NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: VCI Blu-ray (June 2020): With C-19 mail delays, this finally arrived and you know how we love serials. VCI have transferred 1945's Jungle Queen to Blu-ray. It is cited as being "First time on Blu-ray and produced from a new 2K scan of the 35mm nitrate fine grain studio masters". There are 13 chapters that range from just under 15-minutes to almost 20-minutes. Like the others we have seen so far from VCI, this image quality can be somewhat inconsistent have a dark cast at times with almost smoky-faded contrast sequences but there isn't much damage and we get the usual weak-ish stock footage inserts - here there are marching German soldiers, lions, alligators (or are they crocodiles) etc, Overall, the image is very watchable - wavering between looking strong but mostly fairly faint. It is on one dual-layered Blu-ray disc and supported with a reasonable bitrate. The first reel of Chapter Five is lost so an SD rendering is used and you can see the quality drop in our examples below.

VCI have the distribution right to 48 serials from Universal Pictures. So more will be on the way. 

NOTE: We have added 33 large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, VCI, unfortunately, only transfer in a lossy Dolby track. It is in the original English language. We miss the advancement of uncompressed audio with its superior depth. There is no credited score but we get stock compositions from the usual; Milton Rosen (Jack Arnold's 3-D The Glass Web, serial like Junior G-Men of the Air or horror/thrillers like The Spider Woman Strikes Back), Hans J. Salter (Man Without a Star, The Killer that Stalked New York, The Strange Door, Cover Up, Man Without a Star, Scarlet Street, The Land Unknown, The War Lord, The Mole People, The Strange Case of Doctor Rx), Paul Sawtell (5 Steps to Danger, A Game of Death, Inferno, Silver City, The Fly, Denver and Rio Grande, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea etc.), Frank Skinner (The Appaloosa, Madame X, Magnificent Obsession, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, All That Heaven Allows, Thunder Bay, and The Naked City) and the iconic Dimitri Tiomkin (Night Passage, High Noon,  Angel Face, Strangers on a  Train, The Men, Dial M For Murder, The Thing From Another World etc. etc.) VCI offer optional English (SDH) subtitles on their Region FREE Blu-ray.

The VCI Blu-ray offers no extras at all, nor liner notes - nutt'in.

Love the Serials - they tend to have a lot of jungle-based, mysterious women, sci-fi, robots, lost cities, heroine bondage (three times here for poor, bound, Lois Collier) and always the cliff-hanger ending for each chapter (except the last) revisited the following week's start - with a slight less-dour conclusion. Jungle Queen has one of my favorite Noir gals - Ruth Roman from The Window, 5 Steps to Danger, Down Three Dark Streets, etc.  She's the titular 'Jungle Queen' (hubba hubba). Jungle Queen adds Nazi spies, tribal customs and a 'middle jungle' atmosphere to the proceedings. All good.  I watch this stuff and I wonder what am I doing in the 21st Century? When are they gonna invent a time-machine? Still waiting for Buster Crabbe's Flash Gordon to get the 1080P treatment. This VCI Blu-ray is only recommended to Serial fans - or maybe those who have a crush on Ruth Roman, like this reviewer.

Gary Tooze