Elephant Stampede (1951) watch online HD

Elephants are strolling around as muscular Bomba (Johnny Sheffield) rides one through the African jingle. Bomba must swing into action when a snake threatens his bird. After this, Bomba visits attractive Donna Martell (as Lola). This shapely brunette is helping "old maid" schoolteacher Edith Evanson (as Miss Banks) teach the natives to read. Bored with her job, Ms. Martell is much more excited to be tutoring Bomba on the side. The jungle boy is a quick study, in academic areas...

Bomba learns to spell "L.I.O.N", but Ms. Martell is more interested in "L.O.V.E." A good jungle boy, Bomba is not interested in finding a mate. Frustrated, Martell decides to make Bomba jealous by seeming to be sexually available for trigger-happy John Kellogg (as Bob Warren) and amorous Myron Healey (as Joe Collins). On safari, this dastardly duo is out to shoot elephants and steal local ivory. Lola's idea is dumb and dangerous. You could say: Whatever Lola wants, Lola doesn't get.

**** Bomba: Elephant Stampede (10/28/51) Ford Beebe ~ Johnny Sheffield, Donna Martell, John Kellogg, Myron Healey

I was lucky to get hold of a copy of this movie as it is quite hard to get hold of, as are all of the Bomba movies.

In this one, some illegal poachers arrive in the jungle and kill an elephant. After killing their leader, they try and kill more elephants but Bomba tries to stop them and eventually succeeds by getting a heard of elephants to trample them to death.

Johnny Sheffield plays Bomba once again and takes a good part. A lot of the scenes involving the elephants running is stock footage I think. Bomba also has a young lady who fancies him in this movie. She is learning him to read.

I enjoyed watching this movie. Watch it if you are lucky enough to get the chance.

Rating: 3 and a half stars out of 5.

Yes, somebody does say "Holy Cow!", but it was me with the sarcastic reply. I just wondered if screenwriter/director Ford Beebe was serious when he had that line written, said by the hunting commissioner in Bomba territory after spotting a dead elephant. I also had a sarcastic response when Bomba indicated that he slept between the elephant's legs when there was danger in the jungle. "Front legs, I hope", I said, praying that Bomba would not be covered in elephant waste.

All these segments occur in the first 10 minutes, combining bad humor with the reprehensible trade of elephant poaching. Like Bomba, elephants are my favorite African mammal, gentle giants, he claims, and usually right until the evil that men do gets the elephants angry. And when elephants are angry, all humans within their range will pay. It's up to Bomba to stop the poachers, having been involved in the accidental killing of the man determined to stop them from ivory trade, giving a sad element to the plot.

Bomba's trying to learn to read, and pretty Donna Martell is the teacher's assistant working with him. She's decked out in a sarong and assumed to be a native, but it's obvious to me that she's as much a native as Johnny Sheffield is. When this deals with the serious legal and moral crime of poaching and the pointless slaughter of all African mammals, I'm all for it. But when it comes up with some lame piece of dialog, my eyes roll back, and my own trunk sneers at the screen. This is so formulaic that I seem to know what the characters will say when they say it. It's passable entertainment, so I can look past the rotten parts, as long as the lessons of nature are fully explained.

***SPOILERS*** The usual non violent and peace loving Bomba, Johnny Sheffield, the jungle boy takes the gloves off and keeps his loin cloth and underneath briefs on in taking on a number of poachers who are out to shoot his elephant friends for their precious ivory tusks.

Gunning down their guide Game Warden Mark Phllips, Guy Kingsford, Warren & Collins, John Kellogg & Myron Healey,are now free to gun down as many elephants as they want and take their Ivory tusks across the border of the game reserve into Portuguese territory. With Warren impersonating the late Mark Phillips the two poachers have a field day in gunning down helpless elephants until Bomba arrives and puts their plans on ice. By him organizing his elephant friends with the help of his monkey sidekick to strike back at the poachers with the fury of an unstoppable elephant stampede.

It's not just the elephants that we and Bomba get to see in the film there's also pretty Lola,Donna Martell, who's helping the local natives with her boss spinster schoolmaster Miss. Banks, Edith Evarson, on their A.B.C's. So that they get get educated enough to be able to read the works of Milton Melville and Dickens that she has ready or them in her school library.

It's when both Warren & Collins plan to raid the secret cave that tons of ivory tusks are hidden in that the very naive chief Nagaila, Martin Wilkins, told them about that Bomba springs into action. There's also the fact that the two poachers later kidnap and are holding both Lola and Miss. Banks hostage and threaten to murder them if they don't get what they want- the information that Bomba has-in finding the secret cave. That also gets Bomba a bit, quite a bit, hot under, since he doesn't wear a shirt, the loin cloth in him dealing with them.

***SPOILERS*** Violent ending with the elephants coming to Bomba Lola and Miss.Banks rescue and putting and end to both Warran and Collins,who had by then had a falling out, dreams of wealth and glory. It was the worst of the two Warren, who shot and killed his partner Collins and wounded Lola, who ended up getting the worst of it. In him being trampled to death by the rampaging elephants whom he was planning to do in for their ivory. As for Bomba he's now back swinging on tree vines with his monkey friends in the jungle and eating his favorite diet of coconuts and bananas. And thanks to Lola in her teaching Bomba to read and write English he plans to find a newsstand,if there's one in the jungle, and get the latest edition of the Wall Street Journal New York Times and Washington Post and catch up with the latest business and news of the world. That's if he can somehow come up with the cash to buy them.

