Tarzan Goes
to India
Director: John Guillerman Year: 1962 Rating:
6.0
Tarzan goes to India to save the elephants but also meets a few Bollywood
stars as well. For a post-Weissmuller/MGM Tarzan film, this is pretty good.
A decent budget and a ton of elephants. It stars Jock Mahoney who was legendary
among Hollywood stunt people. He began as a stuntman and did stunts that
no one else would dare. Stunting in Westerns he did all that fancy stuff
you see in the B films. When he wasn't involved in a film either as a stunt
person or acting, he had a road show which he performed around the country
doing crazy stunts with horses. In the two Tarzan films he made he does all
his own stunts though I am doubtful about one - we will get to that later.
He was the step-father of Sally Fields and she accused him of molesting her
as a child. In a weird co-incidence so did the step-daughter of Lex Barker,
another Tarzan. He makes a good Tarzan though - he had tried out for the
Lex Barker Tarzan films but didn't get it and by this time he was in his
forties and thought too old after his second one. Before Tarzan he had been
Yancy Derringer and The Range Rider in early TV shows.
This is a film that might resonate more today than at the time it was made.
An evil company with no regard for wildlife, only profits. Tarzan is called
to India by an old friend, The Maharajah, who wants Tarzan to save his elephants
from a flood that will occur when a dam is built. The jungle will be flooded
and the company is on a timetable driven by the coming monsoon. The Maharajah
is played by Murad who was a character actor in hundreds of Bollywood films
- a very few being Caravan, Devdas (1955), Tarzan and Hercules (damn
I need to find that one), Love in Tokyo and the great classic Mughal-E-Azam.
Tarzan arrives in an open air airplane and dives into the water from high
above. Someone clearly did this but would they chance Mahoney? He arrives
in only his loin cloth. No luggage. No toothbrush. No razor. That is the
way to travel. He never changes his loin cloth for the entire film. I would
feel embarrassed at times though he no doubt looks a lot better in a loin
cloth than I would. Not even embarrassed when he meets the Princes, the daughter
of the Mahrajah, who is a doll. Played by a Bollywood minor star - Simi Garewal
- Chalte Chalte, Professor Pyarelal, Burning Train, Mera Naam Joker from
Raj Kapoor. This according to IMDB is her debut.
Tarzan travels into the jungle where he meets Jai, the elephant boy, who
has control of his much loved elephant. Poor kid doesn't even get his name
in the credits though he has a large role. Tarzan devises a plan - kill the
rogue elephant leading the herd of female elephants - and have Jai's elephant
lead them out of the jungle. Tarzan tells Jai, in Africa a boy becomes a
man when he kills a tiger. This is your tiger. Not too much pressure on you.
Except the foreman of the company (perennial bad guy Leo Gordon) wants to
stop this and kill Tarzan. First opposing Tarzan from the company is the
Indian engineer - later he joins him. Played by a young Feroz Khan! A huge
star within a few years. One of the big action stars of Bollywood. It gets
fairly exciting when the elephants - dozens of them - are on the move and
a wall of dynamite is waiting to blow them up. Of course that makes no sense.
Just let the elephants pass. Also, not mentioned are the thousands of animals
left behind to drown. Sacrifices to progress.
Directed by John Guillerman who has a solid resume. King Kong, back in the
jungle again with Sheena, Death on the Nile, Towering Inferno, Shaft in Africa
and an earlier Tarzan film, Tarzan's Greatest Adventure with Gordon Scott.
Also from Bollywood in this is Jagdish Raj, another character actor in over
100 films. My only regret is that this was well before the Bollywood film
Tarzan in 1985 and that Kimi Katkar, who was Tarzan's Jane, wasn't in this
and singing Tarzan, Oh My Tarzan as she tries to seduce him. A classic song.
And a wonderfully bad film on YouTube. This one has no songs but is pretty
entertaining in the second half.
Tarzan's Three
Challenges
Director: Robert Day Year: 1963 Rating:
6.0
Tarzan must have been getting bored of Africa. Or the producers were. After
his trip to India he is now in an unnamed Asian country that is ruled by
a Buddhist spiritual leader. The location shooting clearly takes place in
Thailand but not the usual urban area of Bangkok. Instead much of it is shot
in the north of Thailand among the Hill tribes and it makes fabulous usage
of Thai temples and holy places. Some of them are quite amazing and I admit
to not having visited most of them. I need to get a Thai to watch this and
tell me where they are. Produced by Sy Weintraub who had the movie rights
to Tarzan from 1958 to 1984. He wanted to get away from the traditional portrayal
of Tarzan as a guy living in a tree house with Jane who could not speak English
- and get him closer to the books in which Tarzan spoke multiple languages
fluently. Both these Jock Mahoney Tarzan's have good production values -
especially this one with hundreds of extras and some great costumes and pageantry.
Tarzan has been asked to bring the successor to the High Spiritual leader
who is dying. The successor is called the Chosen One. Before Tarzan even
gets to the Chosen One he has a few adventures as the brother of the Spiritual
Leader is trying to kill him. Early on Tarzan is knocked out of a boat into
a Thai river. And swims in it. Either this time or on a bet later on that
he could swim the river, he got a near deadly virus that made him drop about
forty pounds. He said he never felt strong again. The same thing happened
to Burt Reynolds in C.I.A Operation. Don't go swimming in a Thai river is
my advice to you. You will see many Thai children doing that. Don't join
them. You will likely die. It would be interesting to know when he got sick
because he performs some amazing feats here.
When he finally gets to the Chosen One, he discovers he is a young boy of
about eight. Tarzan takes him along with two others on the journey to where
the Chosen One will have to pass the tests to prove that he is in fact the
Chosen One. Tarzan had his own challenges per the title - to take the boy
he had to pass a test of strength, endurance and wisdom. But the main challenge
may have been putting up with the annoying Chosen One. The brother Khan is
after them and finally they have a very cool duel to the death on a grid
of ropes with boiling water beneath them. The lead up to the duel is great
too.
They made some interesting casting choices here. The woman who goes with
Tarzan is a Japanese actress and two of the natives are black Americans -
the great Woody Strode and Earl Campbell ( Thunderball, Cuba, The Interpreter).
Blacks playing Asians. Different than the usual whites playing Asians. Strode
is so magnetic even as the bad guy - chiseled down to the last atom - as
is Mahoney. There duel is very athletic. If I had been a betting man I would
have gone with Strode - hell he was a gladiator in Spartacus. The kid Rickey
Der - Chinese American - went on to be in a TV series called Kentucky Jones
with Dennis Weaver and Henry Morgan. And in 2011 he made a documentary titled
Have Camera Will Travel . . . Thailand. Will have to look for that.
