TARZAN THE APE MAN (1932)
***/**** Image B- Sound B+
starring Johnny Weissmuller, Neil Hamilton, C. Aubrey Smith, Maureen O’Sullivan
adaptation by Cyril Hume; dialogue by Ivor Novello
based on characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs
directed by W.S. Van Dyke
by Bill Chambers As with most “origin” Tarzan films, Tarzan himself is an off-screen promise for the first third of Tarzan the Ape Man, though his famous yodel (which the studio maintains was artificially created) portends his appearance about ten minutes before he actually materializes. Likewise, as with most origin Tarzans, this one has become something of a viewing formality: The basics of Tarzan are pop-culture fundamentals passed down through the generations as if by osmosis, and so any film that aims to tell the story from scratch is bound to seem a little sluggish. It’s remarkable, then, that Tarzan the Ape Man, in addition to exhibiting a surprising immunity to the ravages of time, is also mostly spared the contempt born of familiarity. Cutie-pie Maureen O’Sullivan essays the talkies’ first Jane, who joins her father James’s (C. Aubrey Smith) expedition in Africa and immediately casts a spell on dad’s right-hand man, Harry Holt (Neil Hamilton). Once they begin their treacherous journey across the Mutia escarpment, beyond which allegedly lies an elephant graveyard that James and co. plan to raid for its ivory, Jane meets her true intended, the monosyllabic, acrobatic Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller). Though Tarzan more or less abducts Jane, their compatibility is such that she refutes her father’s claim that Tarzan belongs to the jungle when she’s reunited with the caravan. “Not now. He belongs to me,” she pouts.
Dated by its implied concurrence with the most glib characters and an initial overreliance on process shots, Tarzan the Ape Man is nonetheless thrillingly modern in its use of not only montage but also diegetic music (in this case, a tribal chant) to keep the tempo for a heroic–and heroically violent–set-piece. (The film almost certainly influenced Walt Disney, with an affecting scene in which a hunting party orphans a chimpanzee recapitulated in Disney’s Bambi for maximum pathos.) And while it’s oblique progress at best, there’s not a single white actor in blackface among the restless natives.
THE DVD
Retaining its MGM logo, Tarzan the Ape Man is presented on DVD in a theoretically optimal 1.33:1 presentation: Despite the general fogginess of the image, a precise layer of grain indicates that it doesn’t get any sharper than this. Fish-eye distortion occurs in many a shot involving wild animals, a lens-based artifact for which naïveté surrounding the then-fledgling practice of telephotography is probably to blame. Contrast and shadow detail are adequate, and the DD 1.0 mono sound is exceptionally clear.
TARZAN AND HIS MATE (1934)
***/**** Image C Sound B-
starring Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O’Sullivan, Neil Hamilton, Paul Cavanagh
screenplay by James Kevin McGuinness; adaptation by Howard Emmett Rogers and Leon Gordon
based on characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs
directed by Cedric Gibbons
It’s been one movie year, apparently, since the events of Tarzan the Ape Man unfurled, and poor Henry Holt (Neil Hamilton) can’t get Jane out of his head. Henry’s mildly diabolical plan to woo her back to civilization entails luring friend Martin Arlington (Paul Cavanagh) to Africa with the futile promise of making him rich by once again raiding the elephant graveyard beyond the Mutia escarpment. Martin brings with him Parisian silks to help Henry remind Jane of all the feminine luxuries on which she is missing out, but if Madonna was right and living in a material world yields material girls, then the opposite must hold true: Though Jane may glimmer with nostalgia upon the sight and sound of a phonograph, she’s content with the simple pleasures of her new beau’s lifestyle.
