Jungle Bride (DVD)

Doris Evans' brother is on Death Row and she's certain he is innocent. She suspects the real killer is out-of-work actor, Gordon Wayne, and she enlists her fiance, self-righteous reporter John Franklin, to help bring the man to justice. The pair book passage on an ocean liner that Wayne and his pal Eddie are traveling on, but their plans are dashed when the ship runs aground on a reef, killing almost everyone aboard. Washed ashore on a deserted jungle island, Doris, John, Gordon and Eddie strike an uneasy alliance to survive. When the woman is attacked by a lion and saved by knife-wielding Gordon Wayne, her fickle heart causes her to abandon the norms of civilization as she succumbs to the passionate call of the jungle.

Jungle Bride is an epic yarn of forbidden love and perilous adventure, powered by vivid scenes of shipwreck and vicious animal attacks. Action director Harry O. Hoyt is most noted in film history as the director of 1925's silent classic The Lost World, which featured stop-action dinosaurs animated by Willis O'Brien. O'Brien went on to animate filmdom's greatest monster in King Kong, released in 1933, the same year as Jungle Bride. Coincidentally, 1933 was also the year that Jungle Bride's rugged leading man, Charles Starrett, helped to organize the fledgling Screen Actors Guild. Starrett gained wide-spread popularity in the 40s playing The Durango Kid in dozens of films. Petite blonde Anita Page was a Hollywood favorite in the late 20s and early 30s following a string of box-office hits, including three with Joan Crawford (Our Dancing Daughters (1928), Our Modern Maidens (1929) and Our Blushing Brides (1930)), two opposite Buster Keaton (Free and Easy (1930) and Sidewalks of New York (1931)) and a critically acclaimed turn in 1929's Best Picture winner, The Broadway Melody. At the peak of her career in 1929, she was flooded by over 10,000 fan letters a week, including over 100 from an obsessed long-distance suitor - Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

• action
• adventure