Bomba, the Jungle Boy returns, predictably involved in peril as he tangles with two mercenary Americans--ivory poachers in the jungle who have just killed their guide and plot to overtake an ivory shipment running through Portugese territory. Despite the camp-exotic undermining (which all the "Bomba" movie inevitably possess), this episode in the serial is curiously top-heavy with violent action (some of it rather nasty). Bomba is punched, pistol-whipped, shot at, and shot down; at one point, he misses a bullet by inches, which instead strikes a pretty native girl harboring a crush on the "jungle devil". Stock footage makes up most of the title stampede (a great deal of which is ridiculously sped-up, one presumes for time), while both the acting and Ford Beebe's direction are equally wooden. Johnny Sheffield is still charming as Bomba; resembling a corn-fed kid straight off the farm, or perhaps a quarterback on the high school football team, Sheffield cannot belie his embarrassment over this cheapjack endeavor, but neither does he get ambitious or attempt to turn his Bomba into a super-hero. The lackadaisical personality of Bomba (who speaks to his elephants in Swahili and asks questions like, "Why are there two f's in 'giraffe'?") is a major part of his appeal. Without him, this would be just another matinée quickie--one with a hardened heart. ** from ****

This segment of the Bomba the Jungle Boy series finds Bomba trying to better himself by learning to read. Teaching him is the lovely Donna Martell, teaching assistant to Edith Evanson at the local native village. She'd like to further Bomba's education in other ways, but Bomba has his mind on book learning.

All that comes to an end when ivory poachers arrive in the territory in the persons of John Kellogg and Myron Healey. They murder their professional hunting guide and assume his identity. And Healey starts moving in on Martell which bothers everyone.

Elephant Stampede marked the appearance of Leonard Mudie as Commissioner Andy Barnes. The character appeared in the first Bomba film with another actor, but was then dropped. Mudie played Barnes throughout the rest of the series and was the only other regular besides Johnny Sheffield as Bomba.

If you know the Tarzan series and know his relationship with the elephant community and how they mutually aid each other you know something about how this turns out. And Bomba does need the aid of his pachyderm friends.

One of the better in the Bomba series.

Elephant Stampede (1951)

** (out of 4)

While Bomba (Johnny Sheffield) is in the jungle having a pretty teacher's aid (Donna Martell) teach him to reach, a couple poachers are killing elephants for their ivory. Soon the two men find out about Bomba and must kill him so that they can get back to their business. The sixth film in the series actually turns out to be one of the most entertaining but than again this is a cheap Bomba movie from Monogram so one shouldn't be expecting an actual good movie. I think there are some pretty funny and campy moments throughout and not the ones we're used to seeing like the stock footage o rear projection stuff. There's an entire side-story dealing with this young, beautiful school assistant wanting to have fun with Bomba but he keeps pushing her away instead preferring to learn his ABCs. This leads to her wanting to make him jealous and take off with the two poachers who are constantly sexually harassing her. I'm not sure how many children in the audience knew this or cared about it but I'm sure the majority of the adults watching, then and now, couldn't help but laugh at Bomba for rejecting such a beauty. The film is actually quite dark for children because there's quite a bit of violence against elephants and especially Bomba. Poor jungle boy takes quite a beating here including being pistol whipped and knocked out a couple times. This action does help keep the film moving and I'd say that at times Bomba comes off as such a jerk you really don't mind it. Sheffield is certainly very comfortable in the part by now and he turns in a fine performance. Martell clearly steals the film as the teacher's aid. The support is pretty good as well, which is rare for this series. All in all, fans of the series should be some entertainment out of this but just don't expect something great.

Yet another cheap Monogram Pictures' Bomba film, with it's signature phony looking backlot jungle, poorly done rear projection, and an overuse of stock jungle footage. The entry has Bomba stopping evil ivory hunters and is less racist than most entries and also a slightly more enjoyable film than the rest of the series. After having watched five of the 12 Bomba films, I'm not sure I really need to see any more, though I'll probably make myself to just say I've seen all of them. Still, this was probably the most bearable of them that I've seen thus far.

The sixth Bomba movie starring Johnny Sheffield has Bomba learning to read from beautiful Lola (Donna Martell). Lola is interested in Bomba for more than his mind but, as was the case in most of these movies, Bomba will have none of that. So, to make him jealous, Lola starts flirting with one of two ivory poachers. Bomba doesn't care about the flirting but he does care about the poaching. So he steps in to put a stop to them killing his elephant friends.

No doubt some modern viewers will read some unintended subtext into the fact that Bomba was often uninterested in the attractive women throwing themselves at him in these movies. I think the real reason was the makers of these movies were aiming them at little boys who didn't like 'mushy stuff,' as well as the comic value that comes from some of these situations. Anyway, the series really needed a Jane like Tarzan had. It's unfortunate they didn't see it that way but that's just one of the many reasons this series never rises above middling juvenile entertainment. This entry is par for the course with the usual rear projection effects and stock footage but there is a nice supporting cast, which helps.