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Pilot and drop-out Butch Donovan (James Mitchum) is forced by gangster
Camora (Charles Comyn) to fly a group of tourists to some African holiday
resort. But why you may ask? Because the gangster has no intentions
to let the plane reach its destination but wants to have it crashed to
collect the insureance money - and he sees to it that it crashes alright.
Thing is, Butch manages to make an emergency landing on some uncharted
island that seems to have been inhabited by humans not long ago (there are
still some houses to back that up) and that comes equipped with its own
jungle girl. Plus, the wild beasts on this island are all incredibly tame
- and incredibly diverse, there are not only the customary lions,
elephants and apes, but also tigers, a seal (?), an ostrich, a crocodile
and a camel, among others. After a few jungle shenanigans, Camora and
his gang learn that Butch and his tourists are still alive and go to the
island themselves to snuff them out - but with the help of the (incredibly
tame) jungle beasts, Butch and the tourists manage to defeat the gangsters
and bring them to justice. In the end, when everybody leaves, Butch
decides to stay behind on the island with the jungle girl. Alexander
Grill provides the incredibly bad comic relief while Jenny Jürgens and
then popular German teen idol Thommy Ohrner (who also provided the
horrible title song), star in a romantic subplot that has little to do
with the rest of the film. Childish jungle adventure with
frighteningly unfunny attempts at comedy - while some of the more serious
aspects of the film are actually (and unintentionally) hilarious, like the
totally non-sensical mix of jungle beasts, the jungle girl's campy outfit
or Thommy Ohrner's attempts at acting. Add to this the dramatically
challenged James Mitchum (one of robert's less talented sons) giving his
hero all the charm of an old drunk and you've got - oh, I don't even know
what you've got, figure it out yoursself ... but watch the film at your
own risk. One thing this film definitely is though, a sad swansong to
the career of Harald Reinl, one of Germany's most competent directors,
whose last feature this was.
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