Widely considered the best of the Weissmuller/O’Sullivan Tarzans, Tarzan and His Mate is not as breezily entertaining as its predecessor, and on that score it’s worth noting that the DVD restores the film to the length it was before MGM started whittling it down, first to appease the censors, then to squeeze in extra showings per day. That said, 104 minutes is an unwieldy runtime for a genre picture of the Thirties, and Tarzan and His Mate‘s pacing seems unsure of itself, as if it wants to leave enough slack for the abridgers. (That three directors–only one of whom received credit–played musical chairs probably precluded any rhythmic unity.) Still, owing to the unblinking violence (which reaches fever pitch with a gruesome stabbing that predates the allegedly groundbreaking gushes of blood in Hammer’s Horror of Dracula) and reinstated nudity (doubling for an allegedly appendicitis-stricken O’Sullivan, Josephine McKay skinny-dips with fellow Olympic swimmer Weissmuller), Tarzan and His Mate is as mesmerizingly vulgar as Tarzan himself. Having Holt’s disregard for human life in Tarzan the Ape Man come boomeranging back through Arlington’s repugnance (“Whip would’ve done just as well,” Holt says after Arlington has shot a member of their safari; “Perhaps you’re right–he could’ve carried 150 pounds of ivory,” Arlington replies) is another nice, contemporary touch that ultimately leads to the redemption of not only Holt, but also the first film proper.
THE DVD
Unfortunately, Tarzan and His Mate sports the worst presentation in Warner’s box set. Gone is the grain of Tarzan the Ape Man–and detail with it. Mastered from a corroding source, the image is consistently washed-out and given to PAL-like motion artifacts. Dialogue is plagued by background hiss, while the music and sound effects are harsh at any volume. However commendable, note that the studio’s desire to subject each Tarzan entry to the bare minimum of compression results in the rather confusing pairing of Tarzan and His Mate with Tarzan Finds a Son! instead of the immediate prequel to either.
TARZAN ESCAPES (1936)
**/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O’Sullivan, John Buckler, Benita Hume
screenplay by Cyril Hume
based on characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs
directed by Richard Thorpe
SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. And here’s where things start going south. In Tarzan Escapes, heavily re-shot by director Richard Thorpe after the preview version tested “too dark” (despite the imposition of slapstick and the purported excision of gore, it’s still a much more downbeat film than either of its prequels), Tarzan and Jane host guests: Jane’s cousins Rita (Benita Hume) and Eric (William Henry); white hunter Capt. Fry (John Buckler, in his final performance); and Fry’s hysterical assistant, Henry Rawlins (Herbert Mundin, the sort of actor hired for his fainting skills). Despite Rita’s and Fry’s duplicitous agendas (Rita needs Jane to return to London with her in order to claim an inheritance; Fry–evidently a fan of King Kong–wants to capture Tarzan for public exhibition), Tarzan and Jane never look more threatened than when Jane orders her common-law husband (they started referring to each other spousally in the last film to appease the Puritans in the audience) to pick up lunch (cut to: Tarzan wrestling a zebra in a reused clip from Tarzan the Ape Man) and shows off various Swiss Family adaptations of modern conveniences.
The idea of starting a nuclear existence in the jungle contradicts the Luddite ideology at work in the basic premise of a woman (and most every Tarzan film is fundamentally about Jane, i.e., us) discovering, as THE ONION A.V. CLUB’s Keith Phipps put it, “how little use she has for polite society,” in addition to dealing the series’ escapist appeal a massive blow. In charting the domestication of Tarzan, these films turn a cold shower on the potent whimsy of a monogamous relationship disconnected from social mores. It’s depressing, and so are the vine-swinging scene transitions (which predict sitcom technique), and so is Jane’s Stepford acceptance of Rita’s ruse, which claims the lives of roughly a dozen people before she confesses that Jane’s presence back home is not actually mandatory. Only the picture’s intentionally pessimistic interludes, like the sticky fate of Rawlins, save it from drowning in a morass of Emily Post-isms.
THE DVD
At least the film looks rich on DVD, certainly better than either Tarzan the Ape Man or Tarzan and His Mate do; mild print damage is an acceptable trade-off for the transfer’s detailed shadows and crisp focus. The Dolby 1.0 mono soundtrack is smooth and clear, if ultimately undistinguished.
