Daughter of the Jungle (1982)

Just when I thought I've seen it all, Daughter of the Jungle falls down in my lap. A jungle-comedy directed by Umberto Lenzi and written by his nemesis, the actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice! I wonder how this movie came to be? Radice and Lenzi never liked each other from the beginning and here they're doing a comedy together? And it feels even more bizarre after watching Lenzi's gruesome jungle-horrors he made earlier. But the question is of course if it works as a comedy? Yeah, I would say so. Silly, but with a few laughs here and there.

Butch and Ringo are two morons from New York who goes to the jungle for vacation. They hire a boat and gets lost directly out in the jungle. They befriends a tribe and not long thereafter a blonde woman, Luana (played by blonde bombshell Sabrina Siani) who crashed with her family when she was three years old and now is the female Tarzan (with her own monkey, Shita). But the evil Dupré (a very funny Sal Borghese) and his clumsy henchmen is also out in the jungle hunting for rubies - and they think that Butch and Ringo also are after these stones! Cue hilarious adventures.

I've seen a couple of Italian comedies before, so it's not a surprise that Daughter of the Jungle often relies itself on cheap sex-jokes, nudity and a lot of slapstick - often someone getting something funny in the head and makes a funny face or two. But I also have to admit that I laughed more than one time and much of the dialogue comes in such a frantic pace that it's hard not to be charmed by the characters or giggle at people falling on their asses. This is not big art, but it's entertaining - and I guess those who like Sabrina naked will be happy with what they see.

Much have been said that this is a spoof of Lenzi's cannibal-movies. I would have liked to say so myself, but it's just a comedy set in a jungle - and that doesn't make a self-referential spoof of any kind. But maybe the countless hours in the jungle inspired Lenzi and Radice to make a comedy in an environment that just caused pain? A sort of a catharsis. Anyway, how the hell should I know? It's hard to read in anything deeper in Daughter of the Jungle. It's a comedy with actors who has good chemistry together and a naked chick. That's what you get, nothing else and it's quite funny.

Ah, it's for the first time in the world out on DVD - from Njuta Films as usual. They have an OK looking widescreen-print, far from stellar and quite grainy, but I guess it beats a lot of the earlier VHS-releases out there.

Over and out.