It’s strange to think how prolific Tarzan movies were in the 30s, 40s and 50s, especially considering that Edgar Rice Burrows’ jungle dwelling avenger doesn’t seem to command the same levels of popularity in these times of connected franchises and multiverse, and yet by the time we reached 1963’s Tarzan’s Three Challenges, we were up to the twenty fifth instalment of the jungle man’s adventures and our thirteenth Tarzan in the form if the appropriately grizzled Jock Mahony.
Much like Tarzan Goes To India, Mahony’s second stint in the loin cloth saw the lord of the apes go on something of a world tour as the vine swinging adventurer suddenly found himself summoned to Thailand like some half naked global trouble shooter – but what the film lacks in classic Tarzan lore (no Jane, no Cheeta, no Boy), it strives to make up for it in sinewy action.
When the leader of an unnamed Asian kingdom sees that his life is slipping from him, steps have to be taken in order to protect his young heir from Gishi Kahn, his utterly ripped, power hungry uncle who will stop at nothing to take the throne for himself. Luckily, someone in the kingdom has some impressive contacts – especially considering there’s no phones or internet – and the jungle lord known as Tarzan is summoned to come and protect the young Kashi as he makes his fateful journey from the temple to his place of coronation.
Of course, your regular Tarzan antagonist is usually cut from an unusually ruthless cloth, and son not only is he more than happy to murder his own youthful nephew in pursuit of a self-love promotion, but he claims he’s doing it all in order to secure power for his son, which obviously buries the needle on the toxic parenting meter.
Enter Tarzan, apparently happy to travel to another continent while not even owning a pair of shoes, who is ambushed on his way to his mission by assasin sent by Kahn, but after fending them off in true Tarzan fashion (he drowns a bunch of them like rats), he makes it to the temple with his surviving guide blissfully unaware that his companion is a mole for the evil Gishi. Still, he isn’t given much time to ponder this as to prove he truly is who he says he is, Tarzan has to endure three challenges in order to prove his virtue.
After conclusively showing everyone that only a truly good man can shoot arrows accurately, be stretched by two buffalo and answer and single riddle correctly, Tarzan begins escorting Kashi through the jungle to meet his destiny with only the child’s nursemaid, Cho San, a kindly monk and the treacherous guide for company. However, even if they reach their destination in one piece, Kashi himself has three challenges to face and even if he passes these, there’s still the matter of his willful uncle to deal with.
Sic him, Tarzan!
To be brutally honest, when Tarzan movies find their niche, they tend to stick to them fairly closely and even though our dashing hero doesn’t wrestle with a rubber crocodile or call forth a stampede of elephants, there’s nothing contained within Tarzan’s Three Challenges that you haven’t see before despite the location change. Still, Tarzan’s busman’s holiday, while basic, still is a reliable source of campy, undemanding fun that goes through the motions competently enough despite featuring plot holes so big, a full grown bull elephant could comfortably stick its butt through them. For a start, while Tarzan has to escort Kashi through awkward, deadly terrain and fend of assassins, the rest of the monks take a less scenic route and get to the same location in less than half the time under the pretext that Kahn’s men will find him too easily on the open road – but considering they find him anyway, it’s a bit of a shit plan. Elsewhere, the movie benefits from having a worthy bad guy in the form of Woody Strode’s malevolent, posturing alpha male, but matters are confused somewhat by having this muscled bad guy of asian descent played by an athletic black dude in mascara who’s been dubbed by another actor to sound suitably villainous. Still, racial awkwardness seems to be a lynchpin of classic Tarzan flicks so I guess we should all be relieved that the trail blazing actor wasn’t playing an evil tribal chief instead – although that’s probably a small mercy. Whatever your feelings, Strode still makes a formidable wrong ‘un, even dubbed and plastered in stage makeup and he fits the archetype for a good Tarzan adversary perfectly with brains, brawl and a willingness to uses them well in effect.
In comparison, Jock Mahoney’s sophomore swing in the jungle is – kind of like the movie – a little by the numbers as he’s very adept at the swinging, swimming and fighting, but he’s missing that raw charisma that vitally stops superior Tarzans from being just a gorilla punching himbo. However, that physical aspect of the character is channelled perfectly in the action secquences and the shot of Mahoney straining to hold two bison in place like Spider-Man trying to stop a runaway train is one of those quintessential Tarzan images that’s just perfect.
The climax, that sees both hero and villain embark on a yet another challenge (technically the film’s seventh) is also prime, adventure movie fare which sees the two tethered together and facing various obstacles – like a random, tendon-tearing bungie jump – only to fight to the death on a web of ropes over vast of boiling oil. However, it’s marred by the fact that Mahoney has visibly lost a lot muscle mass due to contracting amoebic dysentery, dengue fever and pneumonia that caused him to lose 45 pounds (presumably out of his arsehole) between the beginning and the end of the shoot. As a result, next to Strode’s oiled physique, Mahoney looks absolutely wrecked and it’s a curious look for a guy who is supposed to look like he regularly commutes to work by swinging fifty feet above the jungle floor.
After two movies, it was to be Mahoney’s last outing as Tarzan at the grand old age of forty-four (although he looks about fifteen years older after his ordeal) and he still holds the record as the oldest actor to portray the apeman – but while his final appearance is hardly a benchmark for the series, there’s just enough classic Tarzan transpirings to bring the film to life after many extended shots of the Thai surroundings.
Still, technically speaking, Tarzan ultimately failed his greatest and most dangerous challenge: to swim across one of Thailand’s most polluted rivers without getting mortally ill – but then I guess that’s a task not even the lord of the apes is up to…
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