'll be showing it to many unsuspecting friends!

Lili is my favorite.

Believe it or not, I found a copy of this thing. I just watched it. Wow. That's all I can say. I have to comment on it further now that I've seen it again. This has got to be one of the worst movies I've seen, and I've seen a lot of bad ones. I've seen Herschell Gordon Lewis' "Jimmy the Boy Wonder". I've seen "Nukie", "Indian Superman", "Devil Monster", "Return to Boggy creek", and many more. But "Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny" is really a wonder of bad, bad cinema. I can't say that enough. I can just see the producer telling everybody who questioned him during production, "But it's a KID's movie. It doesn't MATTER." Like that's an excuse for this sort of thing.

As I said in my previous comment, I saw this in the theater when I was ten. I think it came out in the spring, which caused some confusion about the Ice Cream Bunny. I mean, is that supposed to be the Easter Bunny or what? And why is Santa Claus in it? I didn't understand then, and 30 years later I still don't understand. Anyway, here's the story.

A skinny dimestore Santa with a large sweat stain on his butt is stuck in the sand on a Florida beach. That's a very surreal image for a kid from Minnesota who's used to seeing Santa in snow. His reindeer (shown in stock footage) got too hot and flew home without him. Santa falls asleep and sends a telepathic message to kids living in a nearby housing development. The message stops time until they respond to it. They all come help him with their pet animals - a horse, a cow, a sheep, a pig, a donkey, and a guy in a gorilla suit. Must be a pretty lax housing development to allow those kind of animals. Nothing works, so Santa tries to cheer the kids up by telling them the story of Thumbelina. The poor audience (us) doesn't just hear it; we see it, too. It's a movie within a movie! When it rolls, we see the credits and everything. That's pretty darn confusing to a kid who thought the movie already started twenty minutes ago. Soon we learn that it's also a movie within a movie, so we're seeing a movie within a movie within a movie! AHH!!!

Whew. The movie within a movie is narrated by a tinny loudspeaker at a cheap amusement park called Pirates World. When the speaker talks, we see a closeup of it. This happens way too many times to count. The young lady who plays Thumbelina is an excellent singer, and I can't help but like her. Trouble is, her story goes on forever and ever and ever. The sets look like something from a high school play. They make Santa on the beach look pretty good!

Then just when you think the movie has turned into Thumbelina and you've given up all hope of seeing Santa again, it ends. It even says "The End" on the screen. So you're getting up ready to run out of the theater and there's Santa on the beach again! After an hour plus of this business we finally get to see the Ice Cream Bunny. He's driving an antique fire engine through the woods to the beach. He's so close now. Please hurry, Mr. Bunny. Save Santa and end the movie NOW! No, wait - now he's taking a long shortcut through Pirates World! HOW'D THAT HAPPEN???

OK, now he's back on the beach. It still takes several minutes to cross those last few hundred feet. Turns out he and Santa are old friends. He gives Santa a ride on his truck, and when you're wondering why they left the sleigh behind it blinks out of sight and magically returns to the North Pole. The kids point at the sky as if they can see it flying. The end.

Wow. Did I mention the really bad singing in the Santa part of the movie? Did I mention the endless kazoos, and the talk-singing into the kazoos? I watched much of this standing up, pacing.

If you're brave - if you're really brave - there's another copy for sale on half.com. I haven't seen it on ebay or in Amazon Z Shops, and I've been looking for a while. Here's your chance.

My head hurts. Me go now.