Jungle Burger

I was first intrigued by this via a still in "The Movie", an early 1980s British film periodical, where it was mentioned in an entry dedicated to animation; I also recall my father renting it on VHS – under its U.K. title of JUNGLE BURGER – in the mid-1980s but, of course, I was too young to be allowed to watch this or even understand it. The edition I acquired had the benefit of the English-dubbed soundtrack (with the hero, spoofing the popular character of Tarzan, voiced by Johnny Weissmuller Jr.[!] – son of the screen's most famous "Ape Man" – and the participation of many a "Saturday Night Live" exponent) but I opted to watch the original French version (accompanied by Italian rather than English subtitles).

Anyway, while the film is moderately amusing, it's in no way a classic (falling far below the standard of even contemporary artist/film-maker Ralph Bakshi); incidentally, it exhibits a similar predilection for explicit violence and sexuality (indeed it's swamped by the latter, particularly during the second half, with the hero depicted as impotent and where both characters and landscape are shaped like male and female genitalia)! The villainess, then, is a bald lady with fourteen breasts (perhaps a nod to the then-latest Bond adventure THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN [1974] – speaking of cinematic references, there's an obscure one involving the maligned but not-too-bad religious epic THE SILVER CHALICE [1954], which I watched for the first time only last month): she's flanked by a mad scientist with two heads who, typically for such evil "Siamese twins" caricatures, are constantly quarrelling among themselves.

The creative writers of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE wrote the English version of this extreme unfunny cartoon from France. The film was barely released (played in Seattle as TARZOON;SHAME OF THE JUNGLE in only one drive-in with a small ad in 1979) This film only got any kind of release was because of the voice talent of John Belushi who has a thankless voice role in a unfunny material he wrote (!). I don't know what voice Bill Murray did, and the late Adolf Ceasar also has a nothing voice role also. All the joke do not work, and it's a suprise since MR. MIKE'S MONDO VIDEO worked very well. Only highlight is a amusing march segment these soldiers did with a funky catchy french/african tune on. It a watered down 70mins print for the U.S., but I guess the french has more explicit cartoon version. Not recommended, unless you like to check out Belushi's forgotten work.

I am fairly interested in adult animation.I usually enjoy them.South Park is my favorite show(as my username would suggest), I enjoyed "Fritz The Cat" and other bakshi films as well as tons of adult anime's from japan such as "Akira", so I decided to check this film out.This is a french film from the 1970's, directed by Picha who seemed to be France's answer to Ralph Bakshi.The original version originally had to be cut down by 5min in order to obtain an R-rating.The English version also features comedians like John Belushi and Bill Murray dubbing the voices.However there is not much dialogue in this film, it's mostly just a bunch of random, unfunny little skits.The basic plot features a bald woman and a sziemise scientist who wants a special kind of hair from Tarzoon(Tarzan)'s wife June(Jane).She gets kidnapped and now it's up to Tarzoon to save her.The film is fairly short, and the majority of the film is just random skits involving jungle animals.Some of them are a bit funny, but overall the film is just boring and unfunny.It's pretty rare so check it out if you want, but I personally did not like it.

Okay, first things first: NO!! This has NOTHING to do with Ralph Bakshi. Jeez, another reviewer here (thankfully with zero upvotes) went on a rant about how this was lame for Bakshi, etc, etc. Wow. And, look! Here we are at IMDb where the cast & crew is listed clearly. It's a FRENCH-made film!

Whew.

That said... it's written by Mr. Mike! It's awkward, weird, dry as hell, funny, unfunny and sometimes actually entertaining.

I've never seen the original French version, so I can't compare, but methinks something was lost in the translation. I would guess that Mr. Mike and Anne Beatts just scrapped the original script and made up their own (kinda like J-Men Forever or What's Up Tiger Lily?). And, sure, Brian Doyle Murray, Bill Murray, John Belushi, etc are all there to help... only you have to be more stoned than they were to enjoy it.

But, really, it has it's moments!

"Shame of the Jungle" did nothing for me. I found it remarkably tedious and was unable to focus on it for a few moments. Apparently some SNL greats such as Bill Murray and John Belushi are supposed to have voiced characters here but I never recognised their voices. The animation is appalling, which I guess you have to forgive for a cartoon from the mid-seventies. But the lack of characters, plot, story, identifiable humour? I say give this one a miss.