VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Bob This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Michael_Elliott Female Jungle (1955)** (out of 4) Det. Jack Stevens (Lawrence Tierney) gets chewed out by his boss after he's in a bar dead drunk while a famous actress is outside being murdered. Stevens is so drunk and after a witness sees him leaving the bar with a blonde, he begins to feel that perhaps he's the murderer. He starts an investigation to try and see what really happened and soon we get more suspects including the woman's press agent (John Carradine), a man (Burt Kaiser) who did her portrait and his wife (Kathleen Crowley). This "B" noir has a terrific cast that do what they can with a lousy screenplay but in the end there's not enough anyone could have done to recover from the very weak story. I think any mystery or noir film is going to be in deep trouble whenever it can't even make the viewer interested in any of the events going on and that's exactly what FEMALE JUNGLE does. There wasn't a single frame where I was interested in who the killer was. I didn't care if it turned out to be Tierney, Carradine or anyone else who happens across the screen. The screenplay makes very little sense and often times it appears none of the pieces really add up until the end when we get the majority of the characters in a single room where we're told what happened. You know a film is in trouble when actors are given long scripts to read at one time just to make sense of everything. Another problem is that director VeSota doesn't really know how to build up any drama or make anything energetic. The movie's pacing is an issue because everything seems to happen at a very slow pace and even worse is the fact that there's just not any life to anything you're seeing. VeSota will always be remembered for his various appearances in Roger Corman films but his director's output didn't really add up to much as he followed this film with THE BRAIN EATERS and INVASION OF THE STAR CREATURES. Tierney does what he can with the lead role but that's not too much as his character is pretty much the worst written. Some might be surprised to see him playing a level-headed guy but he does what he can. I thought both Kaiser and Crowley were decent in their parts but Carradine has fun playing one character who seems to have at least three different personalities. The majority of the film points the finger at Carradine and depending on what the script is trying to do at the time will depend on what type of performance the actor gives. Jayne Mansfield made her film debut here playing a sexy blonde with a few secrets. The performance isn't that good but she was certainly striking to look at.

Dewey1960 One night outside a seedy LA bar, a sexy blonde Hollywood starlet is strangled to death by an unseen, shadowy figure. Naturally the cops are baffled, and one cop in particular is having the queasy sensation that he himself might be the killer. That cop has good reason to suspect himself because he's played by Lawrence Tierney--and Detective Tierney spent that very evening in that very bar drinking himself into Blackout Land (an uncanny nod to the particular problem that sent the actor tumbling down to poverty row). After being summarily dressed down for his repeated drunkenness, Tierney is then inexplicably asked to lend his questionable expertise to solving the murder.What then begins is a bizarrely claustrophobic nightmare chase to the end of the line, offering up a host of potential other suspects. Could it have been the sinister Hollywood gossip columnist (John Carradine) who helped make the starlet's career and was then casually dumped by her? How about the oddball caricature artist (Burt Kaiser) who had recently drawn the starlet's likeness and was one of the last people to see her alive? And what about the caricaturist's wife who just happens to work at the bar? Let's not forget about Tierney's drunken cop who staggers his way through this nocturnal labyrinth with all the conviction of a man staring down at the bottom of an empty bottle. And how does Candy, the gorgeously voluptuous call girl (Jayne Mansfield in her screen debut) who's been sexually involved with both the artist and the cop figure into all of this? Perhaps it's best to not to be overly concerned with the storyline, which is deliriously beneath pulp trash, and relish the demented visual poetry of cinematographer Elwood "Woody" Bredell, himself no stranger to the dark confines of the noir universe, with 1940s classics like PHANTOM LADY, THE KILLERS, SMOOTH AS SILK, and THE UNSUSPECTED lurking on his resume. (Bredell was 70 when he shot FEMALE JUNGLE, which would be his final feature film. He died in 1976 at age 91.) And this is precisely why FEMALE JUNGLE is such an important film, for it relentlessly discards any use for logic in favor of the inhabitation of its own deranged nightmare world. Bredell invests the film with such strikingly abstract imagery that it's impossible to attribute its surreal look and feel to the accidental good fortune of its nearly non-existent budget--as many of the film's detractors have done. Rather, it is a pure distillation of the totality of the noir ethos and much more resonant with the thrill of death and doom than any other 1950s film outside the realm of Nicholas Ray.FEMALE JUNGLE was the first film directed by Bruno Ve Sota. And despite having directed only two others (THE BRAIN EATERS (58) and INVASION OF THE STAR CREATURES (62)) his career was fairly deep as an actor, appearing in such disreputable (and legendary) films as DEMENTIA (55, aka DAUGHTER OF HORROR, which he also co-produced and allegedly co-directed), a bunch of classic 50s Roger Corman films, namely THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS, ROCK ALL NIGHT, WAR OF THE SATELLITES, BUCKET OF BLOOD, THE WASP WOMAN and ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES as well as the Arch Hall, Jr. teen trasher THE CHOPPERS (61; Leigh Jason), and the tres obscure beatnik noir THE CAT BURGLAR (61; William Witney).Shot in 1955, FEMALE JUNGLE was picked up for distribution by Sam Arkoff and James Nicholson's fledgling American International Pictures (then briefly known as ARC) and released in early 1956 as the second half of a double bill, beneath a Roger Corman western THE OKLAHOMA WOMAN. Ve Sota, oddly enough, has a small role in that film, too.But it is FEMALE JUNGLE, an imaginatively ambitious and unapologetically naked excursion to the darkest regions of film noir, that we will remember Bruno Ve Sota for—and deservedly so.This highly recommended film is not available on a US DVD (a UK one does exist, though). It came out on a VHS tape from RCA / Columbia in the early 90s and turns up on eBay every now and then. Jump on it when it does.

gnb I imagine the sole reason for most people to want to see this movie is for the screen debut of 50s cinema sex goddess Jayne Mansfield. However, the film itself stands up reasonably well after fifty years.The plot, as you are probably already aware, concerns the hunt for the killer of a Hollywood actress, murdered after she leaves a bar. An off-duty cop is in the frame as the killer and sets out to track down the real culprit.This movie was obviously done on the cheap but has a gritty edge to it and more than enough action and suspense to fill its meagre running time. Shot entirely at night the film has an oppressive feel and has good performances from all concerned. Jayne Mansfield, in her film debut, is very impressive as a slutty broad and performs well without her trademark squeal. Although obviously very attractive she isn't at all glamorous here and acts very well. For anyone in doubt of her abilities then Female Jungle proves that she definitely had something.Cheap, short and in the long term, forgettable, this is still an entertaining way to spend an hour. Don't break your neck to see it but if the opportunity arises, don't pass it by.

subcityii Even allowing for the fact that it was a low budget, quickly made picture (like many film noirs were), this picture for me was more bad than good. First the bad, the film suffers from some stilted acting by the supporting players and so-so dialog. The film even manages a couple of moments of unintentional humor. It is about a murder that takes place outside a bar where an off duty cop is drinking heavily. The cop is played here by Lawrence Tierney (who looks more like his younger brother, Scott Brady, than he has in any other role of his I've seen). The cops on duty browbeat Tierney into helping out with the investigation. I did not understand why they expected Tierney's character to help, he was off duty after all. Now for the good, after a few false leads and dead ends, the killer is revealed. I must admit, the killer's identity was unexpected. I was fooled. The leading performers here are competent but the one person that really stands out, literally, is a young temptress played by Jayne Mansfield. It is easy to see why she ended up with a Hollywood career playing Marilyn Monroe type parts. This film was released as the second half of a double feature. That is where it belongs. The western it was released with, Oklahoma Woman, is a much better film.