MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*
The small-time studio Lippert Pictures didn't invest much in metaphenomenal movies until the 1950s, when they gained a modest reputation for flicks like KING DINOSAUR and ROCKETSHIP X-M. In the 1940s, though, almost all of the studio's fantasy-content was tied up in their two jungle movies-- this one, and 1948's JUNGLE GODDESS-- both of which evoked the still popular "white goddess" trope.
The title of the later film is more truthful; GODDESS really is mostly about how a young White woman gets adopted as a goddess by a Black African tribe, and how she talks a couple of White adventurers into setting her free. But QUEEN isn't really about its tribe of White Amazons. One of the two main characters is Jean (Patricia Morison), a woman looking for her missing fiancee in tribal Africa, while the other is the new love Jean finds while she's looking for the old one. Though Jean searches for long-time boyfriend Greg, she finds that new love in Gary (former Batman Robert Lowery), a jungle guide she hires to find the tribe of "she-devils" who've allegedly abducted Greg. But Greg isn't being held against his will. While he was part of some vague mission to locate ivory smugglers, he encountered the Amazons' queen Zita (Amira Moustafa), and the two of them fell in love. In the cases of both Jean and Greg, absence did not make the heart grow fonder for the established fiancee; rather, their questionable affections cooled and found better (and presumably more permanent) mates because of their separation. By the flick's end, both new couples have paired off for happy endings, and any viewers hoping that Jean and Zita might battle over the same man must content themselves with a little bit of tough talk from Zita about fighting for her beloved. (So this film does not fall into my "fighting femme" category.)
QUEEN's writer is so focused on getting his two couples linked up that the subject of the all-female tribe is barely addressed. Apparently, they started when a ship at sea foundered, and a lifeboat containing only women and girls managed to land in Africa. There's no clear history of how the survivors decided to dress up in leopard-skins and become their own tribe, rather than trying to reach civilization. No older women are seen, and there's a line or two about how all the current Amazons grew up in the jungle and have just started thinking about recruiting some males for marital purposes, but that's not exactly a thorough exegesis. The viewer also doesn't see much evidence of whatever warlike abilities the tribeswomen mastered in order to awe the local Black residents. There's one scene where Zita hits a stationary target with an arrow, and the real villain of the story-- the head of the smuggling operation-- gets killed by a blowpipe-dart wielded by one of Zita's girl servants. If anything, Jean comes off as a figure more formidable than Zita. When Jean first meets Gary, he, like Zita later on, is busy using some stationary targets for practice, albeit with a rifle. Gary voices some "woman-hating" sentiments, and Jean impresses him by whipping out a pistol and accurately ventilating all of the targets. Later she at least draws her pistol when Gary's attacked by a lion, even if she's unable to fire for fear of hitting him.
Some of the juvenile jungle-japes of this era boasted some pleasant sexploitation elements, QUEEN is pretty blah, even though Morison and Moustafa were both attractive women. There's not a lot of action when the good guys take on the smuggling gang-- with Gary getting to duke it out with the head villain-- but it's just barely enough of a battle-scene to make this a combative film, since Gary is, with Jean, one of the movie's two main characters.
No comments:
Post a Comment