PHANTOM 2040, SEASON ONE (1994-5)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

Hardly any of the TV serials I've comprehensively examined for high mythicity have received a total score of "good," meaning that there's a strong symbolic discourse running through most or all episodes. Peter Chung's AEON FLUX managed it, but that show consisted of only ten full episodes and some shorts. Chung provided character designs for PHANTOM 2040, but the writers were probably responsible for keeping up the quality of 2040's 35 episodes over the course of two seasons.

GENERATION UNTO GENERATION, Parts 1-2-- In 2040, the venerable costumed jungle-hero of the Lee Falk comic strip gets a futuristic update, possibly with some guidance from the future-city patterns created by the example of METROPOLIS. Eighteen-year-old Kit Walker (Scott Valentine), who has no idea of his heritage, was raised by his aunt in the city of "Metropia," a city divorced from the world of nature. Kit wants to become an ecological engineer in the few parts of the world where natural ecosystems are preserved since the world-devastating "resource wars." But because Kit reaches his majority, his father's old teacher, Guran of Bangalla, comes to Metropia to teach Kit to become the new Phantom. The main source of evil in the "big-city jungle" is Rebecca Madison (Margot Kidder), whose primary plot is to create a closed community, Cyberville, where the wealthy will be served while the rest of the world goes to hell. Kit doesn't want to be a crusader against evil, but he gets a big push toward savior-dom when he discovers that a mutated plant, "ghostwood," may be capable ofto renovating Earth's wrecked ecosystem. Kit consents to become a high-tech "Ghost Who Walks," complete with an invisibility screen. The first two-parter also introduces Rebecca's decadent son Max Jr, who at a young age was traumatized by the death of his father Max Sr, supposedly killed by the father of Kit. Max Jr affects to talk to others through the medium of his grungy cat, named for the French decadent poet Baudelaire. Also present are (1) Rebecca's cyborg enforcer Graft, (2) righteous Metropian police officer Sagan and her cyborg-partner, a mutt named DVL (a knowing spoof of Original Phantom's wolf-pet "Devil"), and (3) Metropian shock-jock Doctor Jak (Mark Hamill) and his "biot" (android) aide Pavlova. In the first two-parter, Phantom destroys Rebecca's plan to brainwash citizens with a video game.

THE SUM OF THE PARTS-- Max Jr concocts a new type of biot to frame the New Phantom as a criminal. This is one of the weaker plots, but the android itself takes on a new and unpredictable identity befitting the name Mad Max bestows on the android: Heisenberg. Another Phantom-foe appears: Sean One, who rules over a series of orbital colonies and who, like Rebecca, has plans to encourage humans to desert Earth to become citizens under his control. 

FIRE AND I.C.E.-- Phantom and his team seek to break into Rebecca's security system in order to find out her plans for Cyberville. In the process the hero makes another ally: teenaged hacker Sparks. He also encounters a mysterious figure, Mister Cairo, who seems to be an intelligent hologram.

REFLECTIONS OF GLORY-- Rebecca has another brainwashing plan, and this one is directed solely at the city-council members whose approval she needs to build Cyberville. This time the Madisons plan to use a beautiful singer, Vaingloria (Debbie Harry), who's been outfitted with implants to hypnotize others. (Some slight inspiration from the Evil Maria in METROPOLIS is possible.) In the same episode, Sagan meets Kit a second time when she apprehends Sparks for a minor criminal act, and more or less strongarms Kit into accompanying her on a date. However, when Kit changes into the Phantom to investigate, the vigilante has his first direct run-in with the by-the-book lady cop.

SHADOWS FROM THE PAST-- An African warrior-woman, Nia, bears a grudge against the previous Phantom, and so ends up having a big battle with the new hero. Rebecca makes an alliance with Nia to kill the Phantom, and in so doing shows the woman how she Rebecca has preserved the persona of her dead husband online. Nia poisons Guran, who goes berserk until Phantom is able to find a cure.         

THE BIOT IN RED-- Phantom continues trying to figure out what happened in the events that led to the death of Max Madison Sr and the disappearance of Kit's father. Heisenberg, who has escaped the control of Max Jr, befriends a jazz-playing musician. Max Jr stashes an information cylinder in the musician's case and Doctor Jak sends Pavlova to engage a detective to find the case. Pavlova engages Professor Archer, Kit's college teacher, who's playing at being a detective in imitation of his ancestor (implicitly Miles Archer of THE MALTESE FALCON). Heisenberg conceives a thing for Pavlova and the two of them play out the farewell scene from "Casablanca."         

