THE JUNGLE is not a version of Upton Sinclair’s famous muckraking story of the meat business. It’s a moronic 1952 adventure about an expedition searching India for…mammoths. Filmed on location, with lots of local music and fights between animals staged whenever its 74 minutes need shoring. It is not pleasant, watching these animal stunts, staged so obviously for the film: cruelty as entertainment.
In the cast are Rod Cameron, Cesar Romero and Marie Windsor. Acting, writing and direction (thanks, William Berke) are all horrible. The absurd climax, when the mammoths (pachyderms covered with fur and with phony curves added to their tusks) attack the caravan, has to to seen to be believed. Worth a laff. “Tempting as a woman’s lips. Deadly as her hate!”