TARZAN FINDS A SON! (1939)
**/**** Image B- Sound B
starring Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O’Sullivan, Johnny Sheffield, Ian Hunter
screenplay by Cyril Hume
based on characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs
directed by Richard Thorpe
There’s a bizarre morality at play in Tarzan Finds a Son!, Richard Thorpe’s intermittently-involving second time at the helm, which bequeaths the backstory Edgar Rice Burroughs devised for Tarzan to a tertiary character. A plane bound for Cape Town crashes over that infernal Mutia escarpment, orphaning the infant son of Lord Greystoke’s favourite nephew. Chimpanzee Cheeta (she of the creepy laugh) couriers said baby to Tarzan, who attempts to pacify his crying ward with a leg of meat and is inflexible when Jane proposes alternatives to Tarzan’s name for the boy (Boy, natch). Five years later, the functional family unit of Tarzan, Jane, and Boy (Johnny Sheffield, later “Bomba, the Jungle Boy” in an unrelated serial franchise) is rocked by a search party made up of Boy’s opportunistic relatives; Boy is the key to an inheritance (yep, that trope again), and Mr. and Mrs. Lancing (Ian Hunter and Frieda Inescort) will stop at nothing, not even betraying the ironically-named Uncle Tom (Henry Stephenson), to gain custody of the child.
We don’t want to see Tarzan and Jane lose their adoptive son, of course, but Jane’s best argument for keeping Boy is a variation on “possession is nine-tenths of the law”–it’s interesting to watch the filmmakers jump through hoops to cloud our better judgment with sentiment. (Thorpe resorts, albeit effectively, to a cold-blooded execution to finally tip the scales irrevocably in Tarzan’s (and Jane’s) favour.) It’s a rickety picture in a rickety series whose by-now-compulsory ingredients–swimming montages (Tarzan Finds a Son!‘s “photographed at beautiful Silver Springs, Florida”), Jane’s capture by savages, Kuleshovian inserts of Cheeta–are becoming endurance tests, though having a kid around spices up the flagging dynamic between our seven-year itchy couple, as is wont to happen.
THE DVD
Though Warner’s DVD master of Tarzan Finds a Son! lacks deep blacks (giving the image a two-dimensional appearance), they’ve exhumed a source print in presentable condition. The DD 1.0 mono audio is surprisingly full, if on the quiet side.
TARZAN’S SECRET TREASURE (1941)
**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O’Sullivan, Johnny Sheffield, Reginald Owen
screenplay by Myles Connolly and Paul Gangelin
based on characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs
directed by Richard Thorpe
In Tarzan’s Secret Treasure, Tarzan fils Boy (Johnny Sheffield again) is out swimming with his mom and dad when he finds a nugget of gold at the bottom of the lake. Because Jane tells him he could buy (“What’s ‘buy’?”) a lot with that in civilization (“What’s ‘civilization’?”), Boy strikes out on his own in search of a populated area and happens across a plague-infested village, where the tribal leaders attempt to burn him at the stake. Scientists on an expedition (you don’t suppose they’re on the way to the Mutia escarpment, do you? Is the sky blue?) intervene, and a grateful Tarzan agrees to escort them to their destination. But then out comes the metaphorical gun from the metaphorical drawer: Boy flaunts his sunken treasure before the only scientist with–uncanny!–a pencil moustache (Tom Conway), who consequently mutinies against his crew in pursuit of Fort Knox, jeopardizing the lives of Tarzan and his family in kind.
Despite record cannibalizing of its predecessors (a character jumps out of the way of a rear-projected rhino for the umpteenth time; Tarzan fights a crocodile…again; a Johnny Eck-suited creature appears as a mirage to another drunken sidekick), Tarzan’s Secret Treasure is Thorpe’s deftest turn behind the camera yet; the series’ clockwork formula was more or less retired with this entry, perhaps because they’d finally perfected it. Some eyebrow-raising asides, such as Jane reminding Boy to say his prayers, are counterbalanced by innovative set-pieces (behold the source of Saving Private Ryan‘s underwater gunshot fatalities as spears penetrate a pool’s surface) and a surprisingly principled humanity. When Tarzan and Boy befriend the orphaned native Tumbo (guileless Cordell Hickman), the three form a trinity that has genuine political and emotional resonance.
THE DVD
Warner’s DVD presentation of Tarzan’s Secret Treasure is solid, some medium-severe edge-enhancement vanishing after the jittery opening credits. Contrast and detail are so strong for a change (except during instances of archival footage) that the matte paintings suddenly don’t blend in very well; be careful what you wish for, I suppose. The DD 1.0 mono soundtrack is sufficiently clear.