THE GOOD MARK-- Intrigue out the wazoo. Not only is the Phantom trying to learn more about his father's disappearance, Graft and Max Jr conspire to get hold of Rebecca's secret files. Sagan gets framed by her commander, so Phantom helps her bring him down. The script works in a little-used bit of Phantom lore: "the Good Mark," a symbol of righteousness.

DARK ORBIT PTS 1-2-- Sean One desires to have his orbital colonies declared independent of Earth's government, so he gathers supplies for a space laser from an obese Earth-smuggler, the Aussie-accented Gorda. Phantom is forced to league himself with Graft and Max Jr to foil Sean One's plans. Though Graft remains allied to Rebecca by the end of the episode, he and the Phantom part as respectful adversaries, and even Guran hopes that someday the old soldier will recover the better angels of his nature.

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE-- Max Jr has a dream of his childhood, being shown love by his father. But Max's adult psyche intrudes, reciting a (somewhat altered) poem from Baudelaire about angels knowing grief. Simultaneously, Guran reveals that at a very young age Kit received some instruction from his missing father, thus creating a parallel between the adversaries. Rebecca then launches a new scheme: downloading the mental engrams of her husband into a new biot body. However, the biot awakes believing that it's the original Max Sr and goes on a rampage, taking Sparks prisoner. Later he releases Sparks but abducts Max Jr, forcing Phantom to try to stop the android. When the biot drags Max Jr to Sector Zero, the site of Max Sr's death-- an area which should be replete with poison due to the catastrophe there-- all are surprised to see that the mutated ghostwood plant has neutralized the poison elements. The android realizes that it's no more than a machine and destroys itself, though not without claiming that the previous Phantom killed Max Sr. 

LASERS IN THE JUNGLE-- The episode opens with Vaingloria musing on the impermanence of human life. That day at one of the singer's concerts, a mad bomber tries to assault Vaingloria, but the Phantom saves her. The hero also plans to lure Graft into the Section Zero jungle to annihilate Rebecca's biot army, on which her Cyberville scheme depends. Max Jr sends Vaingloria along with Graft and the biot army as his "observer," but it's more likely that Max Jr just likes messing with people. There's the hint of a possible romance between the singer and the soldier, though both are too damaged to make a connection. Phantom manages to use Vaingloria's specialty, illusions, to wipe out the biot army. There's an amusing side-plot in which Rebecca loses her hair due to chemical exposure, but by episode's end has regained it all thanks to clone-transplants. In the scene dealing with her recovery, her full head of hair is juxtaposed with the image of the snaky-locked head topping a statue of Medusa.

THREE INTO ONE-- Sagan is forced to work with the Phantom when a trio of citizens-- one of whom is a policewoman known to Sagan-- become a unitary being with enormous telekinetic powers. Cairo appears again, appearing to make a deal with Graft. Both Graft and the Phantom learn of "the Triad Project," which was supposedly abandoned during the era of Kit's predecessor. At the end, though Sagan doesn't learn Kit's secret, she's a bit more sanguine about the vigilante's activities.

THE GAUNTLET-- Sparks, who essentially raised himself on the streets after being apparently abandoned by his parents, gets the chance to find out what really happened. Mister Cairo takes an interest in the teen's welfare, not even charging anyone for eliciting vital memories from Sparks' subconscious. The boy learns that biots from Maximum Inc kidnapped both mother and father, and Phantom resolves to ferret out the truth, though he orders Sparks to stay out of the matter. Naturally the youth deals himself in anyway, but he, Phantom and Guran can only learn the truth by subduing a security system named Gauntlet, whose minds were used to provide a template for the system.

LIFE LESSONS-- Phantom shoots a biot and is grief stricken to find that he wounded (but fortunately did not kill) a human being masquerading as one of Maximum's androids. Phantom learns from the soulful biot Heisenberg that some biots have asserted their status as free, cognitive beings, which Kit finds hard to countenance. The main threat, however, is a defective reactor under the control of Maximum Inc, one that Rebecca's totally willing to let detonate since it will only harm the lower classes.

THE MAGICIAN-- Phantom encounters a professional magician named Steele, a friend of his vanished father. However, because of that contact, Graft and Rebecca may get a pipeline to a horde of secrets Steele maintained from the earlier association-- including a lot of the tech the modern Phantom uses. However, Steele uses his tricks to flummox Graft long enough to destroy the secrets and protect Kit. Though Steele doesn't look anything like the classic Mandrake, whom comics-artist Lee Falk created slightly before he invented The Phantom, it's obvious that this is a Mandrake homage, even if one doesn't know that the Steele character is being voiced by the same actor who did Mandrake in the 1986-7 DEFENDERS OF THE EARTH cartoon.      

