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threepenny4.0

There she is, Dorothy Dandridge, playing an African Queen, just a few short years before becoming the first African American woman nominated for Best Actress for Carmen Jones. She sits in royalty, she tells Batman's Alfred (Alan Napier) that she loves him, she gets tied down at the stake, scantily clad and heaving until Tarzan leans in close for the rescue. Halle Berry recreates this scene for the biopic she did for HBO, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, for which she won a pile of awards denied Dandridge in her day. Opposite her is the villainous King Bulam, played by Frederick O'Neal. While laughing at the ridiculous mane he wears around his head throughout, reflect that he founded the American Negro Theater and was the first African American president of the Actors' Equity Association and a strong advocate for trade unions (and enemy to Nixon). Here he stands, half naked and menacing. He has a good fight scene against Tarzan and holds his own. Tarzan's Peril could have been a turning point in the series - much of it was shot on location in Africa, in color, but the footage was damaged on return, and what was salvaged was converted to black and white and merged with studio and backlot footage to make up the difference. Apparently, Lex Barker went to Africa and shot scenes, but none of those scenes appear to have survived. Instead, he often feels somewhat removed from the main storyline, as he and Jane cavort around in their treehouse set while the real action is in the fantastic tribal dance and combat footage from the Africa shoot. I wasn't won over by Tarzan's new Jane (Virginia Huston) - I'm starting to think of them as Tarzan's Tinder dates, since it's a new Jane each time - as she is overly domestic, and wears a ton of jewelry, including a brooch attached to her jungle outfit. The villains are a trio of murderous gunrunners, led by classic bad guy actor George Macready. With all these great actors and fantastic location footage, it's quite a puzzle that Tarzan spends a lot of the running time with some of the most incredibly fake creatures the series has ever tried to pass off as real - first an absurdly, obviously fake python, then a collection of man-eating (and baby elephant-eating) plants. There's even a moment when an elephant helps him that appears to be a fake elephant head. Charitably, we could imagine this was hastily constructed work designed to replace lost footage that might've looked a whole lot better. Once Tarzan confronts the gunrunners, things get a lot better. I wonder if the writers went back and took a look at the original book, because the scenes of Tarzan sneaking into an encampment and stealing weapons is very reminiscent of his adventures in the first book, when he steals arrows from the local tribe before learning how to make them himself. From expensive and expansive location shooting to cheap backlot puppets on strings, from African American Queens and Kings to a Jane who thinks she's Donna Reed, this one is a fascinating and sometimes hilarious mess of contradictions and most likely the peak Lex Barker Tarzan experience.

Gentry Austin3.0

“Tarzan not need authority.”We just weren't prepared for location conditions. Local natives were rounded up, and the first time I appeared in the jungle in my loincloth, they burst out laughing. It was demoralizing. — Lex Barker, Tarzan of the Movies: A Pictorial History of More Than Fifty Years of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Legendary HeroIn a crucial episode, Dandridge, as a kidnapped African princess, was tied to the stakes by a warlike tribal leader. As she lay with legs sprawled apart, heaving and turning to break loose, it was apparent that never before had the black woman been so erotically and obviously used as a sex object. From the way Lex Barker's Tarzan eyed the sumptuous Dandridge, it was obvious too, that for once Tarzan's mind was not on Jane or Boy or Cheetah! — Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American FilmsTarzan Tuesdays: Guns & GinB&W RKO/Sol Lesser Lex Barker Tarzan (his third) with Virgina Huston as Jane. She's the fifteenth in the line of Janes, and was returning to work after a year in hospital because of a back injury. This was supposed to be the first Technicolor Tarzan, and first with major scenes shot in Africa (Meru National Park), but things went sideways when fog rolled in and most of the color footage was ruined in a technical mishap. What you get is a relatively by-the-books Tarzan flick which is notable for the Ape Man wrestling a carnivorous plant on a sound stage, the lack of Boy (a good thing, ‘cause we get more mommy/daddy time—mostly splashing around in the water), and the inclusion of Black Princess Dorothy Dandridge, who thankfully isn’t portrayed as some ignorant, bone-in-the-nose heathen. But of course, Cheetah the rascally chimp gets the last laugh, or in this case, the last burp.

Joe

Slow, pokey Tarzan outing feels somewhat cobbled together despite an overqualified cast including George Macready (born to be a Tarzan villain) and Dorothy Dandridge (!). This was allegedly intended as a color spectacular but a technical mishap ruined much of what was shot on location in Africa, the footage that survived had to be converted to black and white and matched with soundstage stuff shot to replace the rest. I liked the part where Tarzan throws his knife at the giant snake's head.