LORD OF THE JUNGLE (1955)

 

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

LORD OF THE JUNGLE-- which some writer may have borrowed from the title of a 1928 Tarzan book-- at least places the jungle boy in a situation that pits his love for the jungle-world against the encroachments of civilization. After a herd of elephants wreaks chaos on various native habitats, the colonial government sends Wood (Wayne Morris) and his fellow hunters to gun down the whole herd. Bomba argues with Wood, claiming that only the leader of the pack is a rogue, and that, if the rogue leader is killed, the other elephants will go back to their non-destructive ways. Wood, though not a true villain, is a martinet who insists on following his orders, and he doesn't like it when Bomba tries to keep the elephants on his land to prevent their being slaughtered. Bomba meets some resistance also from the local commissioner, who's usually on the jungle boy's side in other entries, but the commissioner's niece Mona (yes, another swimming fiend) throws her support toward the hero. Though Bomba is put into a few perilous pickles from stampeding elephants, in the end he gets his way when the rogue is slain and the other elephants are spared. Thus the series ends on the same quasi-ecological theme with which the first film in the series began.