SWIFTER, HIGHER, FASTER-- Kit's Phantom crusade has led him to neglect the fellow collegians he used to hang with, but when he seeks to re-connect, he learns that one sportswoman, Jenna, has been enhanced thanks to Maximum Inc's promotion of risky nanobot tech. Jenna goes berserk. One of the other females who witnessed the debut of the New Phantom strongly suspects his identity, but nothing more comes of this plot-thread.

DOWN THE LINE-- Phantom and his allies receive a transmission from what appears to be the Phantom of a future era. The supposed descendant claims that for the safety of humankind, Kit must break the Phantom's rule against killing and exterminate Rebecca Madison.

CONTROL GROUP-- Thanks to Rebecca experimenting with memory transfers, Phantom and Sparks get to witness downloads of the memories of Rebecca's enforcer Graft. Both heroes are surprised to learn that the ruthless henchman was once a hero in his own right, defending the helpless people Rebecca wiped out during the conflicts of the resource wars. But because Graft lost almost his entire organic body in the wars-- he speaks the famous Ronald Reagan line from a similarly maimed character in the forties movie KINGS ROW-- he allows himself to succumb to being a madwoman's tool. Yet by the end, it's evident that the heroic Graft is far from being as dead as he thinks he is.

A BOY AND HIS CAT-- Despite Max Jr's facility for plotting evil plots, he enters a VR program and refuses to emerge, so that his body becomes comatose. Rebecca rages at the loss of her son to his own psychosis and brings in a programmer to extricate Max. Said programmer's name is "Cordwainer Bird," a well-known alias of writer Harlan Ellison, and the script not only has Bird comment on his "dangerous visions," the episode title references a famous Ellison story, "A Boy and His Dog." In VR Max encounters a female computer construct who takes the name Athena because she claims that she sprang from Max's head, a la the story of Athena's birth from the skull of Zeus. However, just like Rebecca, Athena is a jealous mistress who doesn't want Max to ever leave, and at one point she morphs into a Medusa-form, referencing the conflation of Rebecca and the snake-haired gorgon in the episode LASERS IN THE JUNGLE. Phantom tries to pull Max out of his delusive state but in the end must leave the confused Maximum Inc heir to his own devices.

In closing my remarks on Season One, I'll reiterate a point I made in my analysis of the book METROPOLIS. The word "Metropolis" means "mother-city," and the arc of the book connotes the madonna-figure of Maria reasserting her primacy over a city controlled by a  father alienated from his son. In 2040, Rebecca wields almost total control of the similarly named Metropia, as well as her husband-- reduced to a "ghost in the machine"-- and all of her children, real and symbolic-- and as such, she's closer to the lascivious goddesses of pagan myth, the antitypes to the madonna archetype. Season Two will prove to be no less rich in mythopoeic correlations.         

       

QUEEN OF THE AMAZONS (1947)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny* 
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*  

The small-time studio Lippert Pictures didn't invest much in metaphenomenal movies until the 1950s, when they gained a modest reputation for flicks like KING DINOSAUR and ROCKETSHIP X-M. In the 1940s, though, almost all of the studio's fantasy-content was tied up in their two jungle movies-- this one, and 1948's JUNGLE GODDESS-- both of which evoked the still popular "white goddess" trope.  

The title of the later film is more truthful; GODDESS really is mostly about how a young White woman gets adopted as a goddess by a Black African tribe, and how she talks a couple of White adventurers into setting her free. But QUEEN isn't really about its tribe of White Amazons. One of the two main characters is Jean (Patricia Morison), a woman looking for her missing fiancee in tribal Africa, while the other is the new love Jean finds while she's looking for the old one. Though Jean searches for long-time boyfriend Greg, she finds that new love in Gary (former Batman Robert Lowery), a jungle guide she hires to find the tribe of "she-devils" who've allegedly abducted Greg. But Greg isn't being held against his will. While he was part of some vague mission to locate ivory smugglers, he encountered the Amazons' queen Zita (Amira Moustafa), and the two of them fell in love. In the cases of both Jean and Greg, absence did not make the heart grow fonder for the established fiancee; rather, their questionable affections cooled and found better (and presumably more permanent) mates because of their separation. By the flick's end, both new couples have paired off for happy endings, and any viewers hoping that Jean and Zita might battle over the same man must content themselves with a little bit of tough talk from Zita about fighting for her beloved. (So this film does not fall into my "fighting femme" category.)      

