The kidnapping of Boy forces Tarzan, Jane and Cheeta to follow his trail to the Big Apple in TARZAN’S NEW YORK ADVENTURE.
wife; but her fears never materialize, as Tarzan cheerily agrees that “Jane be boss here.” Mean- while, Cheeta serves up her own gratuitous comic vignettes, getting drunk off hand lotion, making prank phone calls (to no less than the great Mantan Moreland of KING OF THE ZOMBIES and SPIDER BABY fame) and terrorizing hat-check girls at a night club where T & J pick up leads to Boy’s where- abouts, film noir style. They find out he’s enslaved at a circus on Long Island, but a face-off with das- tardly Rand is cut short by police and Tarzan finds himself in court, much like the Monster in GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN of the same year. Jane is pres- sured by an attorney to reveal Boy is not their natu- ral son nor legally adopted, and the ape-man goes wild, tossing this new species of “stone jungle” rep- tile into the jury box. Jane realizes man’s laws are not for Tarzan: “You who are as free as an eagle... I should have told you to follow your own law.” And that is all the jungle lord needs. With a “Tarzan go... Tarzan get Boy!”, the ape-man throws himself out a window (the glass breaks before he even touches it!) and takes to the skyscrapers of NY, scal- ing walls, swinging from a flag-pole and a billboard, and even diving 200 feet off the Brooklyn Bridge. Sixty years later, some of these same stunts would be rendered through the safety of computer ani- mation for Sam Raimi’s SPIDER-MAN (2002).
36 A model for the hit Australian comedy CROCO-
DILE DUNDEE (1984), this breezy fish-out-of-water story is as far-removed in tone from TARZAN THE APE-MAN (1932) as ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN is from FRANKENSTEIN (1931) or SON OF GODZILLA is from the original Gojira— but like those examples, if taken in the right spirit, it can be a lot of fun. In addition to being enthusiasti- cally acted (O’Sullivan looks like she’s having a ball, despite her increasing dissatisfaction with the se- ries), the film is fast-moving and technically slick. In a tricky shot of Sheffield fighting off a lion, the cam- era had to track and match exactly the movement of an image projected on rear screen—it’s an effect that didn’t quite work in TARZAN AND HIS MATE (coincidentally, another lion fight), but is flawlessly executed here. Music slips almost unnoticed be- neath a travel montage—amazingly, the only non- diegetic music to ever be employed in an MGM Tarzan film other than brief main and end title cues. Someone at the studio made a decision early on that environmental sounds would render dra- matic scores unnecessary; and yet, as Tarzan swings into action across the rooftops of New York and the usual musique concrete of bird shrieks and monkey hoots is replaced with wind and traf- fic noises, one wishes there was something more on the soundtrack, like the rhythmic drive of a
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