TARZAN’S NEW YORK ADVENTURE (1942)
**½/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O’Sullivan, Johnny Sheffield, Virginia Grey
screenplay by William R. Lipman and Myles Connolly
based on characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs
directed by Richard Thorpe
The last of the Weissmuller-O’Sullivan Tarzans (though far from the last Weissmuller-Sheffield Tarzan), Tarzan’s New York Adventure probably served as the model for “Crocodile” Dundee (and the whole fish-out-of-water genre, really), and with the exception of one racially suspect passage, it’s a good-natured romp that showcases Tarzan’s selfless dedication to his family. With Tarzan himself finally sensing a pattern of what happens when he and Jane humour tourists, our hero orders three travellers off the escarpment as soon as their “iron bird” touches down. (The picture’s funniest moment, if you ask me, is when Jane asks for Tarzan’s assessment of the trio and he replies like he’s reciting studio notes: “One man bad. Other man funny. Third man…maybe good. Understand Tarzan.”) After Boy is inadvertently kidnapped by the interlopers, Tarzan and Jane head for the Big Apple, where their adopted son has been employed by a circus–though not before they spiff up with tailored suits and other amenities. Ludicrously, Jane wants to appear cultured upon re-entering society, yet agrees to let Cheeta tag along; here’s a good place to mention that this film contains entirely too much Cheeta, including an offensive scene in which she telephones the notoriously bug-eyed Mantan Moreland (who apparently speaks Chimpanzee). Still, there’s built-in comic value to seeing Weissmuller wearing expensive threads (and showering in them), and the climactic set-piece is impressively constructed, if desperate for music–this movie fakes the Brooklyn Bridge better than I’ve seen such things done in the CGI era. Too bad Jane/O’Sullivan didn’t get a more monumental send-off, though.
THE DVD
Save some print wear and infrequent jaggies, Warner’s DVD transfer of Tarzan’s New York Adventure looks smashing, while the picture sounds the most ‘stereophonic’ of the sextet of Tarzan films reviewed herein despite still being in centre-channel mono.
THE TARZAN COLLECTION – SPECIAL FEATURES
A fourth disc in “The Tarzan Collection” is devoted to special features, starting with John Rust’s 73-minute retrospective Tarzan: Silver Screen King of the Jungle. Unofficially hosted by the ubiquitous Rudy Behlmer, the piece incorporates interview footage with only one of the series’ principals (an unrecognizable O’Sullivan (mother of Mia and Tisa Farrow), circa the 1980s), indisputable authorities like Johnny Weissmuller, Jr. and Scott Tracy Griffin (the leading bibliographer of Edgar Rice Burroughs) help to camouflage the lack of first-hand accounts. This is a conventional talking-head documentary that lays to rest a few urban legends (turns out Burroughs was quite fond of Tarzan the Ape Man) and avoids controversy by skirting the political incorrectness inherent in the films discussed, glossing over MGM’s TLC of O’Sullivan’s acting career versus its implicit sabotaging of Weissmuller’s, and leaving the post-O’Sullivan Tarzans (produced at RKO) unmentioned entirely. Stills from the no-longer-extant version of Tarzan Escapes are tantalizingly flaunted, and we even get to meet one of the Cheetas, who, at 72, is the oldest primate in captivity. Interestingly, Tarzan: Silver Screen King of the Jungle reveals that theatrical prints of Tarzan’s Secret Treasure were dyed sepia (à la the opening third of The Wizard of Oz)–why isn’t it presented that way on DVD?
Rounding out the bonus platter: a pretty funny mock trailer for Jimmy Durante’s Tarzan spoof Schnarzan the Conqueror!!! (2 mins.); Sammy Lee’s pitiful 1940 MGM short Rodeo Dough (10 mins.), in which Lucy and Ethel archetypes Sally Payne and Mary Treen hitch a ride with Weissmuller; the deceptively-titled “MGM on Location: Johnny Weissmuller” (10 mins.), a shockingly educational bird’s-eye view of Tarzan Finds a Son!‘s Silver Springs location shoot; and trailers for Tarzan the Ape Man, Tarzan and His Mate, Tarzan Escapes, Tarzan Finds a Son!, Tarzan’s Secret Treasure, and Tarzan’s New York Adventure. Originally published: July 20, 2004.