QUEEN's writer is so focused on getting his two couples linked up that the subject of the all-female tribe is barely addressed. Apparently, they started when a ship at sea foundered, and a lifeboat containing only women and girls managed to land in Africa. There's no clear history of how the survivors decided to dress up in leopard-skins and become their own tribe, rather than trying to reach civilization. No older women are seen, and there's a line or two about how all the current Amazons grew up in the jungle and have just started thinking about recruiting some males for marital purposes, but that's not exactly a thorough exegesis. The viewer also doesn't see much evidence of whatever warlike abilities the tribeswomen mastered in order to awe the local Black residents. There's one scene where Zita hits a stationary target with an arrow, and the real villain of the story-- the head of the smuggling operation-- gets killed by a blowpipe-dart wielded by one of Zita's girl servants. If anything, Jean comes off as a figure more formidable than Zita. When Jean first meets Gary, he, like Zita later on, is busy using some stationary targets for practice, albeit with a rifle. Gary voices some "woman-hating" sentiments, and Jean impresses him by whipping out a pistol and accurately ventilating all of the targets. Later she at least draws her pistol when Gary's attacked by a lion, even if she's unable to fire for fear of hitting him.

Some of the juvenile jungle-japes of this era boasted some pleasant sexploitation elements, QUEEN is pretty blah, even though Morison and Moustafa were both attractive women. There's not a lot of action when the good guys take on the smuggling gang-- with Gary getting to duke it out with the head villain-- but it's just barely enough of a battle-scene to make this a combative film, since Gary is, with Jean, one of the movie's two main characters.           

JUNGLE RAIDERS (1945)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*                                                                                                                          I've thought of the perfect term for limited-location serials like this one and others in the oeuvre of producer Sam Katzman: "shuttle serials." Basically, because the producer of such serials doesn't want to film on more than two or three locations, the actors are forced to keep "shuttling" back and forth between roughly the same locations. JUNGLE RAIDERS, for instance, really just has two functional locations for its fifteen chapters: a jungle trading-post and a camp, surrounded by mountains, where a tribe of Caucasian Africans make their home. The back-and-forth shutting isn't quite as dull as it is in Katzman's LOST PLANET, but I was ready for the serial to be over long before it ended.                                                                                  

The initiating action is provided by two middle-aged scientists who seek the secret of the Arzec tribe: a root reputed to have great curative powers. The root is never important to the story, however. Doctor Reed comes to the jungle first and manages to befriend the Arzecs and learn the hidden location of their camp. When seedy trader Jake (Charles King) learns of Reed's accomplishment, he holds Reed prisoner in the cellar of the trading-post, trying to learn the natives' location in order to plunder their famed secret treasure. While Reed is being held, his colleague Doctor Moore shows up and manages to befriend the Arzecs as well, again motivated by an altruistic cause. Both Reed and Moore have grown children-- daughter Ann for Reed, son Bob (Kane Richmond) for Moore-- who come to Africa to rendezvous with their respective dads. Ann arrives first by boat, and Jake sends his feminine aide Cora (Veda Ann Borg) to intercept Ann, the better to use her as a club over her old man. Just slightly later, Bob drives to the trading-post area with his war-buddy Joe (Eddie Quillan), looking to find Doctor Moore.                         

What follows is just one twist and turn after another, as Jake and his allies seek to find their way to the treasure, while Bob, Joe and Ann only slowly suss out the danger to themselves and the two scientists. (Reed, BTW, remains in captivity throughout most of the serial's early chapters and only becomes significant after being rescued.) Things are further complicated by the power-plays of an Arzec female priestess named Zara (Carol Hughes), who wants to displace the priest in charge of the tribe's religion. Some narrative tension is provided by the way both villains and heroes are obliged to enter into temporary alliances, which usually end in some sort of betrayal.   

   Nice location shots and attractive performers keep things moving moderately well in RAIDERS. Richmond provides a strong lead as always, while King is welcome here as a scuzzy schemer, as opposed to the more standard mystery mastermind. Quillan is similarly distinctive, providing comedy relief that's actually funny, a rarity in serials. The serial's most noteworthy aspect-- not including the lack of backstory for the Caucasian tribe in a part of Africa with no Negro residents-- is the presence of two formidable female villains in one serial. In fact, toward the end of the serial the two nasty ladies have a brief catfight. It's nothing compared to the spirited bouts of PERILS OF NYOKA, but it qualifies the film for my "fighting femmes" category.   

QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE (1935)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

There's just one element in this 12-chapter serial that renders it marvelous: a short sequence in which two people in the African jungle are pinned down by some sort of "strangler vines." To the best of my knowledge there exist no such plants, so QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE is marvelous. But most of the significant phenomena are uncanny, so as I occasionally do on this blog, I include labels for those tropes for my own reference.

QUEEN gets a "fair" rating for mythicity just because it manages to touch on five or six major jungle-adventure tropes. Nevertheless, the serial is a mess. It recycled footage from a 1922 silent serial, JUNGLE GODDESS (now lost), which was noteworthy in its time for having been shot on a forested backlot in the U.S. and for having a better than average budget for a chapterplay. But in the 1930s silent films were unmarketable. So a producer named Herman Wolk chose to cannibalize certain sequences from GODDESS and to shoot a lot of matching sequences on soundstages. This leads to a lot of padding with the use of stock jungle footage, none of which includes either old or new players. This creates one amusing sequence in which a chimp, cornered on a high rock by hungry lions, is rescued by a helpful elephant, who's never in the same frame with the lions.

Two of the major jungle-tropes used here are that of the "lost city" and "the white goddess." To be sure, there are actually two bizarre African cultures crammed close together. In the ERB tradition, there's a small coterie of White people-- far from the usual "city"-- that have somehow established a priesthood over their Black neighbors. To be sure, the two groups are never seen together, aside from an early scene in which the Black chieftain confers with head priest Kali (Lafe McKee), so apparently this mirrors the original plot of GODDESS. The White priests all wear big conical hats that I suppose are meant to look vaguely Semitic, but their only cultural identification is that they consider themselves citizens of "Mu." Since this legendary locale did not appear in print until one James Churchward wrote a book about it in 1926, I think it's safe to assume this tidbit is a 1935 interpolation.

The more numerous Black natives venerate a huge statue that sometimes shines deadly rays from its eyes. Since the viewer eventually learns that there's a radium deposit nearby, in the so-called "Garden of Rad," possibly the original idea in GODDESS was that the statue was inhabited by minions of the priesthood. The statue is seen to move its hands a little, which sounds like real votive statues (albeit much smaller ones) that were designed to "come to life" and impress the gullible. Did GODDESS originally include the idea that priests inside the statue somehow projected energy from raw radium through the statue's eyeholes, in order to create lethal rays and execute sacrificial victims? Hard to say, for that serial's gone, and QUEEN never explains the statue at all. ("Rad," by the way, is the name of the priesthood's god, so maybe they're supposed to be Latinate Romans?)

The white queen comes to the Black tribe by accident. As a small child, Joan Lawrence is taken away from her parents, and from neighbor-kid David, when she's caught in a hot-air balloon. The balloon's descent into the territory of Mu impresses the Black tribesmen and they raise little Joan to be their queen (Mary Kornman), even referred to a few times as "The Queen of the Jungle." 

Little David, however, grows up to be Adult David (Reed Howes). Joan's parents could never find her, or the radium mine that the father came to Africa to locate. Yet David apparently takes that right turn at Albuquerque, since he makes his way to the Mu territory with no big hassle. He does however get captured and slated for sacrifice by radiation-gaze. Adult Joan at first seems totally okay with the White guy getting burned to ash. Then a crawl asks rhetorically if her "White blood" will allow Joan to endure such savagery. By the next episode, naturally, Joan rescues David.

Despite the fact that Joan has forgotten the English language, and David doesn't speak the local Swahili, the young hunter talks the Queen into leaving the only people she's ever known. More oddly, they agree to let her go with no fuss. However, the writers, probably loosely following the earlier movie's template, did this so that Joan and David could be attacked by diverse menaces on their trek back to civilization. I think Kali is at least responsible for some assaults, because he's afraid David will bring back other invaders and mess up Kali's setup-- but the continuity's excruciatingly hard to follow. In addition to the aforementioned strangler vine, and the usual jungle-animals, David is attacked by a pair of natives who are implied to live beneath the surface of a river (no, no explanation of that either) while minions of Kali blind Joan with radium, stick her in a canoe and send her careening toward a waterfall. For a time White hunters capture Joan and David to find out the mine's location, I think because they've been sold minute quantities of radium by Kali. But the funniest assault comes when a native somehow manipulates a chimp into attacking Joan with a knife. David's priceless line as the chimp runs away: "I wonder who put him up to it."

