“Tumbo, Boy... Boy, Tumbo!” Boy meets a friend (Cordell Hickman) in TARZAN’S SECRET TREASURE.
where he saves a native boy (Cordell Hickman) from a charging rhino (we learn his name in a moppet’s version of the famous “Tarzan... Jane” scene: “Tumbo, Boy... Tumbo, Boy!”), witnesses his new friend’s mother’s death from plague, is almost sacrificed by superstitious natives, and makes the acquaintance of a group of white men before Tarzan catches up and offers pithy commen- tary on their inventions, including a truck (“Elephant better!”) and alcohol (“Whiskey bad!”). In search of the lost Vanusi tribe, the men are led up the escarp- ment by Tarzan; and along the way, the Johnny Eck bird-thing shows up again in outtake footage from TARZAN ESCAPES to startle drunken Irish clown O’Doul (Barry Fitzgerald). But the expedition has a quick change of plans when Boy shows a gold nugget to Medford (the ever-potentially villain- ous Tom Conway, who just missed his I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE co-star Darby Jones in the chro- nology), igniting a greed that endangers everyone. TARZAN’S SECRET TREASURE benefits from
slick special effects: the rhino charge on Tumbo is expertly conveyed, and animated rapids give life to background paintings of a distant river. The plot is denser than usual, but the end results are pretty much the same, with the script suffering
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from an overly familiar formula. Once again, Tarzan is tricked at the end of Act Two—his vine severed by a bullet which strands him on the wrong side of a chasm—a contrivance that allows every- one else to be captured by hostile natives. After wincing at a death-ritual recycled from TARZAN ESCAPES, the survivors are placed on boats for a river-set finale, which at least places Weissmuller in his natural element (he dodges spears under- water and capsizes native boats, giving stock and prop crocs plenty to munch on), but inspiration taps out quickly and the scene ends with yet an- other elephant stampede—the fifth film in a row to climax thusly. For better or worse, Cheeta’s comic bits are expanded, plus we’re treated to more unlikely domestic inventions inside the Tarzan townhouse, with Jane—the Kathie Lee Gifford of Africa—only too happy to enslave Cheeta into washing dishes and keeping the fan running. Very strangely, religion creeps into the narrative a couple of times, as if to strengthen the moral character of the unwed leads: Jane reminds Boy to “say your prayers” and, in a unique moment for the series, Tarzan is likened to Christ after he saves a plague-stricken O’Doul: “When he touched me, it yanked me back to life as sudden as a rope
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