User Reviews

Airline manager Jack Holt fires Dick Purcell from his job as a pilot because he can't follow orders. Then boss's daughter Julie Bishop -- whom Jack loves -- tells him she and Purcell are secretly married. So Holt rehires Purcell, who promises to obey orders. When the airline gets a job to survey the vaste Amazonian jungle for landing sites, Purcell steals the designated pilot's plane to garner glory for himself. Ordered to turn back for lack of fuel, he ignores the orders and disappears. So Holt leads an expedition to try and find the dope.

If you've yearned to see Holt looking like a Wally Wood cartoon from Mad Magazine, in the khaki shorts and wearing a pith helmet, five hundred miles from civilization and six miles from the nearest Howard Johnson's, this is the movie for you. In terms of story, it's like someone took a serial and cut it down to five reels, with head-hunting natives, doctors being held against their wills to help out savages, and, of course, Jack Holt being stalwart. Plus Lotus Long as a native girl, Fritz Leiber as her father, Robert Fiske as the bushy-bearded medico, and Ward Bond as a radio operator.

Blessedly coming in at 64 minutes, this is one of the worst films I've ever seen for several reasons. While the print is immaculate, the story is ludicrous and the characters stupid beyond belief. Plot has hotshot pilot Dick Purcell breaking all the rules to the point of getting fired from his job at an air freight line that seems to service everywhere between Seattle and Panama. But the boss (Jack Holt) knows he's a good pilot so he only demotes him. Next up Purcell hijacks a plane from comic relief James Burke (!) but it has not be fully fueled. They tell him by radio but he chooses to think they're joshing him (!) and he keeps on flying toward Panama until he runs out of fuel and crashes in a jungle. Of course they launch a hugely expensive expedition to find/save the downed pilot (who might be dead) but save some other guy (Robert Fiske) from a tribe of headhunters. Eventually they find Purcell who's shacked up with the chief's daughter (she's half White) in a kindly tribe that wears ankle length dresses. He seems to be married to her, but he's also secretly married to the big boss' daughter (Jacqueline Wells aka Julie Bishop) back home. As they depart the village, Purcell finally gets his comeuppance. Howard Hickman plays the big boss, Ward Bond is a radioman, and Lotus Long plays the tribal wife. Purcell is insufferable, Burke is no Walter Brennan, and Holt's upper lip never moves.