‘BORNEO’

Evening Star, Issue 22881, 12 February 1938, Page 13

‘BORNEO ’

ISLAND OF ADVENTURE FILMED From the island of primitive ferocity, legendary with the terror of wild men and Dyak pirates, of headhunters, of unexplored waterways that twist through impenetrable wilderness, of inconceivable marvels strange to the eyes of man, comes Martin Johnson’s last and most _ exciting adventure, ‘ Borneo,’ Twentieth Century-Fox release, which will be screened on Wed-, nesday at the Grand; ‘ Borneo ’is the pictorial climax of Martin Johnson’s adventurous career. Filmed in the land of the incredible, the inconceivable, and the impossible, it is the strangest and most exciting motion picture yet to come from the dark, mysterious byways of unknown worlds. Far up the winding, muddy reaches of the Kinibatanaan River Martin and Osa Johnson flew in their amphibian plane to bring back a record of the animals which inhabit that remote land of the descendants of the headhunters. ■ The strange almost unbelievable sights they saw and photographed make ‘ Borneo ’ a never-to-be-forgotten epic of the jungles. For the first time in motion pictures fish are shown leaving a receding river, creeping up the b§nk, and climbing the branches of trees growing along the shore, pushing themselves along with strong fins and an occasional flap of the tail.

There is the first motion picture evidence of proboscis monkeys—animals with more nose per face than any other two-legged creatures, the rarest of the rare, never kept alive in any civilised zoo. Flying snakes, of which all past stories nad been considered as legendary, are actually shown flying from the trees, while panic-stricken natives run to escape their venomous fangs. But these are not the only strange sights in a land teeming with fantastic life. The Johnsons also brought back a camera record of thereat wild men of Borneo, who delight in the gruesome pursuit of human heads; of the Murat men, blowing sudden death from their slim blowguns on darts tipped with venom; and of the giant orang-utan, “ devil-beast ” of the jungle, fighting a desperate three-day battle_ against a hundred natives, and hurling tree-top defiance at the “ thunder-bird ’ roaring out of the sky. . Truman Talley supervised the editing of Mr and Mrs Martin Johnson’s production. Lowell Thomas, famous commentator of screen and radio, and “ Professor ” Lew Lehr narrated. Lew Lehr and Russell Shields wrote the continuity. ‘ There Goes My Girl,’ starring Gone Raymond and Ann gothern, wul support ...