Johnny Weissmuller made a name for himself as Tarzan at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio. However, and I am not sure why, Weissmuller and 'Boy' (Johnny Sheffield) jumped from this prestige studio to the less than stellar RKO--where the budgets shrank considerably as did the quality. The scripts got a lot more weird and the films became chock full of poorly integrated stock footage and animals that often weren't even African. Additionally, 'Jane' (Maureen O'Sullivan) remained at MGM and a new leading lady needed to be found. After having the character be 'off on vacation in England' or 'helping with the war effort' in a couple films, RKO decided to re-cast this character with Brenda Joyce--who bore little similarity to O'Sullivan.
This installment finds a party of greedy trappers trying to exploit the jungle to the fullest. However, the wise leader of a very white looking group of natives in the middle of Africa will only allow them to take a male/female pair of each species--and they are just too greedy for this. So, their foreman (Barton MacLane) arranges for the King to be 'accidentally' killed and the new King is more than willing to let them take what they want! What can Tarzan do--especially when these evil trappers come into his territory next?!
This is a surprisingly lame entry--even for RKO. The most obvious problem is that there are absolutely no black people in the film--yet it's set in Africa!!! Instead, tan-skinned SOMEWHAT Polynesian-looking guys abound!! What?!?! Next, the number of stock clips is larger than normal--and the film looks pretty cheesy as a result. Even more cheesy is the completely unnecessary and dopey scene of the chimp, Cheeta, flying from a home-made glider (complete with obvious wires pulling it across the sound stage). Fortunately, Cheeta is very entertaining in this movie otherwise--and perhaps has the best performance of anyone in the film! This, however, is not enough to elevate this above the score of 5--and this is possibly being a bit over-generous.
By the way, when you see the airplane look carefully--it changes type throughout the film and are obviously at least two different planes.
This installment finds a party of greedy trappers trying to exploit the jungle to the fullest. However, the wise leader of a very white looking group of natives in the middle of Africa will only allow them to take a male/female pair of each species--and they are just too greedy for this. So, their foreman (Barton MacLane) arranges for the King to be 'accidentally' killed and the new King is more than willing to let them take what they want! What can Tarzan do--especially when these evil trappers come into his territory next?!
This is a surprisingly lame entry--even for RKO. The most obvious problem is that there are absolutely no black people in the film--yet it's set in Africa!!! Instead, tan-skinned SOMEWHAT Polynesian-looking guys abound!! What?!?! Next, the number of stock clips is larger than normal--and the film looks pretty cheesy as a result. Even more cheesy is the completely unnecessary and dopey scene of the chimp, Cheeta, flying from a home-made glider (complete with obvious wires pulling it across the sound stage). Fortunately, Cheeta is very entertaining in this movie otherwise--and perhaps has the best performance of anyone in the film! This, however, is not enough to elevate this above the score of 5--and this is possibly being a bit over-generous.
By the way, when you see the airplane look carefully--it changes type throughout the film and are obviously at least two different planes.