The Pink Jungle (1968) While other movie studios in the 1960's were commencing their inexorable, slow march into the tar pits of bankruptcy and corporate takeovers, I couldn't help but admire the old school tenacity of Universal.
They continued pumping out machine-tooled, backlot movies that looked no different from their TV shows......flat, bright lighting, the phoniest, cheapest sets, mechanical scripts and direction......I could swear these movies were never touched by human hands........
If you stuck around the end credits, the last thing you'd see is colorful painted postcard of a tourist tram car, reminding you..."when in California visit Universal Studios"
Before big theme park rides dominated, the studio would ferry the rubes around on those tram cars, through those plywood backlot replicas of cities, towns and Old West streets.......the same ones that popped up in all the Universal TV shows and movies.
Chances are, the trams rolled past the shooting of "The Pink Jungle", an all too typical example of spam-in-a-can movies Universal was rolling off their assembly line.
The intention here (at least through the first half of the film) is a light-hearted romantic comedy action-adventure......think of it a primitive stab at a genre that fully flower with films like "Romancing The Stone".
Arriving via seaplane in the backwater of a mythical seedy South American country, come our leading couple - a photographer (James Garner) and an international model (Eva Renzi) he's assigned to pose seductively in the jungle....for a lipstick ad.
Garner sputters and Renzi's bemused as the local Army commander thinks they're CIA agents and their pile of lipstick samples filled with secret stuff.
What passes for the script then latches on to the semi-clever idea of Garner and Renzi amusing themselves by imagining they've stumbled on to a typical B-movie in the making......complete with shady, nefarious characters who behave like refugees from "Casablanca".
Since they're a tad slow on the uptake, it takes a bit until they figure out these guys are all for real in their scramble for a lost diamond mine..........including a wild man, American soldier-of-fortune (George Kennedy, and an equally dangerous, untrustworthy Australian (Nigel Greene)
The movie sprinkles the dialogue with some not-half-bad zingers, so the first half of the film almost qualifies as moderately entertaining. And I should credit those reliable pros Garner and Kennedy who bravely met the challenge of working with Renzi, a notorious, temperamental diva famous for aggravating her co-stars and directors.
Then, sorry to report, the second half happens, in which Garner, Renzi Kennedy and Greene, in search of diamonds, take a long, long tedious trek through desert landscapes Any humor and wit takes a hike, the pace slows to a crawl.......and that's where I began to deeply regret wasting any time watching this at all.
The movie does make a very last gasp attempt to redeem itself with a final big plot twist....so anyone who plans to stay awake for the entire thing might enjoy this hail-mary touchdown attempt to leave the audience smiling. (And who'd want to miss the you-can't-unsee-this sight of George Kennedy throwing himself into an energetic bossa nova with Renzi)
But we doubt anyone who stumbled upon "The Pink Jungle" in a theater ever stuck around to see the reveal........or remind themselves to visit the Universal tram tour. 1 star (*)
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