Sheena Queen of the Jungle

Sheena Queen of the Jungle - Episode 18
The Rival Queen

PREVIOUS

NEXT

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Director

Carl K Hittleman

Producer

Edward Nassour

Executive Producer

Ismael Rodriguez

Screenplay & Story Supervision

Joel Murcott

STARRING

Sheena

Irish McCalla

Bob Rayburn

Christian Drake

Chim

Neal

COSTARS

Bull Kendall

Buddy Baer

Turpin

Lohn Lang

Helen Kendall

Roxanne Reed

Rafik

Virgil Richardson

Howard Evans

Howard Bryant

PLOT - NOTE: Spoiler warning
Bull Kendall and his accomplice, Rafik, team up with an ex-vaudeville magician named Turpin in a Tanganyikan prison camp. All three escape in a truck loaded with bags of lime and they decide to continue their quest for the musk of the Ninomos. They concoct a plan to create a tribal war between the Ninomos and their friendly neighbours, the Wajinas. They use Turpin's hynotism to transform Kendall's wife, Helen, into Mazuma, Queen of the Spirit World. They then and send her to the Wajina village to announce that the Ninomos plan to use magic to create a famine by killing all of the fish in the river where the Wajinas live. They capture Chim and use him to lure Sheena into a trap and then use her to haul the bags of lime to the river to pison the river (right). Sheena escapes by diving into the river but the Wajina chief is convinced when he learns that all of the fish in the river are dead. Warriors from both tribes begin to assemble for warfare but Sheena swings in on a vine and knocks out Turpin, breaking the hypnotic spell he has over Helen. Kendall returns to prison and peace is restored.

COMMENTS
This is the third and final segment of the "Bull Kendall trilogy", which the Nassour Brothers turned into a feature film called Queen of the Jungle, discussed in detail on the pages for The Lash and Land of the Rogue. The Nassours formed a separate company called "Nasbro Productions" for this venture, as the Sheena series was made by "Nassour Studios". One spurious story claimed that they released the film without informing the actors but a story in a 1956 TV magazine clearly shows Irish was aware of plans for a feature film. This was one of the first episodes I saw on video when I rediscovered Sheena as an adult and I was apalled at how bad it was. Firstly, Sheena appears for only seven of it's twenty-five minutes running time, a major disappointment. The hokey comedy involving the hypnotism routine is very tedious, as is the scene of the bad guys chasing Chim around a field and falling all over each other like the Keystone Cops. The scenes with Mazuma, Queen of the Spirit World, however, are campy fun. It is one of the lamest episodes in the whole series. That said, this episode does have the best Sheena-in-bondage scene in the entire series (above).

MOVING PICTURES

Click on the images below to see two short scenes from this episode:

PREVIOUS

NEXT

SOURCES
• The production credits and plot were taken from my DVD of this episode
IMAGES
• All of the photos used on this page are screenshots from my DVD of this episode
• The two video clips were uploaded to Youtube by me specifically to use on this web page
LYNX
• Read an impressive Buddy Baer filmography at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)
CAPTURE
• Bag yourself a copy of this episode on VHS from Moviecraft; beware the high contrast and heavily cropped versions of these episodes currently available on DVD

HOME

SHEENA INTRO PAGE

SERIES INTRO PAGE