The Naked Jungle (1954) on Netflix
Approved19541h 35mAdventureDramaThriller
In 1901, Christopher Leiningen owns a cocoa plantation on the Rio Negro. His mail-order bride Joanna arrives to a cold welcome. Word comes of the marabunta, a column of army ants.
- Netflix2.1/5
- IMDb6.7/104,912 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
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Plot summary
In 1901, Christopher Leiningen owns a cocoa plantation on the Rio Negro in South America, land he claimed with levees and has worked for years. At 34 he has no experience with women, so his brother in New Orleans arranges a bride by proxy. Joanna Selby, a widow, sails upriver and finds her new husband cold and testing, judging her French, her piano playing and her reasons for coming. When he learns she was married before, he rejects her. As she waits for a boat to take her back, the Commissioner brings word that the marabunta, a column of army ants, is moving toward the plantation. Joanna refuses to leave, telling him the workers would abandon the estate if his own wife did.
Cast
- Norma Calderónas Zala (as Norma Calderon)
- Jerado Decordovier
Show all 17 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Naked Jungle (1954)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Producer George Pal wanted to adapt the short story "Leiningen Versus the Ants" but could not initially track down its author, Carl Stephenson; once he found him, Pal bought the film rights for just $6,000.
- Paramount originally wanted Joseph H. Lewis to direct the film, but Lewis clashed with producer George Pal and was replaced by Byron Haskin before shooting got underway.
- The eerie sound of army ants devouring everything in their path was created not with any exotic equipment but by swirling a straw in a glass of water filled with crushed ice, then amplifying the recording.
- Despite being set on a Brazilian cocoa plantation, most of the film's Amazon riverscape, plus its bridge-dynamiting and sluice scenes, were actually second-unit stock footage shot far away in Florahome, Florida.
- The Naked Jungle's influence reached television decades later: it directly inspired the 1985 MacGyver episode "Trumbo's World," which even reused actual clips from the 1954 film.
