fine whine

Another day, another mistaken All Movie Guide synopsis.

This time it's for the little-known 1954 Charlton Heston love story/distaster movie The naked jungle.

The movie's an interesting combination of a watered-down love story and a watered-down disaster movie; ironically it ends with everything being flooded*. Charlton Heston stars as an iron-willed cocoa bean plantation owner deep in the jungle of South America, and Eleanor Parker as the mail order bride who turns out to be much more than he can handle, being a thirtysomething virgin.

Anyway, to the AMG mistake du jour. In their synopsis, 'written' by Hal Erickson, it mentions this:

Charlton Heston plays South American plantation owner Christopher Leiningen, who spends most of the film preparing for the hellish onslaught of deadly soldier ants.

I was watching the time display. It wasn't until forty eight minutes (perhaps forty eight and a half, even) had passed that the whole Marabunta issue is broached. The birds that pique the Commissioner's (and his government's) interest are seen at the beginning and mentioned once, but for the subsequent 45 minutes there follows nothing but the love story plot. How this can be taken then for 'most' is rather a stretch of the word, in my opinion, when taken into consideration that the movie clocks in at ninety five minutes. You might be able to call forty seven of ninety five half, except that even once he is warned of the approaching hordes, he still goes about antagonizing his wife and so forth. Had I paid closer attention I probably would have only found maybe twenty minutes of 'preparing', and maybe another ten of truly 'hellish onslaught'. But hey, at the end of the day Hal Erickson probably gets paid, and I'm left to watch movies and wonder if protracted speeches in them about the relentlessness and organization of soldier ants as a fearsome enemy in a movie from the fifties is meant to be some sort of jab at communism or not.

In fact it reminded me of a MacGyver episode I watched once, but only until the special effects really kicked in and the real ants (and the animated ones) showed up. You see, in that episode, the producers couldn't procure actual ants, 'soldier' or otherwise, and were forced to reveal the attacking hordes solely in scenes of stock footage. One time Jungle was too obviously showing stock footage, unless Charlton's binoculars were somehow able to filter color to black and white. For all I know the MacGyver footage was taken from this film. It wouldn't surprise me.

I don't think I'll inform AMG of their mistake this time. I have yet to see acknowledgement of my other attemps to correct them, so for now, I'll just rest on my, well, whatever it is that people who point out trivial mistakes and poor semantics rest on.

* i.e. watered down.