JUNGLE DRUMS OF AFRICA (1953)

 

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

I first saw this 12-part serial in a condensed TV-form, where it was given the awkward title of "U-238 and the Witch Doctor." But though it's not a very euphonious sounding title, it's more accurate than the original, since "jungle drums" play no real role in the story. 

DRUMS was one of the last Republic serials, and though a number of other serials from the studio cobbled together earlier footage to save money, this one uses only a handful of brief scenes from other films. The conflict is predicated on the good-hearted mission of two Americans from a uranium processing company who want an African tribe's permission to dig for the radioactive mineral. The quest for uranium barely influences the plot as such; instead, it's simply the bone over which two sets of dogs fight. On the good guy side, there's American agents Alan King (Clayton Moore) and Bert Hadley (Johnny Spencer), as well as a white female doctor who ministers to the tribe, Carol Bryant (Phyllis Coates, who would play a jungle-heroine two years later in the same studio's PANTHER GIRL OF THE KONGO, one of the very serials which did employ a lot of old footage). One other good guy has a minor influence on the plot, the tribe's chief Dounga, who favors the Americans because he himself was educated at an American college-- but despite this promising touch, Douanga does very little). On the side of the bad guys are a handful of unmemorable white traders who want to harvest the uranium for a foreign power, and the witch doctor of the alternate title. The latter, Naganto by name, is pissed off because all of his tribesmen give their business to the white doctor, so that Naganto can't sell his phony magical cures. (He's played skillfully by Roy Glenn, immortalized as the Black Dad in GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER.) 

Most of the serial consists of the bad guys trying to get rid of the American agents, either in running gun-battles or with involved traps. The diabolical devices include a spear-launcher set to fire when a rope is pulled and a "hypnotic drug" that causes a hulking warrior to attack the two Americans without cause. More interesting is the serial's replay (with almost no old footage) of the wind-tunnel menace from 1942's PERILS OF NYOKA. The seesaw battles finally come to a head and the villains are defeated, so that beneficent American technology can continue bringing light to the Dark Continent, or something like that. 

Though DRUMS is pedestrian in concept, the charm of the three good guys and the wily Naganto make this chapterplay an adequate time-killer. In contrast to some other jungle-serials, the heroine here is pretty gutsy, often seeming less like a lady doctor than like a sharp-shooting jungle guide.