Female Jungle was the only noir produced by American International Pictures, who later became famous for sci-fi and horror films. It has a peculiar blend of horror and noir elements, like the score by Nicholas Carras collaging sleazy jazz with thriller orchestration, and the scene with John Carradine––who played Dracula for Universal––following a female character through the streets in what feels like a straight lift from Cat People. Add to this some questionable comedic acting and you have a classic B movie oddity.
Laurence Tierney stars as Detective Jack Stevens, who stumbles out of his local dive bar, Club Can Can, into a murder investigation of a movie starlet. He’s interviewed by his superior but has suffered an alcoholic blackout, much to his embarrassment and his superior’s disgust. Stevens suspects he might have done the killing himself, so he sets off to retrace his steps. Earlier he’d been seen with a blonde, Candy Price (Jayne Mansfield). Candy, when not picking up cops for one-night stands, is having an affair with married artist Alex Voe (Burt Kaiser) who was mysteriously visited that night by gossip columnist Claude Almstead (John Carradine). Almstead becomes the main suspect when it’s discovered he was jilted by the victim. However, Almstead knows who the killer is and is out to prove it. Tierney is a strangely riveting presence, full of awkward tension. His own problematic drinking was legendary by this point, this being his last acting job for decades. It’s tempting to think that his character is too close to the bone, his jaw clenched face seems to be pleading for the whole thing to end immediately. Carradine, another great face, moves effectively from ominous stranger to benign police aid. And Jayne Mansfield, in her first role, proves to be a magnetic screen presence. But the film’s most memorable turn comes from unknown James Kodl as Joe, Club Can Can’s put-upon proprietor.
Joe makes his first appearance around the 18-minute mark, leaning on the club bar, check shirt and trusty cigar jammed into his cherub-like face. He’s complaining to Stevens about the police investigation being bad for business. His manner is stilted, his accent a cross between a New York taxi driver and Elmer Fudd, he’s fascinating. Is this man an actor, you wonder, or just some guy the filmmakers met on the street? Joe is primarily there to provide comic relief, the ongoing joke being that he wants to go home but the police have commandeered his establishment. None of the humour particularly works in Female Jungle but when it comes to Kodl comedy is bypassed completely and the narrative becomes something altogether stranger. It’s not just his performance, the editing seems clumsier and harsher whenever it involves him, as if his presence demands a different category of film making. In one scene the bar’s cleaner (Davis Roberts) is trying to tend to a wound on Steven’s arm when he’s interrupted by Joe who, in a badly dubbed and mistimed cut, appears by a door and shouts “Hey George! Let’s get the place cleaned up! Come on George!” His peculiar delivery of the lines combined with the jarring edit pushes the film into the realms of the avantgarde.
This keeps happening, there’s the scene where Joe is telling the police that the murder victim had been in his bar. After delivering his information, the camera cuts from behind his head to a frontal shot and the background noise which was constant till the cut suddenly drops out as Kodl, with a whimsical smile, says: “Sure was a beautiful chick!” before popping his disintegrating cigar back into his mouth. The effect is something close to surrealism. Not that Kodl requires imaginative edits to grab attention, his presence alone is enough to steal any scene. Whether he’s standing hands on hip, jutting his belly out listening intently to the police, or in the background, trying to get a word in, he’s always mesmerising.
By the time you get to the key interrogation scene you’re on the edge of your seat anticipating Joe’s next intervention. It doesn’t disappoint, Stevens and his colleague, Sgt. Duane (Rex Thorsen) are losing patience trying to get a confession out of Almstead in the club. Convinced they have all the facts Duane decides to beat the truth out of the columnist, but Stevens, in a sudden fit of uncertainty, pulls him back, with the tension between the two erupting into violence as they turn on each other. During all this the camera regularly cuts back to Joe who’s very much enjoying himself and, in one of the film’s most amusing moments, he shouts out over the chaos: “Do you want me to call the cops?” He then delivers a laugh that would have earnt him a tot of rum on a pirate ship.
Kodl’s is the sort of bizarre but memorable performance that B movies occasionally deliver, yet it’s perhaps no surprise that his unique talents were rarely called upon again, his only other credit being a doorman in the low-key drama T R Baskin (1971). In that film he gets one line of dialogue, no close ups, no reaction shots and no cigar. Frankly it was a wasted opportunity, some people don’t know a good thing when they’ve got it.
View movie here: https://archive.org/details/1955-female-jungle-the-hangover-la-resaca-bruno-ve-sota-ve
