Tarzan's Revenge 
                                    
Director: D. Ross Lederman
Year: 1938
Rating: 5.5
This isn't really very good but it is so amiable and idiotic that I enjoyed it more than I should have. I am not sure how or why it was even made. The Weissmuller series had already made three films with MGM. This is produced by Fox and Sol Lesser. Didn't MGM have the rights to Tarzan? Lesser has quite the history with Tarzan. In 1933 he had produced a serial titled Tarzan the Fearless and once Tarzan was passed on to RKO he produced the Tarzan films with Weissmuller, Lex Barker and a few with Gordon Scott.


 The two stars of this film are the most interesting thing about it. Not that anyone remembers them now but Glenn Morris and Eleanor Holm were famous in their day. Not for acting as this film makes clear but for sports. He won the Decathlon in the 1936 Olympics and Hitler was so impressed that he offered Morris $50,000 to stay in Germany and compete. He turned it down. Leni Riefenstahl claimed that they had an affair. He then turned to professional football but an injury ended that very quickly. The athletic skills he displays here are very impressive.

 

Holm was an Olympic swimmer and won a gold medal in the 1932 games. She does some fancy swimming and diving here in a seductive white two piece bathing suit. She was heading for Germany in 1936 when she was booted off the team for drinking on the ship! She later married Billy Rose who was famous as an impresario who had been married to Fanny Brice. He put her in a Water Show with Weissmuller and later Buster Crabbe.

 

Now as to the movie. Nothing really happens until the final ten minutes. Eleanor (Lesser refused to use the name Jane) and her parents (George Barbier and Hedda Hopper) and her fiancé come to the jungle to capture animals. The fiancé is clearly a dick as he shoots crocodiles from the boat for sport. On the boat is also a Sheik with a harem of dancing girls. He takes a liking to her. So does Tarzan. He takes her vine swinging which is always the way to a woman's heart. The Sheik (C. Henry Gordon) arranges to kidnap her and brings her to his palatial digs in the middle of the jungle where women are constantly dancing like they are in a Busby Berkeley movie. Cheeta races to tell Tarzan the news and his rescue is kind of fantastic. In the end she hears the whistle of the boat leaving and gazes at Tarzan. Which way will she go?