TARZAN'S MAGIC FOUNTAIN

d. Lee Sholem (1949) 

One of my great heroes is Johnny Weissmuller, so I'm not predisposed to like Lex Barker, the man who replaced him as Tarzan after 16 glorious years. I'm not an unreasonable person, however, so I thought I'd give Barker the benefit of the doubt and see how the interloping twat does at filling Johnny's loin cloth (although I'm assuming Barker got a new loin cloth when he started. I certainly hope so).

These days, Tarzan's Magic Fountain would be described as a franchise reboot: new lead actor, some new sets, some new matte paintings - and a return to some of the gruesome violence that the series was originally notable for but became less prevalent as the films became popular with children. This is counter balanced by an awful lot of comic relief, mostly Cheeta related. There is still a reliance on (often badly matched) stock footage, much of which has already appeared in Tarzan films many, many times over.

The story meanders around a long lost aviatrix (40s horror favourite, Evelyn Ankers) and the idea of a hidden jungle city that has the secret of eternal youth. It's not particularly interesting, and there is an 'of its time' sub-plot where Jane takes charge of an expedition in order to demonstrate all that she has learned from many years of living in the jungle. It's a total disaster, and it's not long before she's lost, covered in killer ants and caught in a flash flood, flapping her arms around and shouting for Tarzan. That will teach the woman to try and do stuff.

So, what does Barker bring to the role? Well, he's fifteen years younger than Johnny Weissmuller, and, understandably, in better shape (Johnny filled out a bit when he hit 40). His biggest contribution, however, is smugness: his Tarzan is extremely pleased with himself, and forever smirking at some private joke or other. It's not an admirable quality, nor is the fact that he wears espadrilles all the time. 

As ever, the film ends on some Cheeta related tomfoolery. This time, Cheeta drinks from the magic fountain of youth and turns into a baby Howler Monkey. A baby Howler Monkey. They must think we are fucking idiots. 

CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN

d. Edward Dmytryk (1943)

Noted endocrinologist John Carradine has made the familiar transition from dedicated scientist to unhinged maniac. He steals a friendly gorilla from a circus and implants it with the glands of his nurse, who made the mistake of suggesting that he was probably working too hard. The result, somewhat improbably, is a beautiful, exotic looking woman who he names Paula Dupree (she's played by Acquanetta, 'the Venezualan Volcano', actually born in Wyoming).

Because he's mad and drunk on his own cleverness, the doctor takes his creation back to the circus, where it becomes clear that Paula has a miraculous power over animals: they are shit scared of her. She is immediately enlisted as an assistant to the big cat tamer, her main role being to stand outside the cage in a spangly outfit just looking intently at the lions and tigers*. Occasionally, if they become unruly, she will look harder, perhaps arching an eyebrow. It's nice work if you can get it, though, presumably, there isn't a massive amount of demand for that sort of talent.

Falling in love with the big cat tamer sends powerful emotions coursing through her reconfigured body, however, breaking her new glands and unleashing her inner gorilla. By the time she is shot by an over zealous cop (nothing much changes in America) she has fully reverted to her old, hairy animal self, but there is a moment roughly halfway between her initial retro-transformation from human lady to ape woman to gorilla in which she is probably the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

* These scenes feature Clyde Beatty, the world famous animal trainer. It is amazing to watch him face down a dozen snarling big cats, but his methods leave a lot to be desired. There is also a lot of footage of lions and tigers fighting each other, an incredible but unedifying spectacle. 

TARZAN TRIUMPHS

d. Wilhelm Thiele (1943)

I’ll start by saying that I love Tarzan films. I also hate Nazis, so Tarzan Triumphs, where Tarzan kills Nazis, is my sort of movie.

When the German army invade the sub-Saharan city of Palandrya it takes Tarzan a long time to intervene, despite the entreaties of an exotic Princess (Jane is away in England nursing wounded soldiers). Tarzan, played with implacable practicality by Johnny Weissmuller, doesn’t understand what it has to do with him – he fights as a last resort, and only to survive – this isn’t any of his business. When the Nazis impinge on his escarpment, however, and try to kill his son and his monkey, Tarzan, rather like the United States after Pearl Harbour, finally understands that tyrants don’t just stay in other people’s backyards, instead having a nasty habit of spreading out if unchecked. In perhaps the single most dramatic moment of the cycle, Tarzan’s face darkens and he grabs his knife, uttering the immortal line: ‘Now Tarzan make WAR!’ and, by Christ, he does.

