Jungle Jim (Johnny Weissmuller) is acting as guide for Phyllis Bruce (Jean Byron), a research writer to the British museum. She is working on documenting information on the origins of an African voodoo cult that worships tigers. They interrupt the ceremony of a voodoo doctor who is making a human sacrifice. Coming to their aid is an expedition led by Abel Peterson (James Seay). While in Peterson’s camp Jim receives a note from a jungle runner asking him to meet a plane coming in with an American Army officer on board.
At the airport Jim meets Major Bill Green (Robert Bray) and Commissioner Kingston (Richard Kipling). They ask Jim to take them to a local trading post run by Karl Werner (Michael Fox). At the trading post Green confronts Werner. It seems that Werner is really Heinrich Schultz, a Nazi that absconded with millions of dollars worth of art during the war. Just then Peterson and his two minions enter the trading post. Peterson and his cohorts have also been looking for Schultz. Green recognizes them as being criminals wanted for theft.
A fight breaks out between the bad guys and the good guys. In the melee Schultz escapes. He goes to the airport and hijacks the plane forcing the co-pilot to take off. On board the plane are members of a night club act. Among them is Shalimar (Jean Dean) who does an act with her pet tiger. The plane crashes in the jungle and the tiger escapes. The voodoo headhunters are ready to kill the white people until the tiger shows up and Shalimar pets it. Jim now has to go into headhunter territory to look for survivors while avoiding headhunters, Peterson and his minions, and a tiger.
“Voodoo Tiger” was released in 1952 and was directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet. It is a jungle adventure movie and the 9th of 16 Jungle Jim movies made by Columbia Pictures. As with all the Jungle Jim movies in the cannon, Jim was played by Johnny Weissmuller.
In this movie you get stock footage of a tiger battling a crocodile, a water buffalo and a leopard. Jim saves a drowning woman with a leg cramp and gets to fight a lion.
There’s a lot of moving parts in the plot of the film. Even so, the movie is only an hour and six minutes long so most of the plot elements don’t get a lot of attention. It sounds busy but elements are touched on and then it cuts to another plot element. A lot of possible areas are missed. Still there is enough touched on so that the movie is still entertaining. What it does have, with all that stuff going on, is a lot of action.