PANTHER GIRL OF THE KONGO (1955)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

PANTHER, one of Republic’s last chapterplays, was crafted with an eye toward recycling footage from JUNGLE GIRL.  To that end, actress Phyllis Coates played a new character—Jean Evans, nicknamed “Panther Girl” for no explicit reason.  She’s usually seen wearing an outfit identical to that of Nyoka Meredith, so that the filmmakers could re-use any scenes that didn’t clearly show the face of Frances Gifford.  The main plot again revolves around getting diamonds, although the new script injected overt SF-elements.  A group of lawbreakers desire to scare both natives and “good whites” away from a diamond mine, so their leader Doctor Morgan creates an enlarging-ray and turns loose super-large crayfish to menace the locals. Since these locals include wildlife photographer Jean Evans and her friend big game hunter Larry Sanders, they end up battling Morgan’s thugs—though neither Morgan nor his oversized crawdads appear very often.

Sadly, though the original photography is crisp enough to match the re-used footage, and some of the original action-scenes are decent, the filmmakers chose not to give their Panther Girl even the minor fighting-skills of Nyoka Meredith.  Discounting scenes in which Panther Girl duplicates the feats of Nyoka—chiefly the lion-killing scene—Jean Evans succumbs every time to the old “head-bump/ instant faint” schtick, bowing out so that Larry can do the fighting.  Phyllis Coates gives the role as much heroic stature as she can manage under the circumstances, but on top of getting knocked out so often, Jean screams an awful lot.  She’s at least handy with a rifle or handgun, but rarely if ever does her skill as a markswoman save the day.

In this scenario the African natives are either passive helpers or impediments.  Early in the story, prior to the white characters finding out that the giant monsters feared by the natives are for real, one of the whites remarks on the “superstition” of the Africans.  The giant crayfish are of course merely normal-sized specimens given the usual rear-projection, and were probably added in imitation of the proliferation of giant-monster sf-flicks in the period.