T. F. Stockwell [Herbert Rawlinson] pulls off a calculated theft, siphoning the money and jewelry from the Cairo bank’s safe deposit boxes where he works. Driven by greed, he escapes the city with his young daughter, Doreen Stockwell [Julie London], and the pilot, slinging them toward the south in a private plane. A violent storm erupts, forcing the trio to crash in a remote jungle. Although they survive the wreck, Stockwell’s first instinct is ruthless practicality: he murders the pilot the moment he realizes the loot is within reach, sealing their fates in the wild.
As the survivors begin to piece together their surroundings, Doreen makes a striking discovery: a wounded gorilla left behind by a safari party. This encounter plants the seeds of an unusual bond, and the jungle begins to take on a strange, protective character around her. The tale widens its scope as years slip by and a new figure enters the outskirts of the same jungle—Ray Gorman [Buster Crabbe], a man whose purpose is personal and troubling. He drifts into the area on the margins of civilization, where a bar owner named Carl Hurst [Barton MacLane] and his partner Marie [Fifi D'Orsay] keep a wary eye on suspicious activity and the movement of strangers.
Gorman’s motive is entwined with a painful family history. His father was once at the helm of the bank that Stockwell robbed; when that father figure was blamed for the heist, despair drove him to suicide. Gorman’s mission, then, is twofold: recover the stolen loot and clear his father’s name, a task that could have far-reaching consequences if the truth comes to light. In the jungled fringes, fate nudges Gorman toward a different kind of ally. He saves Hurst’s servant Tobo from a brutal encounter with another local, and this act leads to a crucial confession: there is a whisper of a legend—the “white witch” who, according to local lore, fell from the sky.
The clue is tangibly connected to Stockwell’s disappearance, and Gorman sees the possibility that the legend might be more than myth. With Tobo acting as guide, Gorman and Hurst, with Marie’s discreet presence, begin a pursuit into the heart of the jungle. What they uncover is far more complex than a simple treasure hunt: the white witch is understood to be a living person, someone who defies ordinary explanation and has endured years in a world ruled by chance and danger. The pursuit threads back toward where Stockwell’s plane vanished and the loot remains a beacon for every shadow-walker in the region.
In a revelation that reframes the entire tale, the “white witch” emerges as Doreen Stockwell herself, now grown and living in a fragile, almost mythic harmony with the jungle. Her constant companion is a gorilla named Nabonga, who serves as her steadfast protector in a landscape that has kept her father’s fate and the loot’s location murky for years. Nabonga [Ray Corrigan] is the animal counterpart to this unlikely bond, the gorilla’s presence underscoring the danger and the tenderness that coexist in the wild. Doreen’s transformation from a girl found in the crashed plane to a figure at the center of legend forms the emotional hinge of the narrative, recontextualizing Stockwell’s crime and the subsequent chase.
As the layers unfold, the story threads together crime, survival, and myth. Gorman’s quest to recover the loot and restore his father’s memory intersects with Hurst and Marie’s watchful maneuvers and with Doreen’s quiet, enduring resilience in the jungle. The atmosphere remains taut, balancing moments of suspense with the odd tenderness of a girl grown into a guardian of a strange, perilous world. In the end, what began as a classic treasure-hunt caper becomes a meditation on memory, identity, and the strange kinship that can form between human beings and the creatures that inhabit the edges of their worlds.
