Professor Carl Blakely (Selmer Jackson) and his daughter, Nora (Angela Stevens), hire Johnny Weissmuller (Johnny Weissmuller) to go into Kirundi country to try to find Blakely’s former associate, Professor Dixon (Billy Griffith). The area belongs to a tribe that worships a fire god that lives in a volcano.
Also running around are treasure seekers Joseph Leopold (Ed Hinton) and Nels Comstock (William Tannen) and a few minions. Nels bought a jewel encrusted dagger off of a Kirundi native for a pound of coffee. Leopold and Nels believe there are more artifacts out there. They venture into Kirundi country and find the native that traded the dagger. They force him and a few other natives to dig looking for more.
Johnny is approached by a Kirundi friend named Teinusi (Abel Fernandez). The Kirundi live near a volcano that has become active again. They are making a human sacrifice to the volcano god. The sacrifice is Teinusi’s fiancé Sarabina (Vera Francis). Teinusi wants Johnny to help rescue her.
Johnny saves Sarabina but only temporarily. The fire god turns out to be the missing Professor Dixon. He’s been saving the girls that the tribe has been sacrificing as brides to the fire god. The tribe recaptures Sarabina and injures Teinusi. The tribe is now after Johnny, and Leopold and Nels are taking shots at him whenever he comes too close to their dig. To make matters worse the volcano is getting ready to erupt and is going to wipe out the village.
“Devil Goddess” was released in 1955 and was directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet. It is a jungle adventure film and the last of 16 Jungle Jim movies starring Johnny Weissmuller. Due to copyright issues the name Jungle Jim could not be used so the jungle adventurer is called Johnny Weissmuller. It is still considered as one of the Columbia Jungle Jim movies and is part of the Jungle Jim cannon.
By this time Columbia has run out of ideas and stock footage for their jungle movies. The opening sequence is Kimba and another monkey and an orangutan getting drunk. Stock footage consists of scenes from other Jungle Jim movies that already contained stock footage. There is a whole section of the film that incorporates a scene from “Savage Mutiny” 1953 where a hyena and a bear fight. Then Johnny’s female co-star, played by Angela Stevens, loses her bag with vaccines in it and they have to go back. By now the hyena is joined by a lion and they are fighting over an antelope carcass. The entire scene has nothing to do with the plot of the movie. There is also some footage from “Voodoo Tiger” as well that really doesn’t fit.
There is no devil, no goddess and no devil goddess in “Devil Goddess” but Johnny does battle a gorilla on a rope bridge. That also has nothing to do with the story. It looks like the story was padded with whatever bits and pieces of film that was lying around. A lot of what goes on has nothing to do with the plot. Even the monkey business is just stuck in there. As for the jungle, it looks more like a quarry pit than a jungle. In addition, the volcano looks very similar to the one in “One Million BC” 1940. The movie is silly and unimpressive but Jungle Jim fans and completists will be interested in having it.