The Lost Jungle

"The Lost Jungle" features world famous animal tamer, Clyde Beatty. While mostly forgotten today, he was quite possibly the greatest animal tamer of all time and he was the first to be the featured headline act in a circus and the first to own his own circus. Beatty only appeared in six movies...including this 12-part movie serial.

For the most part, I think this serial could be "Clyde Beatty and His Pal Deal with a Bunch of Jerks!". Why? Because instead of the usual villains that populate serials (such as spies, masked villains and the like), Beatty has to mostly deal with jerks who try to kill him. One is his assistant, Sharky, a know-it-all who is jealous of Clyde and tries several times to get him killed. Additionally, when the dirigible Beatty is on crashes, two more homicidal jerks (Krby & Flynn) try to kill Clyde because he knows they killed an explorer to take his treasure! In many cases, he escapes death by fighting with various wild animals, though he also engages in a few fights with his enemies. Along to help him is his sidekick (Syd Saylor) and 1001 animals from the circus where Beatty worked in real life.

So is it any good? Well, yes and no. Nearly all serials are a bit cheesy and you can't judge them by the standards of a typical movie. But despite a few silly portions of the film (the island they crash onto has animals from all over the world on it!), the action is pretty good and usually it's actually Beatty fighting off animals and doing stunts. Not great...but not bad either.

By the way, if you do watch, note Mickey Rooney as an extra in part 1.