The title 'Queen of the Amazons' with Patricia Morison led me to hope that Morison (who recently celebrated her 102nd birthday) would be in the title role, but alas no. She's playing Jean Preston, looking for her missing fiancé somewhere in the Dark Continent, where she trades in her fetching forties suits for a fetching pair of jodhpurs and riding boots and her party eventually encounters the amazons promised by the title.
In support are veterans J.Edward Bromberg (first seen reciting 'Three Fishers' by Charles Kingsley to his pet monkey) and John Miljan, who serves as the film's narrator. About half the film consists of stock footage (some of which I recognised from Martin & Osa Johnson's 'Simba: King of the Beasts' [1928]), and the film actually does a pretty good job of integrating the actors into the actuality scenes.
Ironically it's when we finally meet the tribe of "white she-devils" that the film loses its grip; and despite all their build-up both Jean (having earlier shown herself to be a crack shot with a six-shooter) and Queen Zita (equally deadly with a bow & arrow) both prove disappointingly useless when they actually find themselves confronted with a crisis. The day is instead saved by Zita's blonde handmaiden Sugi (Cay Forester), whose quick thinking in grabbing a blowpipe and killing the villain should have resulted in Zita abdicating in her favour, and instead doing Sugi's hair from now on.
In support are veterans J.Edward Bromberg (first seen reciting 'Three Fishers' by Charles Kingsley to his pet monkey) and John Miljan, who serves as the film's narrator. About half the film consists of stock footage (some of which I recognised from Martin & Osa Johnson's 'Simba: King of the Beasts' [1928]), and the film actually does a pretty good job of integrating the actors into the actuality scenes.
Ironically it's when we finally meet the tribe of "white she-devils" that the film loses its grip; and despite all their build-up both Jean (having earlier shown herself to be a crack shot with a six-shooter) and Queen Zita (equally deadly with a bow & arrow) both prove disappointingly useless when they actually find themselves confronted with a crisis. The day is instead saved by Zita's blonde handmaiden Sugi (Cay Forester), whose quick thinking in grabbing a blowpipe and killing the villain should have resulted in Zita abdicating in her favour, and instead doing Sugi's hair from now on.