The Naked Jungle

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Naked Jungle
DVD cover for movie
Directed by	Byron Haskin
Produced by	George Pal
Written by	Ranald MacDougall Ben Maddow Philip Yordan based on a story by Carl Stephenson
Starring	Eleanor Parker Charlton Heston Abraham Sofaer William Conrad
Music by	Daniele Amfitheatrof
Cinematography	Ernest Laszlo
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	March 3, 1954
Running time	95 min.
Country	USA
Language	English
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

The Naked Jungle was a 1954 film directed by Byron Haskin, and starring Charlton Heston and Eleanor Parker. Telling the story of an attack of army ants on a South American cocoa plantation, it was based on the short story Leiningen Versus the Ants by Carl Stephenson. The screenplay, about a stubborn plantation owner and his mail-order bride who fend off the ravenous ants, known as marabunta, was co-written by Ranald MacDougall and the blacklisted writer Ben Maddow. The film was produced in Technicolor by George Pal, who also made The War of the Worlds, Tom Thumb, and The Time Machine. The film's title is presumably a reference to how the ants "strip" the jungle and turn it into a wasteland.

[edit] Pop culture references

MacGyver in "Trumbo's World"

The MacGyver episode "Trumbo's World" featured the same premise as the short story and the film, even using a sizable amount of stock footage from the film. In the episode, the plantation owner was called Lucien Trumbo and he was played by David Ackroyd. MacGyver himself roughly filled the Eleanor Parker role, although he got to do some of Charlton Heston's heroic bits.