Since Joan never learns English "on the road," her personality is confined to that of wide-eyed innocence. She's not any sort of fighter, but her scenes in Mu make the loose implication that she MAY have a psychic connection with elephants for some reason. She's seen commanding a trained elephant in Mu, and then later, on the hunters' ship, she actually commands an elephant whom the hunters have taken captive to do her will-- that is, by reaching its trunk through a porthole to strangle a bad hunter-guy. David therefore shoulders almost all the action-scenes herein, and Reed Howes acquits himself quite well, given that most fights in thirties' serials were spottily choreographed. He's seen to be a stand-up guy, tempted to take advantage of Joan's innocence but not yielding to the temptation.

Whenever the 1935 producers utilize footage from 1922, they don't bother to synch the two, so the viewer sees various scenes of "undercranking," resulting in characters moving like jumping-beans. The longest scene from GODDESS is one in which Kali tries to make his fellow priests think that Kali's own little boy is a god made flesh. But there's a mixup and the priests get the idea that a chimp is the new god in town, so there's an amusing moment where the simian cavorts around the room and the priests imitate his holy actions. However, Kali, like a number of other characters, just disappears from the story when it's convenient for the filmmakers, and so he never pays for his crimes.

QUEEN is a real curio. It's not good, or even "so bad it's good." But it's not as dull as some serials out there, and that's something.

TARZAN LORD OF THE JUNGLE (1976-79)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

Filmation Studio's TARZAN LORD OF THE JUNGLE enjoyed 36 episodes spread out over four seasons on CBS-TV. As of this writing, only Season 1, consisting of 16 half hour episodes, has been released to DVD. Yet somehow I feel confident in making a summary statement about the entire series--

TARZAN was to Filmation what JONNY QUEST was to Hanna-Barbera.

I refer not to the overall level of craft or to audience reception, but to my perception that the Filmation raconteurs pushed themselves far more than they ever had before (with adaptations like SUPERMAN and AQUAMAN) and certainly more than they would in future. 

Of course, with a show produced for Saturday morning television, there was no way Filmation could include any of the visceral violence of Burroughs, even putting aside the company's budgetary limitations. But in lieu of fight scenes the producers used rotoscoping to lend a sense of pleasing grace to animals and to the ape-man himself. 

There were other compromises. Though 1976 wasn't as afflicted with political correctness as current cartoons are today, LORD's producers evidently shared the same intuition that guided Disney's 1999 TARZAN: if you don't have any Black Africans in the stories, no one can complain about how they are depicted. But unlike the Disney version, Filmation's LORD compensates by having the ape-man run across assorted "lost races," though not nearly as many as Burroughs himself created. Thus the stories usually concern Tarzan meeting some sort of exotic society-- a race of ten-foot-tall giants, or one made up of antique Vikings, or knights in armor, or worshipers of a long-lived woolly mammoth. There's even a passing reference to the land of Opar, the lost kingdom Burroughs himself utilized most often.

My favorite episodes, though, are the two involving the lion-worshipers of Zandar ("Cathne" in Burroughs' TARZAN AND THE CITY OF GOLD). This was one of the author's best Tarzan books, and though of course the cartoon couldn't deal with any of the more mature elements, I appreciated that the animators did a great job designing Nemone, one of the many pagan queens who threw themselves at Tarzan's bare feet.

It's here that Burroughs' protagonist gets his first incarnation as "Tarzan, Eco Warrior." To Filmation's credit, the ape-man's love for his jungle kingdom-- which extends to having a strange rapport with animals other than apes-- comes across as heartfelt in the scripts, so that the ecological themes aren't intrusive. There are of course some weaker stories, which in my opinion tend to be the ones with SF-elements, particularly Tarzan's two close encounters with extraterrestrials. 

It also helps that Tarzan uses most of the animal-names in the ERB glossary without stopping to explain any of them, and in place of the overly wacky chimp from the movies, Tarzan's main companion also hails from the books, the semi-cowardly monkey N'Kima. There's no Jane in the first season, nor any other romantic dalliances for Tarzan, but there are a number of female support-characters who are generally portrayed as possessing strong agency, maybe more than a lot of Burroughs heroines.

JUNGLE HELL (1955)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

I won't say that I burned with desire to see JUNGLE HELL. From everything I read, it was just a cheapjack "potted-plant jungle" flick from the mid-1950s, set in India but with a few moments of a flying saucer edited in to grab a potential SF-audience. But I kept  a weather-eye out for a free showing of the movie on streaming or on Youtube. Imagine my completist's outrage when I viewed a copy on Youtube, and it left out the lousy flying saucer!

