Female Jungle

1956 "Thrills jolt with the burst of gunfire!"
5.4| 1h11m| NR| en
Details

Alcoholic detective investigating the murder of an actress starts getting worried when all fingers begin to point at him.

Director

Producted By

American International Pictures

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Reviews

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.
Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews
Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
MartinHafer The film begins with an actress being strangled outside a bar. Inside at the time is a drunk cop who is off duty (Tierney). Also inside are a variety of odd characters including a sketch artist, a weirdo (John Carradine) and a blonde dame (Jayne Mansfield)."Female Jungle" is a poor murder mystery. Despite starring Lawrence Tierney, who was fantastic in 1950s film noir, this film suffers from a bad script, some poor acting and lousy direction. What makes it worse, after the murderer is discovered and stopped, the film goes on for another ten minutes or so in order to explain what has happened and why!! To make things worse, it's not particularly interesting or engaging and is a bit of a disappointment....even for a cheapo crime film.
kapelusznik18 ***SPOILERS*** After a night of drinking and partying actress Monica Madison,Eve Brent, while leaving the Can-Can nightclub is attacked and strangled as her diamond brooch is stolen by her attacker. Coming or staggering out of the club to check out things is police Sgt.Stevens, Lawrence Tierney, who's so smashed that he doesn't know what world he's on. With Sgt. Stevens's boss Capt. Kroger, Jack Hill, spotting him he lets Stevens have in in being drunk on the job even though he's actually off-duty. Ther's also the suspicion by Capt. Kruger that Stevens's in being totally out of it as well as being at the scene of the crime may well be Miss. Madison's murderer! The movie takes a hard right turn when all of a sudden out of nowhere this weirdo Claude Almstead, John Carradine,shows up at the Voe's Alex & Peggy, Burt Kaiser & Kathleen Crowley, apartment in the dead of night-200:AM-to have Alex a professional cartoonist sketch a caricature of himself!You would think that with a stranger showing up at his door in the middle of the night after a murder was committed just blocks away Alex would be a bit suspicious and throw the guy out but he doesn't! Not only does he invite Almstead into the apartment but has his wife Peggy, who's barley awake, to boil up a cup of coffee for him? Eevn crazier is that Alex soon leaves the apartment for a hot date leaving the creepy looking Almstead all alone with his wife Peggy!***SPOILERS**** It soon turns out that with Sgt. Stevens doing the legwork that there's a link to Monica Madison's murder that connects to both Almstead and Alex who both turned out to be her lovers! And that link had to do with a drawing or caricature that Alex did of her as well as Almstead being at the Can-Can nightclub just hours before she was murdered! What can actually be called a 100% film noir style movie with it being filmed in almost total darkness, to save on budget costs, without a single ray of sunlight in it. The movie "Female Jungle" also has the distinction of being buxom blond Jane-Man O Man-Mansfield's film debut as Candy Price as well as having it's star Kathleen Crowley raped, for real not in the movie,that held up production for some three days!
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.
manuel-pestalozzi Having seen this movie recently for the first time I found it surprisingly arty. The classification cheap indie doesn't do the picture justice. The photography in sharp black and white – well, far more black than white -, the quirky camera angles and the editing are almost as good as in more famous film noirs of that period like, for example, Kiss Me Deadly.The story has a really uneasy feel to it. I am not sure if all that surrealism is intentional or mainly caused by a low budget, I just know that is is damn effective. The action unfolds in one dark night and feels like a claustrophobic nightmare. There are several similarities to Otto Preminger's Laura, the ever effective John Carradine is cast as a rich, arrogant art critic in the line of Waldo Lydecker. And he delivers all right. But who is Laura? There are three different women who occasionally pop up, dead or alive, in photographs on billboards, in sketches or framed paintings. They are not real but rather like figments in a man's imagination. Maybe they are the same woman altogether? Very confusing. And who is the man who imagines those women? Is it the caricaturist who thinks he is a failure as an artist? Or the alcoholic policeman? I could not help assuming that they were one and the same person, too. Just think of David Lynch's Lost Highway! It is not really clear, what is going on in this picture. People do strange things. Sneaking up to an apartment at 3 a.m. asking urgently, hysterically for a caricature, entering another apartment at 3.30 a.m., having a discussion with a woman in her bedroom while in the background the woman's husband tosses uncomfortably, desperately trying to sleep, entering a third apartment at 3.45 a.m. putting a head on the bosom of Jayne Mansfield who's reclining there - without any explanation. The police detectives refuse to take people to the precinct and want to conduct the investigation into a murder in a sleazy bar near where it happened. These strange scenes are not cheap - they work in a way that you start feeling slightly feverish.The set design is very good. Several fifties interiors and gadgets are nicely displayed. I admire all those movies in which great effect is created with little means. One reason why I like film noir where this tendency at times results in real art.