Jungle Jim [Serial] (1936)

Long unavailable, this Universal serial of 12 chapters returns in glorious condition thanks to VCI. Albeit no Tarzan, Jungle Jim, as impersonated by Grant Withers, complete with a rousing Nelson Eddy-like theme song, comes to life straight off the comic pages, each chapter summation appearing as a newspaper strip, a neat little trick that sets the serial apart. The story, meanwhile, is what you'd expect and includes such incongruities as tigers in "Darkest Africa" and a jungle queen (Betty Jane Rhodes) who at all times looks as if she just stepped out of the Max Factor salon on Hollywood's La Brea Avenue. Nasal-voiced Al Bridge delivers his accustomed menacing performance as the lead villain ("He ran out on us that cowardly rat!"), and even as Henry Brandon seems a trifle young to have fathered Rhodes, which his character at one point claims, veteran screen fatale Evelyn Brent heaves her bosom and flares her nostrils in the best tradition of melodrama as his equally villainous sister. Although direction is adequate at best, Jungle Jim benefits from having been filmed on Universal's classic standing sets, including Castle Dracula, and remains a fascinating addition to the ever growing number of restored serial thrillers. In the late '40s, former Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller, starred as Jungle Jim in a series of Monogram potboilers that never really measured up to the original Universal serial. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide