Jaws of the Jungle
Film Details
Synopsis
As bats hover above in trees, tribesmen meet, and their chief reads to them from a scroll. After the men leave, the chief prays. Women perform a ceremonial dance before the community loads wagons for a caravan. A boy successfully removes honeycombs from a tree that is infested with bees, but when an ape tries to do the same, he is attacked by bees and flees. A baby ape nurses from its mother. A small bear attached to a leash that is pinned into the ground is hit by an angry tribesman, who then accosts an ape. While the man plays cards with fellow tribesmen, the ape, climbing a tree, drops a coconut on his assailant's head. Men then beat drums and perform a ceremonial dance. A woman in labor is approached by a leopard in one of the wagons until a group of tribesmen with spears scares the leopard away. [No further information on this plot has been found.]
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Notes
Portions of the film were viewed in negative form. No release date was found, although the film was approved by the New York State Censor Board on February 29, 1936. NYSA records list an alternate title of Jungle Virgin for this film. The film's file in the MPAA/PCA Collection at the AMPAS Library includes a list of deletions from the film made by local state censors that suggests the content of some of the scenes in the film: women are shown weaving; boys are shown bathing in a stream; women are shown nursing their babies; girls are shown dancing; a woman giving birth in a caravan wagon is attacked and killed by a leopard; men ritualistically put instruments through a priest's lips and tongue and weave hooks into his back before a ceremonial dance; a human sacrifice is made of an old man and a baby boy by placing them in a wagon and pushing it over a cliff, after which the old man is eaten by a python, which is then sliced open by the natives. Deletions recommended by the Hays Office on February 17, 1936, prior to the film's release, include: shots of bare-breasted women and children's genitalia; a bat sucking blood from and killing a peacock; a leopard gnawing at a calf's throat; a native man forcing his attentions upon a native girl in a tree; a tiger devouring a man; narration describing how a snake enjoyed feasting upon the native; a snake approaching a baby. A woman about to give birth shown in the pain of labor as a leopard approaches was also a recommended deletion, but was in the footage of the film viewed.
