Anyone who has ever watched the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies in chronological order can’t have helped but notice that from his seventh entry onward, the awe inspiring Ape Man had something of a leading lady problem. After Maureen O’Sullivan’s Jane was written out of the series by having her serve as a nurse during World War II, both Tarzan Triumphs and Tarzan’s Desert Mystery seemed to bend over backwards to shove the big, vine swinging lug toward any new leading woman who just happened to wander through his neck of the woods. To add insult to injury, the perpetually curly-haired Boy would always ask his adopted dad to invite them home to their tree house to be a surrogate mother which always felt like a rather shitty thing to do – even for a child part raised by a fucking chimp. However, in 1944, Jane finally returned to the great escarpment with Tarzan And The Amazons, however, thanks to her noticable absence, Tarzan oddly failed to notice that she was now being played by a completely difference actress.
As I just mentioned, Jane is finally returning home to be with Tarzan and Boy once more after doing her part for the war effort, but as the pair straighten up their home in order to welcome her back, they get a little sidetracked by the arrival of an Amazonian woman from the secret city of Palmyria who wandered far from home and is about to get eaten by a panther. Tarzan saves her, but a twisted ankle means he has to take her back home to the deeply distrustful Amazonian race that only he seems to know about.
However, what with Boy being Boy, he immediately disobeys Tarzan’s order to wait behind and discovers the location of this city of oddly delicate warrior women. To stir the plot even more, chimp agent of chaos, Cheeta, thinks it’s hilarious to steal the Amazon’s solid gold bracelet and when they all go to meet Jane, she assumes it’s a present meant just for her.
However, the real problem is that Jame hasn’t come back to Africa alone and has brought a varied group of explorers along with her who fixate on her accident bling and openly wonder where it could have came from. Tarzan – being smart – is immediately distrustful of this band of white people who claim to operate for science, yet are obsessed with the bracelet. However, after wooing boy with their scientific discoveries, he soon agrees to take them to Palmyria like the great, disaster-causing dope that he is.
Of course, no one has taken into account what it means to enter Palmyria as the Amazons take their privacy so seriously that it’s going to either be a quick sacrifice if their feeling harsh, or a life time working in their mines if their god is in something of a more forgiving mood. However, after the expedition weighs up its options and promptly chooses violence, Boy is left in a particularly sticky situation that Tarzan (once again) is going to have to bail him out of.
As with Tarzan’s Desert Mystery, the previous entry in the Tarzan cannon, there’s a noticable sense that the Weissmuller era of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ loincloth sporting adventurer is starting to wind down and in an act of reinvention, the filmmakers try to give us a more classic Tarzan outing. Gone are the Nazis or the change of surroundings that the previous two films offered and in its place is an attempt to restore the previous status quo. As I mentioned earlier, the major aspect of the film is that Jane has been reinstalled back into the movies after a two film absence – but even though Maureen O’Sullivan has been replaced by Brenda Joyce and that chemistry proves to be tough to replicate, it’s still genuinely heartening to see the whole family reunited once more. Similarly, the plot unfurled in typical Tarzan fashion as the main thrust of the story sees yet another cluster of white guys arrive claiming to be men of science, but who devolve into destructive, gold-hungry murderers the moment the potent aroma of wealth passes their nostrils.
The filmmakers obviously assume that including a race of bow-twanging Amazon women is enough to mix things up a little, but if you were to switch this race of oddly caucasians females with a native village with similar religious beliefs, you soon realise it isn’t much of a change at all… Oh sure, all this talk of headband wearing warrior women and hidden cities run entirely of females brings up visions of Wonder Woman and Themyscira, but when these ankle-twisting, bring-a-bow-and-arrow-to-a-gun-fight women show all the battle prowess of a handbag riding pomeranian, it proves to be rather less exciting than you would have hoped.
However, while all the basics are in full effect and Tarzan And The Amazons is a perfectly fine example of pulp adventure (he even fights a crocodile again!), the movie takes several noticable misteps that dilutes some of the fun.
The major one is that this is yet another plot that’s kicked into action by the fact that Boy is in some dire need of some strict parenting more than almost every other cinematic child alive and while it’s good that Tarzan will bail his wayward, adoptive son out of virtually any hot water, the little bastard is seriously starting to get on my fucking nerves. Another weird choice from the film is to essentially push Tarzan and Jane into the background for the middle third of the film as Boy is enticed by the explorers to help them out. This is especially egregious firstly because Jane has only just returned to the series and secondly, Tarzan seems to be the only one here with a fricking brain in his head. A victim of odd jungle fashions he may be, but when he accurately nails civilised life with a terse: “Buses never come, streetcar always late, people always get mad.” you have to admit that this guy just fucking gets it.
But the problem is that no one in both Palmyria or the exhibition are distinctive enough to hold our attention once our jungle-based power couple are sidelined just so Boy can rack up some adventure points of his own.
Finally, in its closing moments, the movie seems to have no real idea how to end itself and instead does so with the most simplest of scenarios. Those hoping to see Tarzan either go to war with the Amazon race for the life of his son, or ruthlessly hunt down those who stole Palmyria’s gold will be horribly dissatisfied as the male survivors literally back themselves into quicksand and Tarzan simply returns the stuff that they stole to get Boy back. It may be a resolution that goes easy on an obviously taxed budget, but it’s hardly the big finish I was hoping for.
Still packed with adventure, inappropriately dressed jungle dwellers and an absolute ton of snarling animals, it really does feel that Tarzan’s starting to lose some velocity in that swing of his – and not even the return of Jane can put the pep back in that loincloth…
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