The impact of Zimbo on South Asian cinema

Not many non-Indians know that Zimbo as a makeshift franchise had begun with a trio of very obvious knockoff prototypes in the end of the 1930s and their female focused, Hunterwali related spinoffs. 

Named Toofani Tarzan, the first film’s plot is nearly always the same as that of its somehow more famous reboot, but with slightly less violence. Then came the more fun Tamil variant Vanaraja Karzan, which was released in June 1938. Meanwhile in 1939, both spawned another film variant called Jungle King, which is basically a hipper Toofani Tarzan in a few more western clothes. 

In 1942, a female focused spinoff called the (first) Jungle Princess made its way onto some Indian screens, while the Jungle ka Jawahar and the (second) Jungle Queen films, both loose spinoff sequels to the first one, were made about eleven and fourteen years later.

A fourth film in the makeshift Karzan/Mala/Bama/Pedro series, named Mala The Mighty, was released in 1948. It is a (likely lost) loose soft reboot/spinoff which likely centred on a different character in a similar jungle setting. Last but not least was Bama, a now lost spiritual sequel to the first Toofani Tarzan movie, which was released in 1952. 

In 1958, the first true Zimbo movie, based loosely upon Busuke Akagawa’s book The Boy Jungle King, was released. The then nineteen- to twenty-year-old Azaad Irani’s first major cinematic role was of the newly renamed Zimbo in that movie, years before he would become a true legendary talent in some parts of the mainstream Bollywood movie scene. 

While it does have elements taken from both the Tarzan books and Johnny Weissmuller-Gordon Scott era Tarzan movies, it’s much more likely that Zimbo was simply raised in the Western Ghats forests, as he likely arrived there when he was a toddler, whose middle-class West Bengali parents were looking for a better life elsewhere. But the apes who raised him are likely escaped chimps from a very messy circus.

The filming locations for the whole trilogy are in fact all Indian, hence the crazy amount of zoological and cultural shenanigans running around onscreen. There’s the nasty and greedy Bihari Lal and his gang, plus Zimbo’s well-meant uncle and his adopted daughter Leila, who thankfully isn’t related to him by birth otherwise. 

A spinoff called Zimbo Comes to Town was released two years later with a different director, but it wasn’t as much liked as the first. Unlike the first film, it likely featured an amnesiac thief running around in the forest, who likely isn’t the real Zimbo due to acting a bit more brutish and wearing different clothing. Some of the circus higher ups are also pretty fucked up people, but the only one who does care for him is a cute young trapeze artist. In other words, it’s basically an erratic impostor who wants to be like his would-be hero, even though he can’t come up with other plans until before he’s revealed as such in the next movie. 

There is a lost competitor movie called Pedro, starring the eponymous chimpanzee, which was released in the same year as Zimbo Comes to Town. The plot is otherwise more similar to that of Busuke Akagawa’s book, but still remains different from the Zimbo trilogy. In fact, it’s more of a prequel to the Bama film also directed by the little known Akbar Ali Aku. 

In 1963, an unintended stealth sequel to all the previous (pre-1962) Karzan/Mala/Bama/Pedro movies was finally released, albeit as a belatedly boring response to Zimbo Comes to Town. This film has the generic name of Jungle Boy but is more like a spiritual remake to the first of the loosely book based Bomba the Jungle Boy films. Unfortunately, it’s pretty much lost media except for the poster and images. 

In 1966, Zimbo Finds a Son was released at last. The plot of that film actually doubles as the end of the Zimbo imposter’s temporary reign. It’s also the best film of the trilogy in terms of both drama and memes. Being a partial remake of Tarzan Finds a Son in spirit, it has Zimbo, Leila and their adopted son Mala embarking on an adventure worth a watch for bad movie fans.

In November 1985, nineteen years after Zimbo Finds a Son first aired on cinemas, came the release of a regional hit classic (at least in both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh when they were awkwardly merged together). Named Adavi Donga ‘85 (not to be confused with the long delayed but averagely handled Adavi Donga biopic released in April 2023), it was basically an abridged deviation of the Zimbo trilogy, but darker and more solemn, while also starring superstar Chiranjeevi as the boisterous Chiru Kalidas. Although a rather honorary (albeit not fully official) instalment of the Zimbo franchise, it also is not only its own story but also the Zimbo franchise’s most popular and civilised movie, mainly because of how savvy yet flawed its wild man protagonist is and how much YouTube views it has in comparison to the prototypes, the succeeding trilogy, the 1999 continuation and Junglee Manchhe. 

In 1998, a film directed by SchlockMeister Allan A. Goldstein, was released. Like Adavi Donga beforehand, it was an unofficial retelling of the Zimbo trilogy which was made with some drastic changes, largely in order to cash in on (a decade wide trend of) fellow Jungle Book inspired works. Being co-written and coproduced by John Lawson, Damian Lee and media mogul Ashok Amritraj, it is such an endearingly bad movie that its Hindi dub is better than its original English version. 

In 1999, as an unremarkably bad response to both the more modest success of Allan A. Goldstein’s Jungle Boy and the international success of Disney’s first Tarzan instalment, a rather loose soft reboot/continuation of the Zimbo film series, was made with lesser known and lower budget actors to boot. The fourth movie, simply called Zimbo ‘99 (in order to avoid confusion with the original trilogy), has the grown-up Mala become the new Zimbo in his adoptive peer parents’ footsteps. 

Nepalese movie geeks have understood that in September 2006, a movie called Junglee Manchhe was released in Nepal to some domestic fanfare. It was made on a much lower budget, but making up for that fact is the amount of violence being similar to that of various independently made kung fu movies, thus it is much more violent than even Adavi Donga ‘85.

Urban majority Worlders regardless! You’ll all be surprised if there is a writer-director with the balls to make a new and exportable web series in the future. But in order not to be accused as a Lord Greystoke rip-off, it will somehow become a historical werewolf adventure divided into four parts, combined with elements from Adavi Donga ‘85 and Junglee Manchhe. 

Even though it’s set in a clusterfuck called the Victorian era British Raj, the titular Navneet is a mortal force of nature raised both by feral dogs and by wolves; thus, it is he who becomes a werewolf as well.