Nevertheless, I'm counting HELL as a marvelous film even if I didn't see the marvelous content, because there are numerous online testimonies from others who saw the full inanity, such as this review of a DVD pairing of this film and an unrelated Sabu flick. Apparently HELL started out as a pilot for a "Sabu the Jungle Boy" series (which would have been in production during the last years of the "Bomba the Jungle Boy" film series), but no producers bit. I  don't know if credited director Norman Cerf was involved with the original project, but I find it interesting that this was his only directorial credit, and that almost everything else he did was related to editing. The first movie-version of the TV-footage definitely called for tons and tons of editing, for Cerf loaded at least twenty minutes of stock footage of various scenes from India, particularly of elephants doing stuff (including one lady elephant discreetly giving birth). Later, other hands apparently took Cerf's work, shortened it, and edited in the flying saucer stuff, with some voice-overs to explain what effect the saucer-people were having on the jungle, given that no aliens meet any of the characters, or even animals.

Far odder than the inserts is the fact that if you strip away the inserts and the stock footage, the "story" that was allegedly a TV pilot is an absolute mess. In both films and TV shows of the fifties, jungle-tales followed a very simple template, in which the heroes and villains are quickly established, as are the stakes over which the opponents are fighting. Impoverished though almost all the JUNGLE JIM movies and TV shows may be, at least they make sense as they trundle along from Plot Point A to Plot Points B and C. Maybe the incoherence proves that Cerf, credited also as the writer, WAS involved in the original project.

The basic conflict, such as it is, is the opposition between the superstitious ignorance of primitive Indian natives and the enlightened knowledge of White Bwanas, which was a common trope in many other jungle-genre works. Interposed between the two worlds is diaper-clad Sabu the Jungle Boy, who lives with his primitive people (though we never see a village as such) but standing foursquare with the Bwanas. The sole representative of Good White culture is Doctor Morrison (David Bruce of MAD GHOUL fame), though he's later joined by lady doctor Pamela (K.T. Stevens from MISSILE TO THE MOON). 

The exposure of a local kid to radioactive uranium sets up the conflict. Tribal wise man Shan-Kar (essentially an Indian version of an African witch doctor) merely fakes trying to cure the boy with mystic jargon (which I think is at least real Hindi). Sabu, a sort of local culture-hero, takes the boy to Morrison, who immediately cures the child of radiation poisoning, no muss, no fuss. But Morrison has a guest, a Russian named Trosk (for "Trotsky," no doubt). Unlike most Communist provocateurs in fifties flicks, Trosk is totally without any thug-backup, but somehow he wants to get his hands on the uranium and ship it back to his people. One would think that Trosk would eventually contend with either Sabu or his White Friends, but he never does. He lurks around, suggests an alliance between him and nasty know-nothing Shan-Kar, but nothing comes of that. Eventually, when Trosk is out in the jungle trying to steal the uranium, he's attacked by stock footage of a tiger (and a stuffed tiger) and he dies.

Actually, the only combative scenes in HELL take place between Sabu and fellow native youth, Kumar (Robert Cabal, later "Hey Soos" from RAWHIDE, who was seven years older than thirty-something Sabu). An odd bit of dialogue suggests that Sabu's title of "Jungle Boy" is some honorary title that isn't exclusive to him, since the hero tells Kumar something like, "When you're Jungle Boy, you can make the decisions!" At no time does the shaky script suggest that Sabu lives apart from other humans as Bomba did. There's one scene in which he summons an elephant, but there's no suggestion of any communion with animals. It would be easy to believe that Sabu the fictional character was simply a mahout, an elephant-handler, as indeed Sabu the actor had been-- though that wouldn't explain the elevated title.

The sloppy script doesn't really even bring home the lecture on the importance of converting ignorant natives to Western ways, and a romantic subplot between Morrison and Pamela may also be the worst romance ever seen in a jungle flick. Sabu is the movie's only asset, but thanks to the tons of stock footage, even the actor's fans will find this HELL particularly torturous.

On a side note I also watched the feature that joined HELL on the DVD, a 1951 production from Lippert Pictures called SAVAGE DRUMS. This item had no metaphenomenal content, aside from showing how the Asian "fire-walking" trick might be done. But this formula film, directed by a fellow who also helmed a handful of JUNGLE JIM entries, at least had the sort of A-B-C storytelling of which Norman Cerf could only dream.

