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"From now on, I'm through with civilization." Africa is a mix of location footage and studio foliage, a "cursed hole" to the ivory hunter (C. Aubrey Smith) but an exciting playground to his daughter (Maureen O'Sullivan). "The secret graveyard of the elephants" is the safari's destination, getting to the Mutia Escarpment means crossing the river on rickety rafts, hippos and crocodiles come snapping their way. The famous yodel is heard half an hour in, "maybe hyena, bwana." Tarzan the feral trapezist, knife dangling off loincloth, tousled Johnny Weissmuller with his splendid torso and feline suppleness—as ravishing an object for camera contemplation as Gary Cooper in Morocco. Taken to his lair in the trees, the heroine asks without success for a bit of privacy from her monosyllabic abductor: "I wish you'd knock before you enter my boudoir." (Unable to compete for her attention, pith-helmeted Neil Hamilton as the explorer's business partner contents himself with smoking pipes quizzically.) Edgar Rice Burroughs' imperialist chestnut as a pre-Code erotic fantasy, W.S. Van Dyke provides briskness and heat to go with unused reels from Trader Horn. The Victorian lady in her fraying costume and the slab of beefcake who communicates mainly by poking her, "I wonder what you'd look like dressed," happy part of the frisky fauna. (The interplay of humans and animals accommodates actors in monkey costumes cradling real baby apes, a peculiar poignancy remembered by Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey.) Stampeding pachyderms follow Cheetah's own mini-adventure dodging big cats, the monstrous primate in the pygmy pit is the couple's ultimate test one year ahead of King Kong. "You must let him go. He belongs to the jungle." "Not now. He belongs to me!" A throb of Tchaikovsky announces the lovers at the close, libidinously exalted in Tarzan and His Mate and duly domesticated in every subsequent sequel. With Doris Lloyd, Forrester Harvey, and Ivory Williams. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |