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Bomba the Jungle Boy film 4:
When strolling through the African jungle, Johnson (Damian O'Flynn) and
his guide Hadji (Smoki Whitfield) stumble upon a man dressed only in
loincloth - Bomba (Johnny Sheffield) of course - swinging from tree to
tree on vines, and for some reason they figure they have to capture him
... and ask Emir Hassan (Paul Guilfoyle) of the Hidden City for help. What
they don't know of course is that Hassan is evil, and he wants Bomba dead
because Bomba is the only one who knows how he usurped his throne ... and
after quite a bit of chasing Bomba through the jungle they seem to
actually succeed in killing him - much to the dismay of Johnson and Hadji
who wanted to capture him alive.
Bomba though survives a fall from some rocks and is found by lovely
young Nita (Sue England), who nurses him back to health. Nita's foster
father Rasheed (Leon Belasco) though wants to marry her off to none other
than Hassan. Nita instead wants to flee with Bomba, but Bomba is less than
interested - but tells her he knows the secret of her origin (she is only
Rasheed's foster daughter you know and has lost her memory about her
previous life). But before he can tell her, she is captured by Hassan, who
takes her with him to the Hidden City, to make her his wife for good.
Despite not wanting her to accompany him, Bomba doesn't want Nita to fall
into the hands of Hassan and follows her to the Hidden City - where he is
soon captured though.
Slowly, it dawns on Johnson and Hadji that they have made a terrible
mistake when siding with Hassan, and they do everything in their power to
free Bomba and Nita, and soon find out Nita's origins - she was actually
the daughter of the rightful Emir of the Hidden City but Hassan killed her
father and mother to conquer the throne. Soon, with the help of Rasheed,
Nita's foster father who has also seen that he was wrong in giving Nita to
Hassan, Bomba, Nita, Johnson and Hadji all can escape the city, and
ultimately everything leads to Bomba and Hassan going one on one - and
Hassan dies, falling off the same rocks he pushed Bomba off towards the
beginning of the film.
While the first Bomba-films dealt with black African
natives, this one is more of a Arabian Nights-tale with Bomba thrown into
the mix - and if you can accept the inherent campiness of the story, which
is of course mirrored in Ford L.Beebe's direction, you might actually kind
of like this one, if only in a trashy way.
One word about the film's title though: The Hidden City
fails to make any sense since all the characters seem to know exactly
where it is (as opposed to hidden). My theory is that a script with
the title The Capital City was commissioned while posters were made
bearing the name The Hidden City ... and when this was found
out, all the characters changed their lines referring to the city from capital
city to hidden city to go along with the film's title - but
there is no proof for this and it is merely a suspicion of mine which I
made up myself.
By the way: Scriptwriter Carroll Young has also written (similarly
campy) films for the Tarzan-
and the Jungle
Jim-series.
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