Tarzan And The Huntress (1947) – Review

Playing the same character twelve times on the bounce is nothing to be sneezed at, but it has to be said, by the time we got to Johnny Weissmuller’s eleventh go-round as Edgar Rice Burroughs’ loin clothed lion wrestler, it was getting pretty apparent that the wear and tear was starting to show. Not only did Tarzan And The Huntress mark Weissmuller’s fifteenth year as the character, but it was Brenda Joyce’s third go round as Jane, Johnny Sheffield’s eighth appearance as Boy and Kurt Neumann’s third consecutive go in the director’s chair, so it isn’t so surprising that life in the great escarpment was getting a little stale.
It also wasn’t helping that the Tarzan movies were going through something of a noticable pattern saw our hero share marquee space with string of female antagonists. So while the previous film featured a nefarious Leopard Queen and the following movie included “mermaids”, Weissmuller’s penultimate film saw his vine swinging alter-ego squaring up to an a Huntress – but had the series reached a point where familiarity has bred contempt?

It’s a day much like any other as Tarzan and his clan go about their usual existence – and by that I mean that they’re relaxing on a river until the obligatory burst of Cheeta fuckery gets them of their butts – but their idyllic existence is soon complicated once more by the arrival of yet more entitled white people. This expedition, led by the notorious big game huntress, Tanya Rawlins, has come to gather up as many wild animals as they can in order to restock America’s depleted zoos in the wake of World War II (not exactly sure why that’s a problem, but ok), but they immediately find their mission stymied by the kindly King Farrod who will only allow them to collect a single  male and a female of each species.
Of course, this simply isn’t good enough for Tanya’s mean trail boss and her financial backer, and so a plan is hatched with the King’s shifty nephew to have the ruler and his son meet with “accidents” while the hunt is underway in order for everyone to get what they want.
Of course, once again Tarzan and his family wander into the midst of this and once again, Boy is wooed by civilisation (in this case, a torch that doesn’t need batteries) and briefly sides with the hunters by trading them a couple of lion cubs. Naturally, Tarzan isn’t going to put up with any of this shit on his tur and starts puffing out that barrel chest of his, first swiping all of the group’s guns and then resorting to more severe methods when his newest foes don’t quite get the message.
Will Tarzan save the day? Will Boy realise his mistake? Will Cheeta pull some mischievous shit and hope that doing a cheeky backflip will get her out of it? People, we’re eleven films in – what do you think?

If truth be told, if I was to have watched Tarzan And The Huntress in a bubble, utterly isolated from the eleven other entries in Weissmuller’s admittedly impressive Tarzan output, I’d probably find it quite agreeable and whack another star on without a second thought. However, as I’m watching a lot of these motion pictures in order (much like audiences at the time would have) I can’t help but feel quite frustrated about the same old story tropes that continually keep popping up, regular as clockwork, that’s now giving me a serious case of jungle-set deja-vu.
The main problem is Johnny Sheffield’s Boy, who, at a painfully obvious sixteen, has long since outgrown that moniker to oddly resemble a bizarrely ripped Ralph Malph from Happy Days. With his voice comfortably a few octaves lower that it was when he first started, Tarzan And The Huntress not only is Sheffield’s final appearance in the series, but the character of Boy would be retired completely from here on in which, judging by this film, is something of a fucking relief. While I realise that character progression over multiple movies in the the 30s and 40s weren’t exactly on the level of, say, Loki in the MCU, the fact that Boy is still making the same, childish, selfish mistakes that he was eight movies ago isn’t just lazy, it makes him downright unlikable. In fact, taking baby cubs away from their mother in order to swap them for a fucking torch is quite possibly the most shit-heel act someone raised by Tarzan could possibly do and it’s so reprehensible, it actually mars the final act of the film where he helps his patriarch like a non-so little mini-me of his adopted dad.

It’s also a bit strange because having Tarzan standing next to a muscular sixteen year-old kind of reveals that Weissmuller at this point of his career was noticably getting doughier around the midsection. Now, far be it from me to body shame a former Olympic swimmer, but Tarzan is supposed to at the peak of human fitness and the fact that the actor had stuck around for so long was starting to be something of a detriment. Elsewhere, slighy apart from the main action, Brenda Joyce just tries the best she can despite the massive and continued handicap of not being Maureen O’Sullivan and it’s actually Cheeta who has to offer here. However, while the cavorting chimp adopts a family of her own, takes up a spot of hang gliding and genuinely continues being a destructive force of nature, the very fact that she’s a trained ape technically goes against the whole pro-animal message the film is clumsily shooting for.
On top of this, with a title as imposing as “The Huntress”, I was hoping that Patricia Morison’s antagonist would introduce a whip cracking, icy villainess for our hero to tangle with, but unfortunately the character proves to be more petulant than malevolent and seems more interested in her lipstick than providing a juicy, female opponent to change things up slightly. In response, actually villain duties are transferred to her thuggish partners, which is pretty much business as usual and that sub-plot concerning the King being assassinated and his son narrowly avoiding taking a bath in an alligator pit get sort of lost in the shuffle.

Even the more stand out parts of the film feel just feel way too familiar. While it’s initially to see Tarzan bust out his patented yodel in order to perform that most dependable of jungle dwelling finishing moves – inciting a good, old fashioned elephant stampede – we’ve seen it all before and no amount of awesomely dubbed hideous screaming and yells of “UMGAWA!” is going to change that.
While Tarzan And The Huntress is by no means an out and out bad film, if you want originality, you’d better hunt elsewhere.

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