The dog tags of a Woman's Army Corps officer are found in the jungle along with a few other items by our hero Jungle Jim with the body of a dead pygmy. Our government has taken an interest in finding and maybe rescuing Ann Savage because with those dog tags is a piece of rope made of a substance grown only in the jungle. It's strong and it doesn't burn. Of course there are other and unfriendly governments also interested and in 1950 that could only mean the Commies though they are never identified by name. In the film that would be Steven Geray and William Tannen who want to find Savage for their own nefarious purposes.So it's Johnny Weissmuller and David Bruce for our side and Geray and Tannen for the bad guys going to look for Savage in pygmy country. A lot of stock jungle footage, an elephant stampede, and Jungle Jim battling a gorilla or a guy in a gorilla suit in unconvincing fashion.When the Jungle Jim series ended, Weissmuller took the series to television where it was better suited. Still it only lasted a season there.With King Solomon's Mines and The African Queen on the horizon, the movie going public would little tolerate films like Pygmy Island. It's not tolerable now.

***SPOILERS*** Jungle Jim, Johnny Weissmuller, gets recruited by the Unitate States Government to find this Ngoma plant that only grows on an island off the coast of Africa that produces fibers that are indestructible. It''s a foreign and unmanned power or government, take you pick, who want's to get it's hands on that plant and use it for evil purposes. Like in bankrupting the US as well as other Western textile industries and causing a major depression in the commodity stock markets!With secret US Government agent Captain Ann R. Kingsley, Ann Savage, lost in the jungle, she's actually being protected by a group of white Pygmys, looking for the plant it's now up to our hero Jungle Jim, or JJ for short, to both find and rescue her before the bad guys lead by the double dealing Leon Marko, Steven Gray, find her and where the valuable Ngoma plant is being grown. Jungle Jim does his usual thing in he movie "Pygmy island" including fighting and killing a man eating but rubber crocodile as well as slugging it out with a man in a monkey suit who seemed to have gotten the better of him until his pet chimpanzee Tamba came to JJ's rescue. Tamba not only ends up whipping the big hairy gorilla silly but also makes a monkey out of the guy as well.It's Marko and his cut throat cohorts who disguised themselves as the notorious Bush Devil tribesmen who terrify the Pygmys into deserting their villages that contains the soil where the Ngoma plant grows in. Once it's reviled by Jungle Jim that the Bush Devils are nothing but a gang of puny, in the Pygmy's eyes, white men it doesn't take long for them to get on message and with the help of Jim put and end to their reign of greed and terror on Pygmy Island.The fifth installment of some dozen Jungle Jim movies that by now seems to be following the same storyline with Jim and his jungle friends doing in the bad guys who are mostly greedy foreigners who are up to no good. Being made in 1950 when the Cold War was heating up, with the Korean War breaking out that summer, the bad guys in the film were obviously eastern block USSR communists but for some strange reason the makers of the film kept their identities or loyalties secret. Maybe it was done in not giving the Reds a reason, in being made to look like a bunch of buffoons and complete fools on the silver screen, to make things for us,the nations free world, worse then they already were!

I can't believe it's been five years already, but that's when I last went on a Jungle Jim movie blitz, having sat through nine of these epics. I have to say, my timing is incredible because Turner Classics is running a Saturday noon-time gig of Johnny Weissmuller's jungle adventures at the present time. I only became aware of it today, but as luck would have it, I've seen the first four in the series, and today they were showing the fifth, "Pygmy Island". It was a bit of a hoot to see Turner host Ben Mankiewicz offering a scholarly intro to this flick because let's face it, these movies are terrible in almost all respects, but they're such a blast I plan on catching all the ones I haven't seen yet.So right off the bat, you have to wonder about the title of this picture. Unless I'm mistaken, there was no island, and if one were to assume this story took place in Africa, a lost tribe of white pygmies would have been bigger news than the missing female Army Captain (Ann Savage) at the center of the story. Ann Kingsley is the government's top expert in plant chemical research, and she's hot on the trail of the nagoma plant that has properties that can produce a virtually indestructible rope. But so are those dreaded Nazi-like foreign agents who have their eye on the same prize.Apparently Hollywood kept a reserve supply of midget actors on hand for pictures requiring their talents, as the entire cast of "The Wizard of Oz" seems to have shown up here in loincloth to portray the pygmy tribe. Their leader Makuba was none other than Billy Curtis, better known to film fans a couple decades later as the only citizen of Lago to befriend Clint Eastwood's Stranger in "High Plains Drifter". I also had to do a double take to figure out who his friend Kimba was, good old Billy Barty. Check him out and tell me if he doesn't look like a miniature version of Huntz Hall.Well your usual jungle antics are on display here, as Jungle Jim wrestles a rubber crocodile, survives an elephant stampede, and manages to escape a fierce but comical looking gorilla atop a wooden bridge strung across a high gorge. Later on, he's kidnapped by the bad guys after being pulled from quicksand fighting one of the enemy. Did you notice they used the barrel end of a rifle to do that? How safe do you think that was? Speaking of that gorilla, I think another reviewer had it right, that had to be Crash Corrigan in the monkey suit.You know, I wish I could have been around to be with this bunch filming a picture like this. Can you imagine how sloshed they must have gotten every night trying to forget what they just put on film. But boy, I'm glad these pictures survived, because who would have ever believed it.

Pygmy Island (1950) ** (out of 4) The fifth film in the series has Jungle Jim (Johnny Weissmuller) helping rescue a woman (Ann Savage) who went into the jungle and never returned. It turns out that a group of white men are racing against the government trying to locate a mysterious rope that can't burn and this here starts up a war with a group of midgets led by Makuba (Billy Curtis). If you're expecting any type of "quality" from a Jungle Jim movie then you're going to be disappointed. I'm sure kids back in the day were thrilled and terrified to see Jungle Jim fight a rubber alligator but when seen today you can't help but view it as nothing more than camp. What's shocking is that they were able to squeeze out sixteen of these films and their quality might not have ever gotten too high but the camp value is usually there. The actual story here is certainly better than some of the entries in the series as the groups are trying to locate this mysterious plant, which will allow them to make a fireproof rope. All is good as we get several fights, an elephant stampede, crocodiles attacking and we get the highlight involving a large gorilla. In the film's best scene Jungle Jim and his friendly chimp are crossing one of those bridges that connect two cliffs and of course there's a long fall to your death if you go over the side. When Jim gets over the bridge he's attacked by a large gorilla (man in a suit of course) and their battle is downright hilarious. Seeing Weissmuller having to fight a gorilla is worth sitting through the entire film. As you'd expect, the performances are all bland to bad with Weissmuller showing that he was more image than acting talent. Savage appears to be asking yourself what she's doing in this type of film but at least Curtis is fun as the midget leader. At 69-minutes the film still seems way too long but if you're into these types of "B" movies then you might find this one a tad bit better than some but at the same time that's really not saying much.