The Naked Jungle *** (1954, Charlton Heston, Eleanor Parker, Abraham Sofaer, William Conrad) – Classic Movie Review 8202

Director Byron Haskin’s 1954 jeopardy action adventure thriller The Naked Jungle stars Eleanor Parker as mail-order bride Joanna Leiningen, who goes to live with her rich new cocoa plantation-owner husband Christopher (Heston) in the Amazon jungles.

When he finds out that she is a widow, he decides to reject her and send her away. But in the week of her departure, the duo learn they are to be menaced by legions of rampaging ants. They are not giant ants this time, but a two-mile-wide, 20-mile-long column of army ants  – the ‘marabunta’. Can they save themselves, the plantation and their marriage?

Haskin’s turn-of-the-last-century (it is 1901) jungle melodrama has the courage of its convictions, and is surprisingly well produced and confidently handled. In some ways it is a typical work of the fantasy producer George Pal, who also made The War of the Worlds, Tom Thumb and The Time Machine.

The Naked Jungle is always entertaining and surprisingly suspenseful. It is infused with a palpable sense of menace and danger, and is realised with authoritative star acting. The posh screenplay is by Oscar-winning Philip Yordan and Oscar-nominated Ranald MacDougall, based on the 1937 short story Leiningen versus the Ants by Carl Stephenson.

However, Oscar-nominated Ben Maddow co-wrote the screenplay with MacDougall, and the Philip Yordan credit is a front for blacklisted writer Ben Maddow. Maddow claimed: ‘Philip Yordan has never written more than a sentence in his life. He’s incapable of writing.’ Maddow claimed he had written several screenplays that Yordan signed.

Also in the cast are William Conrad as the Commissioner, Abraham Sofaer as Incacha, John Dierkes, Douglas Fowley, Romo Vincent, Leonard Strong, Norma Calderon, John Mansfield and Ronald Allen.

It was shot in Technicolor by Ernest Laszlo and filmed at Paramount Studios, Hollywood, Los Angeles; Florahome, Florida (dynamiting of bridges); and Barro Colorado Island, Panama (jungle scene footage).

The noise of the ants devouring everything in their way was created low tech by swirling a straw in a glass of water with crushed ice, with the sound amplified.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8202

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