Wed 28 Dec 2022
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: THE PINK JUNGLE (1968)
Posted by Steve under Action Adventure movies , Reviews[6] Comments
THE PINK JUNGLE. Universal, 1968. James Garner, Eva Renzi, George Kennedy, and Nigel Greene. Screenplay by Charles Williams, based on the novel Snake Water by Alan Williams. Directed by Delbert Mann.
James Garner plays a two-fisted fashion photographer who can flatten a man with one punch and hit two tossed cans in mid-air, shooting from the hip.
Let me repeat that: James Garner plays a two-fisted fashion photographer who can flatten a man with one punch and hit two tossed cans in mid-air, shooting from the hip.
I really should end the review right there, but since this was Charles Williams’ only filmed screenplay, and they do explain (sort of) our hero’s prowess at the end, it really deserves a bit more attention. So here it is.
For purposes of plot, Garner starts out the movie stuck in a backward South-or-Central American nation doing a photoshoot with super-model Eva Renzi. A convenient helicopter is just as conveniently stolen by lovable bad-guy George Kennedy (fresh from his Supporting Actor Oscar in Cool Hand Luke) who soon gets the couple involved in a search for a lost diamond mine.
En route to the treasure, the actors and camera crew leave the Universal backlot jungle for the arid vistas of Nevada, but they can’t shake off the hackneyed plot. They encounter another colorful rogue (Nigel Greene) and end up in a rather tame gun battle with a mousey little guy from earlier in the movie who wants all the diamonds for himself. (SPOILER ALERT!) He doesn’t get them. (END OF SPOILER ALERT!) A couple double-crosses later, it all comes to a merciful end.
Universal ground out a number of B-movies like this in the late 1960s, all seemingly put together with the same formula: A leading man past his prime, a dependable character actor, and an eye-catching actress to play carnal cat-and-mouse with the fading male lead. Stir in a modicum of action, a dollop of whatever passes for romance, and a hint of humor, let it stew among the familiar Universal studio sets and “exteriors†and….
And it worked quite well in PJ and Coogan’s Bluff. Less so — much less so — in things like The Hell with Heroes, A Lovely Way to Die, Jigsaw, and others too lame to name, by which standard, Pink Jungle is a Wheelchair Case.
To his credit, Charles Williams does what he can with it, throwing a knowing wink into the dialogue when the clichés pile up, but even he can’t get this one up on its feet. Hell, it’d take divine intervention to pull this cinematic Lazarus from its celluloid tomb, and while I can’t say for sure that angels feared to tread the Universal backlot, they never seemed to show up there in significant numbers.
I shall add that James Garner manages to grin and look light-hearted through all this, Nigel Greene projects his accustomed authority in too little screen time, and Eva Renzi, memorable in The Quiller Memorandum (or was it Funeral in Berlin? I forget which.) fills her forgettable part more than adequately.
But it’s all for naught under Daniel Mann’s leaden direction. How they kept his obvious disinterest from spreading to the rest of the cast I can’t figure — perhaps they quarantined him — but The Pink Jungle just isn’t worth that much deep thought.
December 28th, 2022 at 10:37 pm
Harmless and enhanced as much as it could be by that cast, but the book SNAKE WATER by Alan Williams is actually quite good, all the silliness left out, and surprisingly Williams series character, well one of them, is Sammy Ryderback George Kennedy’s character who appears in most of Williams later works along with his other series character fat ruthless French fixer Charles Pol (both appear in HOLY OF HOLIES where a plot is afoot to drop a nuclear weapon on Mecca).
Alan Williams (BARBOUZE) was a British war correspondent with seven league boots who had been many of the places he wrote about, but the decision to camp this up with tongue so far in cheek it is nearly swallowed does the book no justice.
December 29th, 2022 at 12:37 am
Dan,
I don’t know anything about this film or the original property. David seems to have a fine insight relative to that, but a personal basis, I avoid any Universal product, especially those with James Garner or George Peppared heading the cast. On the other hand, Garner was certainly not past his prime, just in a lousy picture. Now, lousy does not mean a B film, after the early or mid-fifiti9es, there were none.
B does not mean cheap, although they were, but how they were sold to exhibitors. A films received negotiated percentage of box office, B films were sold at a fixed rate, although a Gene Autry was certain to get a higher price than a Bob Steele or Buster Crabbe. Same with Roy, although some Autry and Rogers films went out as A’s. On the other hand, it is not so straightforward. The original Thin Man was shot in two weeks for about two hundred thousand dollars. It went out as an A. Meaning, MGM did just dandy.
So, let us just call this thing lousy.
December 29th, 2022 at 9:14 am
Barry,
“Past his prime” doesn’t really apply to James Garner at this stage in his life; his career was just in temporary eclipse until THE ROCKFORD FILES and Kodak commercials pulled it back into the sunlight.
December 29th, 2022 at 10:29 am
Just For The Record:
Jim Garner’s commercials were for Polaroid, not Kodak.
… and if you don’t think that makes a difference, you don’t know anything about the Business (and it is a Business above all else).
December 29th, 2022 at 10:57 am
Mike, I cheerfully confess I know pretty close to nothing about “the Business” except that launching into a discussion of it here would steer the conversation away from the subject of the Review.
December 29th, 2022 at 4:06 pm
“I avoid any Universal product” –ha! Ha! That’s sure taking some firm stand. I like the forthrightness behind it.
“…and it is a Business above all else”.
Another toothsome remark. It sure is.
James Garner: quite a few ineffectual movies in that era, I suppose. But I’d still watch him in anything. He has good credit with me. Garner has that quintessential American “everyman” zip.
A similar flick (to this Pink Jungle thing) which I’ve never seen but always meant to, “A Man Could Get Killed”.
That’s the kind of attitude Garner excelled at, the wide-eyed “what are you getting me into?” regular-joe-in-over-his-head.