Elephant Stampede ** (1951, Johnny Sheffield, Donna Martell, John Kellogg, Leonard Mudie) – Classic Movie Review 11,010

Writer-director Ford Beebe’s 1951 adventure Elephant Stampede [Bomba and the Elephant Stampede] stars Johnny Sheffield and is the sixth in the 12-film Bomba, the Jungle Boy series, in which Leonard Mudie joins the franchise and plays a new Commissioner Andy Barnes and thereafter also appears in all six of the films in the series that follow.

In an African jungle village, Miss Banks (Edith Evanson) the school teacher is getting the locals to learn how to read and her beautiful young assistant Lola (Donna Martell) is teaching Bomba  the alphabet. Then two ivory poachers Joe Collins (Myron Healey) and Bob Warren (John Kellogg) arrive in the village and try to force Bomba to lead them to a hidden cache of ivory, but Bomba calls for help from his elephant friends.

The film was shot in Arcadia, California, in the botanical garden now called the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden.

Also in the cast are Donna Martell as Lola, John Kellogg as Bob Warren, Edith Evanson as Miss Banks, Martin Wilkins as Chief Nagalia, Myron Healey as Joe Collins, Leonard Mudie as Andy Barnes and Guy Kingsford as Mark Phillips.

Elephant Stampede takes place in Africa, but the elephants are Indian, and there is obvious rear projection, blatant soundstage jungle sets with painted backdrops and stock footage of jungle creatures. Large artificial ears were attached to the Indian elephants as a disguise. 

To appease the prudes of the production code committee, Bomba wears anachronistic, often visible, dark underwear under his loincloth.

The 12 Bomba films, all directed by Ford Beebe, are: Bomba, the Jungle Boy (1949), Bomba on Panther Island (1949), The Lost Volcano (1950), The Hidden City (1951), The Lion Hunters (1951), Elephant Stampede (1952), African Treasure (1952), Bomba and the Jungle Girl (1952), Safari Drums (1953), The Golden Idol (1954), Killer Leopard (1954) and Lord of the Jungle (1955).

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,010

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