Beautiful, moving film.

Blistering performances.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I found this movie playing on the 'Movies!' TV network. It was great fun watching it, because it hit theaters in 1951 when I had just started first grade. By today's standards, being in black and white and with sometimes cheesy special effects, it is a primitive movie. But it represents that era very well. I enjoyed watching it.After Johnny Weissmuller, former Olympic swimming champion, had made a number of Tarzan movies, he became Jungle Jim in a series of movies, this being one. The actual setting for this movie is never stated but it looks to be either the jungle of Africa or the jungle of South America. Some of the scenic shots show very dark-skinned indigenous people, while most of the characters look like they could be from the Americas. Nevertheless it was shot in the Simi Valley area, many of the scenes looked like terrain from some of the western movies of the 1940s and 1950s. But hang a few Palm fronds onto Oak trees and presto, it looks like the jungle. Weissmuller as Jungle Jim was about 46 during filming and looked his age, although in good shape for his age. There are several scenes where he has to swim, either to rescue a damsel in distress or for underwater activities.The story involves a lady journalist traveling to find an American athlete and war veteran lost over the jungle some 9 years earlier. When Jungle Jim saves her, he helps her with the search. In the process they find the lost aviator, who had taken up with a village and taught them techniques like irrigation and blacksmith skills. Plus their village had a sidewalk! But they also encountered a ruthless, rogue Chemist who had discovered a particular radioactive ore that when processed a certain way could turn plain sugar into perfect, valuable diamonds. (That is about as likely as is cold fusion.) So together, the two men and the lady must defeat this guy to save the people and prevent the world market being flooded with diamonds.Bob Waterfield was the lost aviator, Bob Miller, wearing an authentic WW2 A-2 aviator jacket, and Sheila Ryan was the lady journalist, Anne Lawrence.

A little romance entered Jungle Jim's life in Jungle Manhunt. Not for Johnny Weissmuller mind you at least in the Tarzan films he had Jane. No the romance came for Sheila Ryan who came with camera in hand as a news reporter looking for a football player who disappeared in a presumed plane crash several years earlier. And Ryan's in need of a guide.The guy that Ryan is seeking is Bob Waterfield the Frank Tarkenton of his day. Waterfield was probably the best quarterback of his day, a very popular guy and also one of the first Christian athletes though he was far from Tim Tebow. At the time this film was made he was starring for the Los Angeles Rams. And Waterfield was also half of a very big celebrity couple of himself and Jane Russell.Anyway rumors of a white man leading a native tribe on various raids to capture men and kill all the others in peaceful tribes bring Weissmuller into the local war. Ryan tags along to see if it could be Waterfield.Instead it's Lyle Talbot playing a foreign scientist with a bit of cheesy accent who is enslaving the men to work in his uranium mine where they're prone to die real soon. Weissmuller finds the mine, finds Talbot and along the way finds Waterfield.Jungle Manhunt was fascinating to watch various acting styles employed. Lyle Talbot did what was required of him and overacted outrageously for the kid trade the target audience was and for posterity because he knew how corny this film was and knew also it would be a camp classic. Ryan was a good actress and did what was required of her to look both feminine and competent in the man's world even though she did need rescuing by Weissmuller from drowning. Weissmuller who in his first Tarzan film just got a grunt or three and some jungle gibberish for dialog, graduated to where he could handle dialog if not great at least competently. Poor Waterfield as an actor, he was great quarterback.I have to say this particular Jungle Jim feature was enjoyable even if I did laugh in the wrong spots.

***SPOILERS*** Unintentionally funny, aren't they all, Jungle Jim, Johnny Weissmuller, movie where he together with news photographer Anne Lawrence, Sheila Ryan, are searching the jungles of darkest Africa to find lost, for some nine years, professional football player and the estranged husband of actress Jane Russell Bob Miller played by real football hero Bob Waterfield. It's during this time that a series of deadly raids are conducted against a number of native villages lead by a mysterious white man using men dressed up in Halloween skeleton costumes as his shock troops.We and Jungle Jim later find out that the white man doing all this damage is industrial chemist Mitchell Heller, Lyle Talbot, who uses the natives his men kidnapped as slave labors in his hidden cave in the jungle to create from igneous rocks synthetic diamonds! Diamonds that are so genuine that their easily mistaken for the real thing! The one drawback to this operation on Heller's part is that those working in his "Diamond Mine" don't last too long dying within a few days of deadly radiation poisoning. Always needing new manpower to get the job done Heller has his men raid the local villages to get him new recruits or workers.It's after being taken hostage by Heller's men it's non other then Jungle Jim's faithful jungle companion Tamba the Chimp who rescues Jungle Jim and makes it possible for him together with Bob Miller throwing, quarterback style, bomb laden coconuts and mango's to put an end to Heller's grandiose plans in his efforts to corner the worlds diamond markets! With Heller now on his own with his Skelton Men running for cover he makes a run for it himself, with a safe box filled with synthetic diamonds, towards the hill country surrounding the village. Only to end up falling some 200 feet, without a parachute, from a cliff he was hanging on by a branch, that broke, to his death.As usual Jungle Jim got the best deal in the movie in not only being the person,together Bob Miller, who saved the day and the native villagers from the evil Mitchell Heller and his feared Skeleton Men but also ended up with the real hero in the movie the cute and cuddly Tamba the Chimp. As for football hero Bob Miller he had to settle for second best in ending up getting the girl, not his real life wife Jean Russell, the sexy newsreel photographer Anne Lawrence.

This is one of the better Jungle Jim entries.Although still low-budget with the usual stock footage it has some good things goibg for it.First of all,Johnny Weissmuller looks quite fit and shows off his physique twice in the film.He looked better here,than in his last Tarzan film.Sheila Ryan as Ann the lady photographer is a beautiful and spunky co-star.She looks lovely in a sarong in a scene where she is getting cozy with the lost football player,Bob Waterfield.(a real-life player).Also along for the ride are Rick Vallin as Jim's native friend,Tamba the Chimp and that great B-actor Lyle Talbot as the villain.A predictable JIM adventure,but still a lot of fun.