good score, to increase the tension. The series climaxes six-for-six with an elephant stampede, only this one doesn’t seem so much like a cliché since the animals are given extra motivation (they, like Boy, are captives of the villains) and their employment of circus tricks to block the bad guys’ getaway is an ingenious touch that culminates the motif of Boy’s affinity with the creatures. The quality of the transfers varies, with the
younger films looking considerably more vibrant. APE-MAN has always appeared soft and grainy in its home video guises, but this latest incarnation is the most appealing to date. The low-contrast image is occasionally blurred around the edges (note Tarzan’s battle with the leopard), an effect of the original pho- tography, which increases the dream-like feel of certain sections. As an early sound film, static is always present and dialogue is often muffled. Un- fortunately MATE, the most essential film in the set, fares the worst: the print appears to be two or three generations removed from the negative and suffers from blooming whites and fuzzed details. Other than occasional artifacting in detailed shots of jungle fo- liage, the rest of the titles look fine, benefiting from increasingly superior contrasts and shadow detail. TARZAN FINDS A SON! was printed in sepia-tone for its original theatrical distribution but is presented here, as it has always been on home video, in stan- dard B&W. The optional subtitles are helpful in dis- cerning difficult-to-hear dialogue passages, though there are occasional blunders (a line in NEW YORK ADVENTURE is mistranslated from “Then it’s true— he’s not a myth” to “Then it’s true—he’s not a man!”) and the transcriber doesn’t even attempt to spell out Tarzan’s native language or that of the African tribes. On Disc 4, supplements
get under way with the 90m documentary TARZAN: SIL- VER SCREEN KING OF THE JUNGLE, a compilation of talking-head interviews, clips and stills. Hollywood histo- rian Rudy Behlmer and Burroughs expert Scott Tracy Griffin dominate the proceedings, supported by occasional commentary from Weissmuller biogra- pher Geoff St. Andrews, Johnny Weissmuller, Jr. and archival interview foot- age of Maureen O’Sullivan, who died in 1997. Among the doc’s highlights: film
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footage of pre-MGM ape-men Elmo Lincoln, Kamuela Searle (we see the ill-fated star of THE SON OF TARZAN dropped forcefully by an elephant, an accident that led to his death) and Frank Merrill, who trumpeted the first Tarzan yell in the semi-sound TARZAN THE MIGHTY (“Yah! Yah! Yah!”); Olympic medalist John Naber’s appreciation of Weissmuller (“In no distance, in no stroke, in no time in his ca- reer did he ever lose a race”); amusing stories about Burroughs’ paranoia over copyright infringement (he actually challenged the publishers of a dictionary for placing Tarzan in the national vocabulary with- out his consent); the naming of the Mutia escarp- ment after Mutia Omoolu, a real African tribesman appearing in TRADER HORN; a bit on concurrently competing Tarzans Buster Crabbe (FLASH GOR- DON) and Herman Brix (the latter’s yell is just awful, sounding like a high-pitched car engine changing gears); the forming of the MGM backlot zoo and the acquisition of residents Jackie the lion and Mary the rhinoceros; and, best of all, a segment on the only surviving principal cast member of the MGM series— Cheeta! Retired from the biz after DR. DOOLITTLE (1967), the 72-year-old chimp is shown playing the piano, painting and going for rides with his keeper. O’Sullivan remembers how much Cheeta loved “Johnny” but hated her, the experience of working with “One-take” Van Dyke (“I said ‘Can I do it again,’ and he’d say, ‘No, you should have thought of it the first time.’”) and the unpleasantness of shooting the excised vampire-bat sequence: “It was an awful, disgusting scene... The mud was up to here, we never got a chance to go to the bathroom... I think everybody just did it in the mud... and then
Tarzan slowly gets the hang of modern conveniences.
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