I was a little curious about Johnny Sheffield's age when he made this picture so I had to take a look. Turns out he was about twenty four, which might have been a hint that Bomba the Jungle Boy wouldn't work as a character much longer. Later on in the story hunter Jeff Wood (Wayne Morris) called him a junior ape man making it sound kind of derogatory. I guess it was time to call it quits.The story isn't too bad, Bomba shows his mettle in protecting a herd of elephants that hunters have been authorized to kill by the territorial commissioner due to their destructive rampages. Turns out however that it was a lone rogue elephant responsible for the havoc, so Bomba intends to single him out as the bad guy. There was a running theme that Bomba actually owned the land that the elephants were living on by virtue of his parents having settled and worked there. I don't know how one would lay claim to jungle property but everyone seemed to accept it in the story.I'm not certain how far back one would have to go in film history to credit the first time it happened, I'm sure Tarzan had his fair share of vine swing saves the way Bomba did here with pretty Mona Andrews (Nancy Hale). It always brings to mind what most modern viewers recall about Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia. She didn't kiss him however, that actually happened earlier in the picture, and it was Bomba planting an innocent peck on the cheek of Miss Andrews.The one thing I did find hilarious in the film had to do with the African native drum talk, especially when Molu (Joel Fluellen) rapped his drum exactly the same way each time, and each time it meant something different. That was in the same league as all those Westerns in which Indian tribes communicate by smoke signals, or better yet, each time Tonto communicated with the Lone Ranger with identical hand waves under entirely different circumstances. How can you possibly interpret that?

The last in the Bomba series starring Johnny Sheffield. This also happens to be the last film of Sheffield's career, as he wisely retired after this. The plot to this one has Bomba trying to stop a rogue elephant in order to prevent an entire herd from being slaughtered by government-sanctioned hunters. The idea that one elephant can essentially lead a herd of them into doing things they don't want to do seems pretty out there but it's best to just go with it. Also this movie introduces the fact that Bomba OWNS the African jungle he inhabits, apparently because his birth father bought it. How this was never mentioned in any of the other movies is beyond me but, again, just go with it.In addition to Sheffield and regulars Leonard Mudie and Smoki Whitfield, there's a portly Wayne Morris as one of the hunters and Nancy Hale as the niece of Bomba's friend Andy Barnes. She has an obligatory swimming scene, as most of the girls in this series did. Wayne Morris is far removed from his days as a leading man for Warner Bros. If it weren't for his distinctive voice, I might have mistaken him for George Kennedy here. There's even more stock footage than usual in this entry. It's used well and the action scenes with the elephants are good. There are also more scenes of Bomba swinging through the jungle than normal. The Bomba series is not one of my favorites and it is certainly far below the quality of the Tarzan movies Sheffield co-starred in with Johnny Weissmuller. Still, most of them are enjoyable enough and this is a good end to the series.

Good clean fun. Johnny Sheffield retired his loincloth and vine rope with this twelfth and final entry in the "Bomba" series, started in 1949 by writer-producer-director Ford Beebe and Monogram Pictures (by now transformed into Allied Artists). It was appropriately timed, of course, as Sheffield no longer looks like a Jungle Boy, apt to running away from the girls after a chaste kiss. Here, Bomba attempts to stop elephant hunters sent by the government to kill a wild herd, convinced that one rogue pachyderm is responsible for leading the others astray. Beebe's method of inter-cutting stock wildlife footage with the African-set adventures usually results in a visual hodgepodge; with "Lord", however, the editing is pretty sharp, particularly during the exciting climax. Bomba and a stubborn young woman from London became fast friends (complete with a romantic moonlight smooch), though he ends up aiding her in a reconciliation with her bleeding-heart fiancé and walks away with his standard friendly wave. Amusingly, no female was ever able to topple this lord of the jungle! **1/2 from ****

Lord of the Jungle (1955) * 1/2 (out of 4) The twelfth and final film in the series was clearly showing that the thing was out of gas and needed to be stopped. This time out Bomba (Johnny Sheffield) has to deal with a bunch of hunters out to kill a group of elephants who are stampeding villages and killing people. Bomba believes that if you kill the rouge leader that the rest will return to being good but will he have time to save them? Issues with elephants have been rampant through this series as well as other jungle adventures like Tarzan. Something I've noticed in this series is that quite often Bomba is on the fence about being a jerk at times and fighting for things that just make him look silly. I think that line is crossed here because he really does come off as a jerk and while he continues to fight for the elephants more people die yet he's still only interested in the elephants. Perhaps had the writing been stronger the character could have been filled out some more but writing and Bomba never really went together. At just 69-minutes this film goes along quite slowly and as usual we're treated to some silly stock footage, rear-projection shots and of course endless scenes of dialogue with people talking about what they're going to do. This all grows very tiresome in this entry and it turns out that the last was also one of the worst. You'd think with so many elephants that you could come up with something better but I'm going to guess that everyone knew this was it so not too much effort went into it. Sheffield fits the role nicely, as usual, but even he seems to be lacking some energy. Wayne Morris makes for a good heavy but he's actually not in the film too much. Nancy Hale plays the love interest but her character is really underwritten. LORD OF THE JUNGLE will only need to be viewed by those, like me, who enjoy watching every movie in a series no matter how poor they are. Now with all twelve Bomba films viewed, this series certainly wasn't high art but Sheffield was good.