Jungle Jim 02
Jungle Jim
Old Time Radio Programs. Presenting the Adventures of Jungle Jim, True Friend to all good men, relentless enemy of all bad ones no matter what their race or creed may be. Episodes 101 - 200 10-02-1937 thru 08-26-39
This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.
Chapters
Reviews
Good Serial Adventure
Alonzo Church
By the time of this second group of 200 adventures, the writers of this series had worked out most of the kinks, and had developed a good -- if somewhat slow moving -- serial. Jungle Jim, by this time, is charactarized as the best man-hunter in the business, and, in this group of episodes, he mostly stays in the jungle, dealing with power-mad warlords, a set of pirates, and towards the end of this part of the run, an exceptionally nasty native tribe. Shanghai Lil is the girl interest throughout, even though she turns evil for 15 or so episodes and helps the villain of one of the arcs, because Jim won't marry her and settle down. Lil varies between th good-natured sarcasm of a Myrna Loy, and the not so good-natured sarcasm of an Eve Arden. She's the kind of gal who will defend you with a machine gun at one minute, and then send you a live, fanged cobra as a going-away present after you've had a spat. In other words, she's the sort of hot, dangerous babe that makes these kind of dramas fun. Episodes can move slowly, particularly when one arc has ended, and a new one is getting started. However, some of the episodes can get rather harrowing. Racism is, of course, rampant, and anyone who has issues with the un-pc aspects of the past had best ignore this. It is worth noting, though, that Jim's jungle man colleague is resourceful, and more intelligent than most of the peole Jim encounters while fighting villainy in the far east.
Superior to the B films
qrper
The review of Mister Church is quite succinct. I agree with his comments. I recall seeing the Jungle Jim B pictures many years ago and must say the voice of the radio Jim is much more agreeable than that of Johnny Weismuller. And the radio version, because of it's theater of the mind advantages, was able to deliver more intrigue than that possible from the mock jungle on the film studio back lot.