GREYSTOKE: THE LEGEND OF TARZAN, LORD OF THE APES (1984)
**½/**** Image B+ Sound A- Extras B-
starring Christopher Lambert, Sir Ralph Richardson, Ian Holm, Andie MacDowell
screenplay by P.H. Vazak and Michael Austin, based on Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
directed by Hugh Hudson
Sort of a frustrated interior decorator, Hugh Hudson followed up his Oscar phenomenon Chariots of Fire with a big-budget, poker-faced adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes. On the surface, this sounds promising, if nothing else because such a thing had never really been attempted before (the Burroughs estate continually licensed out the Tarzan brand but not the stories proper for fear they would be dishonoured in their translation to the screen), but Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes–aside from being ponderously titled–is oftentimes punishingly stately. Eschewing such vulgarities as referring to Tarzan by that name, the picture begins in Scotland, where Lord Jack Clayton (Paul Geoffrey) and wife Alice (Cheryl Campbell) set sail for Africa after bidding goodbye to the Sixth Earl of Greystoke (Sir Ralph Richardson). Their ship is wrecked, and Alice gives birth to a son before expiring in the treehouse she and Jack–knocking on death’s door, himself–managed to put up. Kala, an ape mired in maternal grief, adopts Baby John, who grows up to become the brilliant mimic of legend (played almost definitively by Highlander‘s Christopher Lambert). Ultimately, Belgian explorer D’Arnot (Ian Holm) meets Tarzan the hard way (he’s the only member of his hunting party to survive a tribal ambush), cultivates the Lord of the Apes inasmuch as he can with only a straight-razor and a mirror at his disposal, and delivers him to the Greystoke estate.
The second half of the bifurcated Greystoke deals with John’s bizarrely smooth assimilation into Edwardian society and, all-too-peripherally, with his romantic interest in Greystoke groupie Jane (Andie MacDowell, dubbed by a mannered Glenn Close (who, oddly, would go on to voice Kala in Disney’s animated Tarzan)). Famously co-scripted by a sheepdog (“P.H. Vazak” is Robert Towne writing under his pet’s name), Greystoke isn’t the disaster these kinds of shenanigans would suggest–Hollywood’s answer to Chicken Little, Towne considered taking his name off Chinatown and Shampoo when they didn’t go his way, either. But the problem is that Hudson is too literal and too housebroken, a deadly combination that seals off the film from discussion; the Vangelis-scored episodes of a British track team running alongside the shoreline in Chariots of Fire are so indelible, it’s easy to forget just how much of that movie takes place in rooms cluttered with antiques, and it’s a disappointment when Greystoke similarly turns into a furniture showcase. Listening to his sedate DVD commentary with line producer Garth Thomas, it’s even obvious that Hudson takes more pride in his artificial jungle set and Albert Whitlock’s (sensational) matte paintings than in those shots captured on location, at great risk to cast and crew, in Cameroon. Only Lambert, Holm, and Richardson (a posthumous Academy Award nominee) are capable of keeping afloat in Hudson’s stuffy tableaux, with Lambert transcending the material in a truly wrenching death scene–the last of too many, alas–that makes one wonder why the actor was eventually sentenced to B-movie purgatory.
THE DVD
Warner’s DVD release of Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes contains a 137-minute cut of the film implicitly endorsed by Hudson, although it runs shorter than both the European version and a LaserDisc variant of the same. Elided from the domestic theatrical cut but present in this current incarnation are an egregious overture (John Scott is no Vangelis) and a stark, Quest for Fire-esque prologue that establishes Kala’s backstory. Perhaps owing to an interpositive source (Greystoke was the first production to use Super35, a format/process that requires an additional generation loss to arrive at an anamorphic release print), the 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is intermittently rife with crunchy grain, and fields of black are significantly lacking in texture. Contrast and flesh tones look great, however, while the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, likely adapted from the six-track mix that graced 70mm engagements, is quite ambient at times. (The opening thunderstorm is a delight.) Extras include the abovementioned yak-track and Greystoke‘s original theatrical trailer.
- Tarzan the Ape Man
99 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 1.0; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner
- Tarzan and His Mate
104 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 1.0; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner
- Tarzan Escapes
90 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 1.0; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner
- Tarzan Finds a Son!
82 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 1.0; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner
- Tarzan’s Secret Treasure
81 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 1.0; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner
- Tarzan’s New York Adventure
71 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 1.0; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner
- Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes
137 minutes; PG; 2.35:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 5.1; CC; English, French, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Warner
