Much like how Tarzan has to let go of one vine to swing on from the next, the Tarzan franchise once again had to leave a previous actor hanging in order to move onto some new blood, and as the series raced on, leaving Lex Barker to seek further roles, a brand spanking new Tarzan in the shape of Gordon Scott was rolled out to keep things moving.
His first movie was Tarzan’s Hidden Jungle, a fairly basic Tarzan vs Hunter adventure that seemed deliberately to try and tone down the more fantastical aspects of the series in favour of letting its new lead get comfy learning the ropes – or vines as the case may be. So for once, Jane and Boy apparently now don’t exit, although Cheeta is surprisingly still around to deal out her particularly vicious brand of chaotic japery, but allowing their newest Tarzan to go solo without all the usual creature comforts the saga his built up at that point seemed to be a bold move in order to turn Edgar Wright Burroughs’ savage hero into a strapping bachelor rather than a half-naked family man.
We jump right in to find a couple of frustrated hunters trooping through Africa, shooting anything that can see in order to secure enough fat, skins and ivory to meet the quota of their callous boss, Burger. However, the problem seems to be that their last few enterprises seemed to be so fruitful, they’ve managed to hunt almost all of the wildlife out of the immediate area and figure they have to find more, pronto if they’re going to nab a juicy bonus.
Of course, Tarzan’s not having any of it and once he gets wind of them putting a bullet into a poor, baby elephant he swings in to slep them about a bit and then try to heal the imperiled pachyderm with some handy dandy Jungle medicine. However, while the hunters lick their wounds, one of them seems resistant to the warning he just got and figures if they just cross a nearby river, they’ll find all the animals they could possibly need. Unfortunately, this proves to be the territory of a fierce tribe who not only worship animals, but enact grim justice to anyone who harms a living thing on their land and promptly has the gun waving idiot thrown to the lions.
Meanwhile, in an attempt to further heal the wounded elephant, Tarzan arrives on the doorstep of the kindly Dr. Sellers and his rather attractive assistant Jill Hardy, but not soon after he’s gone to get some of that jungle medicine for the doc to analyse for his patients, those shifty hunters turn up with a devious plan. You see, they’ve heard that Sellers has a good relationship with that notoriously dangerous tribe and so, posing as photographers, they plan to be escorted into dangerous territory hiding in plain sight. Of course, when they are rumbled, both Burger, Sellers and Jill are targeted for execution, but with Tarzan on the way, hopefully he can get then off with just a slap on the wrist rather than getting full on devoured by lions…
Every now and then you get a Tarzan movie so basic and run of the mill, you’re left openly wondering if the filmmakers had to get a movie out thanks to a strict contract whether they had any new ideas or not. As it stands, Tarzan Hidden Jungle is one of those movies and even though it’s decently plotted and competently helmed by Harold Schuster, it’s so unremarkable and vanilla that if you didn’t have a brand new Tarzan stretching his legs, it would be utterly unremarkable.
To be fair, this may have something to do with the fact that producer Sol Lesser was oh-so gradually trying to turn Tarzan back to the grittier, one-man army he was originally envisioned as rather than a husband and father who had an elephant operated shower and a rather flashy kitchen. When taken in this respect, the addition of Gordon Scott to the role proves to be something of a highlight – I mean, he seems to be burdened with a muscular, bouffant hairdo that’s dangerously veering on Elvis Presley and his lack of acting experience often means that when his isn’t speaking, he has a rather empty expression locked onto his face, but as a physical specimen he certainly fits the bill. Not to disparage any other of the actors who ever donned the loincloth, but with 218 pounds of muscle on his 6′ 3″ frame and 19-inch biceps sprouting out of his arms, Scott is a fucking unit no matter which way you slice it. His lack of acting experience oddly sometimes is actually a benefit as the lack of creature comforts (pun not intended) and family unit mske this a Tarzan who has a much flintier demeanor to go with that barrel chest and those tree trunk, ass-whupping arms.
The plot proves to be of the slightly more disappointing nature of people randomly wandering in and out of the narrative at particular intervals in order to edge things along and as such, feels like a very surface level adventure that, if some of that aimless wandering was tightened up, would probably make a fairly gripping 45 minutes of television but as it stands, Tarzan’s Hidden Jungle (which isn’t actually that hidden) plays mote like an action farce where the plot can only move forward because the one person who can sort everything out in ten minutes us conveniently elsewhere.
However – as is habit for virtually any Tarzan movie that was made before the 70s – if this proves to be your very first Tarzan movie that you’ve ever seen you may very well end up watching to slap another star on my review as you openly wonder what my fucking problem is. But if you’re familiar with the bulk of the character’s cinematic output (especially Scott’s legitimately magnificent Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure), chances are you’ll agree it’s fairly unremarkable stuff.
What isn’t unremarkable us some of the members of the supporting cast, with a pre-Psycho Vera Miles putting in a likable female lead chiefly to show that now that Jane is no longer part of the Tarzan mythos, the lord of the apes is now free to play the field as a legitimate man of the ladies – and it must have worked, because both Scott and Miles were married briefly for a time.
Elsewhere on the cast sheet we amusingly find Jack Elam on villain duties as the suitably dastardly Burger, and whole the actor was arguably most famous for being the shit-faced, bug eyed proctologist from The Cannonball Run, his no nonsense, business related motives for so ruthlessly plundering the natural world in order to make a quote still manages to resonate even when he’s dispatched smartly by a well placed elephant’s foot.
Oh, one last thing: while Cheeta has always been something of a maniacal wildcard throughout the franchise, even I have to admit that the vicious little shit stealing a pocket watch from a man just about to be fed to the lions and wearing it around her neck may be the coldest, most gangster shit I’ve ever seen the diminutive chaos-ape stoop to…
An attempt to make Tarzan more grounded ends up infusing Scott first forray with a noticable lack of pizzazz when previous movies wasn’t afraid by going silly when going big. But with Gordon Scott only just slotting into the famous role and far better outings still ahead of him, Tarzan’s Hidden Jungle ironically just doesn’t stand out.
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