Dr. Linda Roberts (Angela Greene) is in the jungle looking for the land of the giants. Linda is an anthropologist looking for what is being called the missing link. Jungle lore says that there is a hidden land where these giants live. Linda is looking for Jungle Jim (Johnny Weissmuller) to take her there so she can research the creatures hoping to find clues to mankind’s origins. Jim knows where the giants are supposed to live but he refuses to take her there. He says the area is treacherous and the giants are a violent and dangerous race.
Not long before Dr. Roberts came to the jungle an earthquake in the mountains resulted in two of the giants entering the area of the jungle where local tribes lived peacefully. The giants, a male and a female, were captured after they caused a lot of destruction. The earthquake also caused floods that sealed up all the mountain passes preventing the migration of elephants. Poachers are killing the trapped elephants. Commissioner Kingston (Lester Matthews) believes that the secret pass into the land of the giants would also be a pass for the elephants to get to the other side of the mountains. Kingston wants Jim to show him the way. Jim refuses him too.
In the meantime, Fred Lewis (George Eldredge), his ward, Denise (Jean Willes) and her boyfriend, Doc Edwards (William Tannen), harvest ivory from elephants. Jim sees a Zulu warrior, (Frederic Berest) steal a couple elephant tusks. He returns the tusks to Lewis’ buyer, Quigley (Frank Jaquet). Quigley mentions that he is willing to buy as much ivory as Lewis can provide despite the hunting limit. Lewis refuses but Denise has no scruples. Denise talks Commissioner Kingston into drugging the giants and letting them go. They will then follow them and find the secret passage. She lets the Commissioner think that her intensions are to let the elephants go through the pass to the other side of the mountains. What she really intends on doing is to trap the elephants in the pass and kill all the elephants before they can get through. Then she and Doc can sell the poached ivory to Quigley. Things don’t work the way they expected.
“Jungle Jim in the Forbidden Land” was released in 1952 and was directed by Lew Landers. It is a jungle adventure film with science fiction undertones and is the eighth of sixteen films made by Columbia Pictures featuring Johnny Weissmuller as Jungle Jim.
Jim doesn’t really get to the Forbidden Land. It’s more like the missing links from the Forbidden Land get to Jim. Also, the “missing links” look a lot like moth-eaten werewolves and they aren’t giants just tall. Their outfit consists of fur pants and a fur jacket. Highlights of the film are Jungle Jim wrestling with a stuffed panther and killing a two-ton hippo underwater with a buck knife. We also get another monkey stampede as well as an elephant stampede. Stock footage includes a jaguar vs wild pig fight. All in all it was fun.
Weissmuller went from playing Tarzan to playing Jungle Jim. He was getting a little older and had issues with keeping his weight to where the studio wanted, especially wearing nothing but a loincloth. As Jungle Jim he could wear khakis and not have to worry about his muscle to fat ratio. Still at least once in every Jungle Jim movie you see Jim standing on a rock or a shoreline in his underwear before he jumps into a river or lake to take a swim.
The giant man was played by Clem Erickson and the giant woman by Irmgard Helen H. Raschke. Jim’s pet money Tamba was played by Tamba.