We needn’t go into extensive detail about how he systematically wipes out the Germans other than to say he employs both his in-built talent for death (Tarzan is a good man, but he kills pretty much everything that he disagrees with) and the deadly natural accoutrements of his jungle home: crocodiles, rampaging elephants, some geographically misplaced piranhas. For all their arrogance and advanced ordnance, The Nazis have no effective answer to Tarzan’s primal savagery and so, accordingly, die, one by one, screaming in horror and incomprehension at how this could happen to a member of the master race. Aficionados of the series will be familiar with the relentless horror and violence of Tarzan films, and although this is relatively tame in comparison to, say, Tarzan Escapes, it is still strangely satisfying to see so many nasty National Socialists get their bloody comeuppance.

The pay off, in which almost psychotically naughty chimp Cheeta talks to Berlin on the radio and is mistaken for Hitler, is brilliant, propaganda at its best, although, even in her role as an agent of chaos and misrule, Cheeta consistently demonstrates more humanity and compassion than the fucking Fuhrer ever did.   

There are clips of this fantastically entertaining film all over the internet, including one which comes with a very 21st century proviso: '*WARNING* Johnny Sheffield ('Boy') is only 12 in these clips. If you prefer to see older people in peril then please do not view'.

THE LOST WORLD

d. Irwin Allen (1960)

Arthur Conan Doyle's tale of an unknown Amazonian plateau populated by dinosaurs and savage primitives was first filmed in 1925, and has been adapted umpteen times since. This version is from Irwin Allen, the parsimonious producer and director of such television classics as Land of the Giants, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space. Allen spent a fair amount of money on this production, so made sure he got the most out of it by recycling clips from it for years to come. 

Unable to justify the expense of stop motion models, Allen simply glued horns and shit to some standard lizards and let them loose on miniature sets. The results are unconvincing, especially when a gecko blunders into shot and someone shouts 'My God, a Tyrannosaurus Rex!'. When a giant spider is needed (there's always a need for a giant spider in films like these) he simply blows up film of a normal spider to enormous proportions and uses an optical effect to colour it day-glo green.

The two best things about the film are ginger: Jill St John as a spoiled and slightly mercenary heroine, the sort of pretty thing on the make who comes on a dangerous expedition wearing red go go boots and carrying a poodle, and the great Claude Rains as the indomitable Professor Challenger, a man with hair and a beard as fiery as his irascible temper. 

Rains was born in Camberwell in abject poverty (nine of his brothers and sisters died in childhood), and grew up with a thick London accent that he never completely eradicated. A very dignified actor, his professional speaking voice is careful and cultured, a sort of dry purr but, when he gets excited and speaks quickly, every now and again you can quite plainly hear the twang of his native Cockney. It's a very endearing trait, and one that you'll listen out for from now on, I hope.    

CURUCU, BEAST OF THE AMAZON

d. Curt Siodmark (1956)

Routine technicolor exotic adventure potboiler with a variety of vicious animals and some shrunken heads. The titular beast is an extraordinary thing, a sort of malevolent parrot with piercing blue eyes, fearsome tusks and slashing talons: it's also fake, a ruse by a native witch doctor to keep the white man and his disease ridden civilization away. 

The fakeness of the monster doesn't really matter, however, as elsewhere real nature is working overtime to demonstrate it's redness in tooth and claw. The protagonists are attacked by crocodiles, several big snakes, a spider the size of a dinner plate, a jaguar and a load of piranhas, represented several times with mismatched, washed out stock footage. 

Shot on location in Brazil, the film never really takes off, despite being punctuated by somewhat manic dance routines and having a beefy male star who never stops smoking, regardless of whether he's eating, kissing or having a medical examination.

I was particularly impressed by the no nonsense heroine, played by Beverley Garland. She is beautiful, yes, but she's also a doctor, a scientist and an explorer, a person of great intelligence and nerve who is determined to make the world a better place. These qualities are even noticed by our carcinogen addicted hero who admiringly says: 'You're not frightened of anything, are you?' Disappointingly, she responds 'Of course I'm frightened, I'm a woman'. Bah.   

ISLAND OF DOOMED MEN

d. Charles Barton (1940)

What a great villain Peter Lorre was. Here, he plays a man involved in 'the dirtiest racket ever invented': white slavery. His modus operandi is to recruit parolees, offering them a home and a job, before flying them to his private fiefdom, Dead Man's Island (there's a clue there, really) where he chains the men together and forces them to mine for diamonds until they expire of fatigue, disease or malnutrition or get killed by the brutal guards. 

