The only reason why anybody has ever heard of this little squib is the presence of Boris Karloff, who wears a turban and a luxuriant Stalin moustache as the blimpish old fogey General Pollegar, whose principal function within the film is to be a nuisance, blocking the young hero's efforts to oppose a corrupt cult worshiping the eponymous fire demon, Sabaka.
About half the film comprises colour travelogue footage filmed in Mysore which includes lots of pageantry and elephants; presumably the work of Jack McCoskey, second-billed of the film's two credited cameramen. The narrative scenes for the most part consists of long, soporific dialogue sequences made to feel tinnier still by their lack of musical accompaniment. Obviously cobbled together to accommodate the location footage, most of these scenes have been shot indoors in Hollywood with a cast including familiar faces like an abstracted-looking Reginald Denny, a menacing Victor Jory and a cowardly Jay Novello. The young hero, Gunga Ram, is played by Nino Marcel as a fresh-faced all-American boy with an accent hailing from the exotic Indian principality of Brooklyn. Ironically it was Karloff himself who came closest of any of the cast to being authentically Indian, as he attributed his perennially tanned complexion to Anglo-Indian ancestry.
The film's most interesting presence is actually the veteran voice artist June Foray (now 99 years old), making an extremely rare appearance before the cameras as Marku Ponjoy, the cult's unscrupulous High Priestess.
About half the film comprises colour travelogue footage filmed in Mysore which includes lots of pageantry and elephants; presumably the work of Jack McCoskey, second-billed of the film's two credited cameramen. The narrative scenes for the most part consists of long, soporific dialogue sequences made to feel tinnier still by their lack of musical accompaniment. Obviously cobbled together to accommodate the location footage, most of these scenes have been shot indoors in Hollywood with a cast including familiar faces like an abstracted-looking Reginald Denny, a menacing Victor Jory and a cowardly Jay Novello. The young hero, Gunga Ram, is played by Nino Marcel as a fresh-faced all-American boy with an accent hailing from the exotic Indian principality of Brooklyn. Ironically it was Karloff himself who came closest of any of the cast to being authentically Indian, as he attributed his perennially tanned complexion to Anglo-Indian ancestry.
The film's most interesting presence is actually the veteran voice artist June Foray (now 99 years old), making an extremely rare appearance before the cameras as Marku Ponjoy, the cult's unscrupulous High Priestess.