her unbridled romance with the jungle and its savage Lord. During the epilogue of TARZAN THE APE MAN,
Jane informed Harry Holt, “You’ll be coming back... I can see a huge safari with you at the head, bearing ivory down the coast; only this time there’ll be no danger, because we’ll be there to protect you every step of the way.” Her words proved to be a perfect set-up for the superior se- quel, TARZAN AND HIS MATE (1934), which not only remains the best of all Tarzan movies, but belongs on every critic’s short list of great action- adventures films. It is a year later, and the smitten Harry Holt
(Neil Hamilton again) has not forgotten Jane Parker or the fortune in ivory atop the Mutia es- carpment. In the midst of preparing a return trip, Holt’s map is stolen by a rival pair of white entre- preneurs, prompting him to hurriedly assemble a team, including new partner Martin Arlington (Paul Cavanaugh, playing the debonair lady-killer role to the hilt) and his liaison with the porters, Saidi (the series’ first substantial role for an African, and played with a certain primitive reality by the mono- tonic Nathan Curry). Upon their first sight of the
mythic escarpment, a native refuses to continue, so Arlington shoots him dead. “A whip would have done just as well,” complains Holt, to which Ar- lington counters, “Perhaps you are right; he could have carried 150 pounds of ivory.” They soon catch up with the competition, slaughtered by the fierce Gaboni tribe and hung upside down with arrows driven through their heads (in a surpris- ingly graphic shot, ants and flies swarm over a corpse’s bloodied face). A steady pulse-beat of drums and chants announces the Gabonis’ ap- proach, and a real sense of dread fills the air as Holt nervously suggests, “We’d better make a run for it!”
What follows is still among the African-adven-
ture genre’s most visceral action sequences. The safari breaks into a run, but the Gabonis are all around, camouflaged among the trees. They snare several bearers in nooses and pull them scream- ing into the air, riddling their bodies with arrows. A bloody exchange of bullets and spears takes place at the base of the cliff until the natives’ fear of “ju-ju” overrides any prior bloodlust and they retreat. The safari immediately embarks on the long climb up the escarpment, but before we, the
Primitive flirtations between Tarzan and Jane were just one of the series elements that won fans around the world.
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