The diminutive Lorre pads around the island on crepe soled shoes, wearing a boxy lounge suit and a pith helmet. He never stops smoking, and the resentful lighting of his cigarette by underlings is a recurring motif of the power he wields, and the hatred he inspires. He alternates between sudden, hysterical rage and a kind of somnolence, as if he is exhausted with his own evil. There's a telling little scene where he gets in a temper and shoots his housekeeper's monkey (not a euphemism, an actual monkey). Fury spent, his heavily lidded eyes close in ineffable weariness. He has a beautiful wife, who absolutely detests him, so he sits and listens to her play the piano and smokes and smokes and smokes.

A dedicated undercover agent (who apparently spends two years of his life in a state prison to maintain his cover) is on Lorre's tail and soon infiltrates Lorre's operation - and his wife. Interestingly, Lorre knows all about the agent and, in fact, has actively sought him out - in order, perhaps, to facilitate his own downfall.

An undemanding but satisfying film, this is an ideal choice if you like corporal punishment as there are literally lashings of lashings, or if you like to watch people being shot or stabbed in the back, because there's a fair bit of that too. It's undeniably all about Lorre's character, though, and, when he dies, stabbed by his monkey grieving housekeeper, you almost feel sorry for him - but not quite, he's a creepy little bastard and a rotten Boss.

FROM HELL IT CAME

d. Dan Milner (1957)

The image of some creature lumbering out of the woods or jungle to threaten us is a primal fear, a reminder perhaps of harder, wilder times. No wonder that it features in so much of our folklore and mythology and, of course, our films. Where would our films be without screaming girls clutched in the horrible hands of hideous creatures? Nowhere, that’s where.

From Hell It Came is a South Sea Islands variation on the theme, and here the monster is the Tabanga, a malevolent tree stump. The film makers hedge (no pun intended) their bets a little by giving the grim faced tree multiple origins, and it is variously described as a mythical monster, a murdered Prince returning from the grave to exact revenge and a direct result of nuclear testing, but all of that is just incidental detail. What matters most is that the Tabanga is remarkably angry for flora, and immediately sets out on a murderous rampage.

The killer tree is notable for its permanent scowl, its indiscriminate and versatile approach to violence, and for the fact that it resembles something that they might put in a kids playground at a Halloween themed Wetherspoons. It eventually ends up in ‘the quicksand at the edge of the jungle’, a fairly predictable conclusion given that everyone in the cast says ‘the quicksand at the edge of the jungle’ at least once, just in case we miss the fact that it’s there. One primal fear down, 35,000 to go*.

* An arbitrary number, as thinking of primal fears was starting to freak me out. 

SON OF KONG

d. Ernest B. Schoedsack (1933)

'I guess next time you leave big monkey alone, huh?'

Released a mere nine months after King Kong, and made at a third of the cost, Son of Kong is a charming, modest little film that packs murder, mutiny, dinosaurs, seismic disturbances and a big white hero ape into seventy minutes without ever removing its tongue from its cheek. 

Set a month after Kong's New York rampage, it focuses on hapless promoter / chancer Carl Denham, now broke and facing a grand jury trial and a dozen law suits. Eager to escape his legal woes, and feeling bad about dead Kong and his dead victims, he jumps on board his boat and hits the open seas.

After forty five minutes of mildly diverting intrigue and romance, the highlight of which is a group of monkeys in fezzes playing avant-garde mood music, he finds himself back on Skull Island in search of treasure, arriving just in time to save Kong's son from drowning in quicksand. Poor Little Kong 'ain't a patch on his old man', being gentle, dopey, boss eyed, albino and a mere twelve feet tall, but he is lovable and approachable and doesn't seem to want to eat anyone.  

Comically anthropomorphic, Little Kong becomes Denham's protector, beating up the various oversized mammals and reptiles that prowl the island, including a Nothosaurus, a Styracosaurus and a giant, angry bear that he puts into a headlock and punches repeatedly in the face.

All too soon, a violent earthquake sinks the island beneath the sea, and plucky Little Kong sacrifices himself to the turbulent waters in order to hold his best friend Denham above the waves until he can be rescued. It's all rather sweet, and although it lacks the impact, iconography and innovation of its illustrious predecessor it is fun, genuinely funny and easy to like.