Jungle of Fear (1993 Video) User Reviews (2)

Only Available As a Workprint

[Michael_Elliott · 28 September 2017]

Jungle of Fear (1993)

It would be rather unfair to give this film any sort of rating since it was never finished. It's currently out there in the market as a 120-minute workprint that contains a lot of footage but it's all time coded and it's certainly not put together. Certain scenes have no sound effects or music. A lot of times it's clear that you are watching either an outtake or a scene that probably wouldn't be in the movie. Also, several of the cast members have extremely thick accents so I'm sure a dubbing job was needing to be done as well.

Is the film worth watching? If you're a Franco nut like myself then you'll probably want to watch it since you're probably like me and want to see everything that the director did. As I said, it's impossible to treat it as anything other than a workprint because it's simply not put together and who knows what the director would have done with it.

The reason it's worth watching is that you've got a funny cameo by Franco and then there's the cast. William Berger, Christopher Mitchum, Antonio Mayans and of course Lina Romay are all on hand here and it's Franco's love that is so great. She really gives a fun, hyped-up and energetic performance and I really enjoyed her here. It's really too bad that the film will probably never be completed because it seems like this might have been one of her best performances.

As for the story, I can see a little of Poe's The Golden Bug and it's certainly in the adventure genre. There's a really bad looking snake and other fake looking bugs all set in the jungle. JUNGLE OF FEAR is interesting to watch but that's about it. It's hard to really compare it to the rest of the director's work in its current state.

Unfinished

[BandSAboutMovies · 1 March 2023]

Has my obsession with Jess Franco gone too far? I'd say yes, seeing as how I just watched a workprint of Jungle of Fear, complete with time code and multiple angles of the same scenes. There's no dubbing. And who knows where he was going to take Christopher Mitchum, Antonio Mayans, Lina Romay and William Berger in this film?

Yet I have reached that point where I will watch everything that he does because, say it with me, "to see Franco you must see all of Franco."

There are crystal skulls, gold bugs, an evil Nazi version of Van Helsing, Dr. Quasimodo, Lina being filled with high energy and smiles, an evil woman named Furia who is a dancing dom, Lina hiding behind a JCVD poster, Charlie Chaplin Jr. Getting in the shower with Lina, a Franco cameo where he sings opera, an appearance by Fatima Michalczik (who was an editor on the Franco Don Quixote edit of the unfinished Orson Welles movie and oh man, there's so much to say about that someday soon) and Chaplin walking past a mural of his grandfather and literally mugging the camera.

Instead of all the work that we're putting into artificial intelligence, can we get someone to dub and edit and make this movie finished? Because it gave me hope in this grim world watching it, despite how ragged it all seems.