This is the third jungle adventure I have seen from director Harry Fraser. The other two were The White Gorilla and The Savage Girl. This one, Drums of Africa, is at best marginally better than those other two. Harry sure knew how to knock out shoddy product in this genre. Like the other two films, this one is full of stock footage of wild animals. Although I don't really mind this as this footage is always kind of quite good fun to watch. In fact some of the scenes with the lions and tigers were actually pretty good, especially where some guy wrestles with them. Impressive stuff. My main gripe about the movie would most probably be its rubbish story line. There's a thread about a lost city, a fatal disease and a multiple lion attack. Nothing wrong with having a few things going on, but with the exception of the lion attack, the other story elements are dealt with very half-heartedly. The lost city turns out to be, you guessed it, more stock footage; this time hilariously it's shots of Angkor Wat which is of course in Asia. It just goes to show the things that they could get away with back in the 40's. Also, on that subject, I could never quite understand why there was a tiger in the middle of the African jungle. I think they just included it because they had it. The deadly killer disease is the other plot thrust of the story. And it's this that explains the presence of Buster Crabbe's doctor character in the middle of the jungle. He's there to find an antidote and help the natives. But this too is pretty lacklustre, and it really is hard to care very much about this plot element at all.
Drums of Africa is a pretty poor jungle adventure overall. It's not completely devoid of entertainment though.