Studio: Famous Studios
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Produced by: Sam Buchwald
Short Synopsis
In an African jungle a tribe of warriors, drawn as the crudest caricatures, celebrates around a temple that is secretly a Nazi outpost, their leader a German commander in a mask. The Nazis shoot down an American plane carrying plans for an Allied convoy; the only survivor is Lois Lane, who takes the secret papers from a dying officer, hides them under a rock and is captured. Refusing to talk, she is tied to a stake to be burned. Clark Kent, flying out to meet the convoy, spots the wreck, parachutes down, and as Superman fights his way through the warriors and the Nazi guns to put out the fire, rescue Lois and smash the radio before the convoy's position can be sent; the convoy is saved and a U-boat sunk, and Hitler, listening in Berlin, hears the bad news.
Why It Matters
- The film's night-time jungle, lit by torches, and Superman's fight against machine guns at the temple are among the better action sequences of the Famous Studios run, and the ending, with Hitler at the radio, is one of the series' few direct appearances by the real enemy leadership.
- It is also one of the series' most offensive films, with its African tribe drawn as savages under German command, and it has been cut from some television packages for that reason; it stands as a document of what a major studio's most prestigious cartoon series could show in 1943. Like the rest of the series it is in the public domain and widely available.
Notes and Trivia
- Dan Gordon, the director, had written the Fleischer Superman film Terror on the Midway.
- The convoy plot ties the film to the Battle of the Atlantic, at its height in the spring of 1943.
- See also: Destruction Inc. (1942), Japoteurs (1942), Spies (Private Snafu, 1943).
