KING OF THE JUNGLE. Paramount, 1933. Buster Crabbe, Frances Dee, Sidney Toler, Nydia Westman, Robert Barrat, Irving Pichel, Douglas(s) Dumbrille. Based on the novel The Lion’s Way, by Charles Thurley Stoneham. Directors: H. Bruce Humberstone & Max Marcin.

   King of the Jungle was one of the earliest and best of the flood of sequels, ripoffs and imitations that followed the success of MGM’s Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) and while it doesn’t have much going for it in the Originality Department, it’s a lively and inventive little film well worth a look.

   The story (in which Philip Wylie had a hand) chronicles the adventures of a shrill little brat raised by Lions (sound familiar?) after his father — played in a short scene, back carefully to Camera, by Douglass Dumbrille, who turns up later in a different part altogether — is killed on Safari.

   The lad grows to strapping manhood in the form of Buster Crabbe, who would later play every pop culture hero known to kids in the first half of this century, becomes leader of the tribe pride, gets captured by Circus Folk and eventually travels to San Francisco, where he (WARNING!) successfully resists the lures of the Big City, gets the Girl, sets his adoptive family free and returns with the lot of them to Africa. (END OF WARNING!)

   Admittedly, it’s all pretty damsilly, but Crabbe is fun to watch, Francs Dee makes an intelligent heroine, and Sidney Toler turns up as a sympathetic Sawdust Impresario. There’s also a spectacular Circus Fire (re-used in Road to Zanzibar and godknows where else) an impressive Elephant Stampede through Downtown Frisco, and even a touch of Artistry here and there, as in the opening when the hero’s father gets his Safari Permit: the camera pans in on the document, then dissolves to a tracking shot, still moving, of the tattered document blown listlessly past dead bodies strewn about a ravaged camp site.

   MGM spent more and went further with Tarzan, but they never surpassed the charm and energy of this shaggy-dog one-shot.