NABONGA (1944)

T.F. Stockwell, wanted on charges of bank embezzlement of securities and jewels, flees Cairo with his young daughter Doreen in a small chartered plane. During a storm, the plane crashes in a jungle. When the pilot sees the riches Stockwell has with him, Stockwell shoots him dead, then realizes that Doreen has wandered off. The last we see of Doreen, she is standing next to a wounded ape. Several years later, Ray Gorman (Buster Crabbe) arrives at a jungle village near where Stockwell's plane went down. Gorman's father wound up getting blamed for Stockwell's crimes and committed suicide, and Gorman is seeking either revenge or the jewels. He has heard rumors of a white jungle witch who lives alone in the jungle and, thinking it may be Stockwell's daughter, he tries to find her. Following him is unscrupulous treasure hunter Carl Hurst (Barton MacLane) and his lover Marie (Fifi D'Orsay). Gorman eventually meets the sarong-wearing Doreen (Julie London) who lives alone quite comfortably in a jungle cave with Samson, the ape she befriended as a child. She and Gorman hit it off, but when he tries to talk her into giving him her late father's riches, she understandably says no, they belong to her. Gorman can't be too aggressive because Samson's instinct is to be very protective of Doreen. Eventually, Carl and Marie appear, causing trouble for all. A rather abrupt ending leaves the bad guys taken care of and Doreen apparently ready to head to civilization with Gorman and the jewels..

This is an average low-budget jungle melodrama, made watchable mostly by Buster Crabbe's likable performance and the presence of Julie London in her first film. Though she continued acting (including a seven season stint on the 70s show Emergency), she became better known as a torch singer ("Cry Me a River," a strangely sexy version of the bubblegum song "Yummy Yummy Yummy" that was prominently featured in an episode of Six Feet Under). At the tender age of 18, she's a bit uncertain in the role of a jungle goddess, though to be fair, we never see her acting as a traditional jungle goddess (like Sheena) would—she seems happy to live alone with her ape and have little to do with any humans. Crabbe almost veers into comic relief with his somewhat exaggerated reactions to Samson, but otherwise he's the perfect stoic B-movie jungle hero. MacLane and D'Orsay are serviceable villains. Busy B-actor Ray 'Crash' Corrigan, who made dozens of westerns, plays the gorilla, something he did in several movies; the title is apparently the ineffable name of the gorilla, though in the movie I only heard it called Samson. The jungle animal stock footage is not especially well integrated into the movie, but that's par for the course. [YouTube]