In the short we have Bela Lugosi play a mad scientist. And he has a beard. It looks kind of good on him. Bela does some science and some guy complains about something he has that wander around and goes crazy. That thing is a cool robot. The robot foolishly walks into a wall, but Bela has it fix the wall and go back to sleep.
Bela leaves to go with some lady. The lady is Bela’s wife. She’s doesn’t know about his robot or plan that we don’t even know about. This kind of seems like the second part. Bela has developed a way to put people in suspended animation. He plants a disk in something and a little robot spider goes to the disk and when it arrives the spider explodes and puts them in suspended animation. It’s pretty funny.
He also found a new element. Impressive. He says he’ll give the element to the government for a sum of money. His former partner says he shall give the element and Bela says screw him, but he walks away to his lab. Bela developed an invisibility belt and it looks like he was having a lot of pain. He says his assistant had failed so starts to improve it. It worked now after a dissolve cut and Bela gloats about his greatness. Bela has his robot uncover a secret passage and they transport the element and some other supplies to his secret lab. Man Bela has a ton of secret passages! He has a secret compartment in a secret cabinet, in a secret room. The wife gets a chipper, young white Captain and they tell all the stuff they now about Bela. They look through his old lab and they find that all the equipment is gone and a cigar is there. Bela and his assistant sneak through his secret exit and they drive away. They pick up a hitchhiker and they drive off. Apparently thinking he’ll be useful. The hitchhiker looked like him so they accidently crash their car off a cliff and it explodes. Bela and his assistant survive, but the look alike dies. Bela turns invisible runs to the home puts a disk in his wife’s handbag and they go to se the body. Some girl spies on them, sneaks aboard a plane, and Bela plans to put his wife to sleep with a spider. They take off in the plane and the spider explodes on the pilot because they took it out and put it on the dashboard. The controls are damaged and the girl that snuck on is now in a parachute suit and jumps out. The wife and captain are not shown to leave and the plane explodes ending the short.
The movie starts with a kind of funky soundtrack. I get a kick out of music like this for some reason. Almost tribal like music with a constant drum. Kind of like the music in The Manitou. We officially start in a club where a pilot is smoking. He hits on the singer, but he fails. Maybe? The pilot’s buddy meets him at the club and reminds him of their jobs. The first pilot tells his buddy their looking for a crashed plane in Africa for a $20,000 dollar reward. They look through some binoculars and find some stock footage. They find a crashed plane so they land in the jungle. They trek through some stock footage and fake jungle sets until they find some natives. One of the guys just flat out shoots one of the natives! He shall be henceforth known as crazy guy. So crazy guy and pilot get captured and brought to their village. And guess what? They are brought to the village with the woman they’re looking for!
The titular Jungle Goddess is quite striking
El coincidence! So crazy guy is also a bigot foe seeing no problem with killing one of the natives. One of the natives is super into this. Pilot is considered innocent and crazy guy is guilty and will be executed eight days from then. Crazy and pilot argue a bit and Pilot is taken to speak with the white goddess. So Pilot talks to the Goddess and she talks about how her father sent them to find her after he died. It was in his will. They go through a flashback where the girl is finished in college in America and takes a plane to the Netherlands to go home. Her plane flew over Africa and her plane crashes. She was the only survivor and she started wandering until the natives took her in and they worshipped her as a goddess for her white skin and medical knowledge. The Witch Doctor apparently doesn’t like her. So she wants Crazy Guy and the Pilot to escape. She doesn’t like Crazy Guy, but who would? They look outside to see some stock footage. Crazy guy and Pilot argue over stuff and the white goddess wants to eat with the Pilot to scheme with him. They eat Zebra and they call Crazy guy white devil and claims he breaths fire because of his cigarette. There’s his new nickname! They continue scheming and they decide to leave the next morning. Pilot finds a piece of rock for atom bombs and he brings it back to White Devil. White Devil tries to convince a native who’s close to White Goddess to help him. She doesn’t say anything to him, but she tells it all to White Goddess. Pilot gets pissed and leaves to talk to him. He takes the gun from White Devil, but they get into a fight and in the scuffle White Devil kills another guy. This forces White Devil, White Goddess, and Pilot to flee to the jungle and try to leave. They trip and she sprained her ankle. She gets along fine though. More stock footage ‘chases’ them and they rest for the night. White Goddess and Pilot talk about hats. Riveting.
Cut back from commercial then White Devil and Pilot are fighting. White Devil gets his gun and runs off. He starts shooting a lion and the natives close in. More wandering later and White Devil shoots a coconut. He shoots some more and trips on nothing. Wait did we just see this shot? Yes we just looped a set of scenes. White Goddess and Pilot find the plane, but White Devil attacks them, the witch doctor kills White Devil, and Pilot kills witch doctor. Then they get on the plane and fly off. The first skit is Joel and the bots hiding seek with the forces that control the universe. Odd… Well the invention exchange! Also I just realized that the Mole People have respirators. The behind the scenes reason is that the costumes were very uncomfortable and they had trouble working inside them. So they have the respirators to cover the mouths. Joel’s is a arm saw built into a toy car so you can drive it across the board, while cutting. Then Joel cuts a whole in the floor and falls through. Kind of funny. Dr. F’s is a saxophone and cut his head off and put in on a saxophone to make music. Not as funny. Next skit is…I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s a joke about the spider and disk explosions, but I just don’t get it… Next skit is joking about the binoculars showing stock footage that shows. So they put different overlays over Cambot to imitate different scenes through those views. My personal favorite is sniper scope. Goes for to long after a while. Lost its comedy after while. Okay Nope Scope was pretty funny. Nest skit is a ship coming to up next to them and my god this joke is getting so old so fast!!! This time it’s Pilot and White Devil being white imperialists. Not funny! Last skit is a funny sitcom parody called “My White Goddess”. Tom is White Devil, Crow is Pilot, and Joel is White Goddess. Pretty funny. All the jokes about White Devil killing everything in sight are pretty funny. The rest of the episode had some funny bits and the skits were hit or miss. The movie was okay. Typical 50’s movie. People would have found it exciting them, but not it’s just kind of dull. Check it out.
Episode Rating – 5/10
Movie Rating – 3/10
Favorite Riff – ‘Why are you called white devil?’ “Because I kill indiscriminately!”
Possible Stinger – The close up of the robot and the robot saluting Bela Lugosi.
Episode – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3SKwDHX1i4
Trailer – None