African Treasure (1952)

Awesome Movie

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Another Bomba the Jungle Boy movie starring Johnny Sheffield. Here our junior Tarzan is battling diamond smugglers who are forcing natives to work as slaves. Laurette Luez plays the daughter of one of them. She's certainly a looker. Not that Bomba would notice. Lyle Talbot plays the leader of the diamond smugglers, who first enters the picture posing as a hunter and fooling stupid Andy (Leonard Mudie). At this point Mudie has become a series regular. Woody Strode has a bit part as a jungle mailman (!). The jungle telegraph stuff is the highlight of the picture and that's saying something since most people will probably find it pretty ridiculous. There's the expected rear projection and stock footage, used to cheap effect. Bomba's fight with a lion is probably the weakest in the series up to this point. At its best the Bomba series was nothing special and only of interest as middling adventure stories. This is not the series at its best. Actually, this is one of the worst. Even at just 70 minutes the movie drags and feels like it takes forever. Of some minor interest for series fans but nothing here for casual viewers.

African Treasure (1952) * 1/2 (out of 4) The seventh film in Monogram's series finds Bomba (Johnny Sheffield) trying to stop some diamond smugglers (one played by Lyle Talbot) who are trying to get rich while abusing some local natives. African TREASURE is as cheap as the previous six films but there's very little entertainment to be found here. At just 70-minutes the film seems way too long and even worse is the fact that very little happens throughout the movie. The biggest problem is the actual screenplay that doesn't give the characters anything to do. For the most part we have three or four groups who are constantly wondering around and talking about what they're going to do when they run into one of the other groups. We hear the natives call Bomba the "White Devil" and we get such politically incorrect lines as a jungle girl telling them they don't have to fear him because he's white. Yes, there's a jungle girl here played by Laurette Luez and she tries to bring a love story but even this here falls flat. The only good thing that can be said about the film are a couple fine performances. Sheffield is obviously very comfortable in the role and he has no problem as he at least appears to be giving it his all. Talbot, a classic bad guy, also makes for some fun but one wishes he had more to do. You can look quickly for a young Woody Strode. Outside of these things there's pretty much nothing else going on. We see Bomba fight a fake lion and of course he has to rescue people.

Roy Rockwood's creation, Bomba, the Jungle Boy, returns for his seventh cinematic adventure--amusingly, this one as cheap and padded with stock footage as were the previous six! As the mythical "white devil" who swings from the vines and talks to the animals, Johnny Sheffield seems to know much more English this time, and he's allowed to have affectionate feelings for the requisite native girl involved in the proceedings. Still, the premise here (diamond poachers in an abandoned crater using kidnapped natives to sort out the stones from clay and help smuggle them out) doesn't allow for much animal action or boy-girl romance. Instead, we get the greedy, murderous white men ordering the natives around mercilessly, while Bomba sends urgent messages back to the village via drum calls (when Bomba takes out two sticks and starts pounding away on hollowed branches, this entry almost becomes a "Bomba" parody). The murky underwater photography, as well as a fight between Bomba and a lion, are both bottom of the barrel, however Sheffield still manages to hold the screen with his youthful appeal. *1/2 from ****

***SPOILERS*** Things didn't seem quite right for British Province Colonial Commissioner Andy Barnes, Leonard Maudie, when American big game hunter Pat Gilroy, Lyle Talbot, showed up, by boat, unannounced at his outpost deep in the African jungle. It's later in the movie when Barnes gets a post office wanted poster, from the Jungle Mailman, of escaped criminal Roy DeHaven that he realizes that both Gilroy and DeHaven are one and the same person! But by then DeHaven got the drop on Bearns and took him hostage in order to get, also by boat, to the Nujuli Crater where his two partners in crime Greg, not Laural, and Hardy, Arthur Space & Lane Bradford, are digging for the crater's mother load of diamonds with the help Pedro Sabastian, Martin Garralaga, and the Nomgola villagers. It was Pedro & the Nomgola villagers that Greg & Hardy took hostage after wiping out almost the entire Nomgola village and the members, including Prof.Catesby, of the Catesby Expedition who were staying there!Now where does the star of the movie Bomba, Johnny Sheffield, the Jungle Boy come into the picture? He's swinging on the jungle vines with his good friend and companion Kimbobo the Chimp when he spots this gorgeous young teenage girl and her guide walking through the dangerous jungle underbrush! Being attacked by a 500 pound male lion Bomba puts the big cat away without as much as breaking into a sweat. It's then that Bomba gets the lowdown from the girl Lita, Laurette Luez, in what she was doing there risking her life in the very inhospitable jungle!Lita's father-Pedro Sabastiant-was a member of the doomed Catesby Expedition who was taken prisoner together with the survivors of the Nomgola village massacre by Greg & Hardy to mine the diamonds at the Nujuli Crater! It's now up to Bomba the save Pedro and the villagers before Greg & Hardy have them buried alive after they mined all the diamonds for them. That's in order to keep them for talking to the police or the British Colonial Commissinor, Andy Bearns, about Greg & Hardy as well as the guy who's to fence the precious stones Roy DeHaven! It's Later that DeHaven is apprehended by the local natives lead by Berns' loyal native butler Eli, Smoki Whitefield, who stopped him from getting to Greg & Hardy before he and his hostage Bearns could make it to his boat. Bomba doesn't waste any time going into action but Greg & Hardy are a lot tougher then what he, and we in the audience, thought that they were. Getting himself easily clubbed beaten and tied up by the bad guys, which wasn't like him, Bomba has to rely on his good friend Kimbobo to pull his chestnuts out of the fire. Kimbobo does that by pelting Greg & Hardy with rocks and coconuts whenever they happened to get the best of his friend Bomba. It's later that Bomba, with the help of Kimbobo the Chimp, finally puts both Greg & Hardy in their place and behind bars. That's when they tired to make their escape by boat with the diamonds before Bomba and his jungle friends, monkeys exotic birds big cats and elephants, get a hold of them! Which in fact they, or at least Bomba & Kimbobo, did!P.S Check out former L.A Rams football great Woody Strode in a cameo part, if you blink you'll probably miss him, as the Jungle Mailman.