TARZAN (1999)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

I don't know why I was in any way surprised, back in 1999, at the near-total liberties Disney Studios took with both the Edgar Rice Burroughs origin-tale of Tarzan and the character's cinematic heritage. Some alterations of traditional stories by Disney had taken on their own classic status-- after all, did any American viewers really pine to see "Snow White" adapted from the Grimms?-- but I'd seen the silly-ass distortion of Lewis Carroll in the 1951 ALICE IN WONDERLAND. 

Still, given that the previous HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME didn't entirely skirt the content of Victor Hugo's novel, it was a little daunting to see so many changes. No mutiny on the ship that strands little Lord Greystoke's parents in Africa; just a fire at sea, wherein the parents and their already-born infant escape (with no mention of what happened to the ship's crew). The parents perish conveniently off camera, without any involvement by the African ape-tribes. The bereft female ape Kala still adopts the human infant, but her mate Kerchak isn't a rage-filled brute bent on destroying Tarzan, but a sulky "heavy father" who thinks the human child's weakness endangers his tribe. The apes (specified to be gorillas here) are a fun bunch of goofballs, like a nicer version of the capricious monkey of Disney's JUNGLE BOOK, and Tarzan's best ape-bud is-- horrors!-- a GIRL-ape, one Terk, voiced by Rosie O'Donnell. The ape-boy's other best friend is a juvenile version of Tantor the Elephant.

Aside from the disapproving gaze of Kerchak, and the occasional leopard attack, Tarzan's life in the jungle is pretty good in Disney's carnivalesque jungle (no Black natives in sight, and somehow Tarzan can surf atop tree-branches without picking up a single splinter). But along come a trio of explorers looking for gorillas, and these are the first time Tarzan meets his own kind. 

All three support-characters are loosely derived from Burroughs' parallel characters. Archimedes Porter, the father of Jane, is most like the book-character, because in both media he's a silly-ass, absent-minded professor type. Jane in the book is just a level-headed young woman who becomes the object of Tarzan's ardor. But Disney, concerned with stoking the joke-machine at every opportunity, makes their Jane almost as daffy as her old man. Finally, in the novel Clayton is Tarzan's cousin and competition both for both the title of Lord Greystoke and for Jane's hand in marriage. Here Clayton is just a routine "bad white hunter," who guides the two academically-minded Brits to the gorilla-grounds but plans to betray them and capture all the apes for zoo-sales.

The constant barrage of slapstick jokes, even in the midst of danger, ensures that the romance of Tarzan and Jane lacks even the mild eros of classic Disney-flicks like SLEEPING BEAUTY and the aforementioned SNOW WHITE. This Tarzan is never capable of anything like passion, and neither is Jane. Their unison is never as important as Tarzan's main conflict, that of having to choose between his ape-family and the world of humanity. (I don't think Original Tarzan's aristocratic heritage is even raised.) This trope is given enough emotional resonance that I can rate the movie's mythicity as "fair," even though the script nullifies every other aspect of the Tarzan myth.

Credit where due, TARZAN's fantasy-jungle looks great, much better than the landscapes of LION KING. There aren't a lot of "beast-slayings" in the film's ninety minutes, but when creatures like leopards or baboons attack, they do so with uncompromising speed and ferocity. The jokes are repetitive, but some of them land reasonably well. I'm mildly surprised that any of the music won an Academy Award, because I found all of it mediocre.

Though most of the phenomena depicted are uncanny, like Tarzan's slow accretion of his godlike strength and skill, the animals are marvelous in nature, given that they display human intelligence even though they don't walk on two legs. The film was popular enough to spawn too DTV sequels and a TV show, but I imagine these don't even have the limited appeal of seeing how much the Disney brand distorted the myth of the immortal ape-man.

THE JUNGLE PRINCESS (1936)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

There's not much doubt that THE JUNGLE PRINCESS was an attempt to emulate the success of 1932's TARZAN THE APE MAN, since one of the credited writers, Cyril Hume, had worked on two of the MGM Tarzans before contributing to PRINCESS. As an interesting sidebar, director William Thiele went on to helm two MGM ape-man adventures after this film. All that said, PRINCESS is intended to be a romantic drama first and foremost.

Jungle-girl Ulah (Dorothy Lamour in her feature film debut, which "typed" her as a sarong-girl) isn't precisely raised by animals in her rather vague origin. When she's a small girl she's apparently living in the Malaysian jungle with her father, and the father is killed by a tiger (presumably a female) even as the tiger is shot to death. Ulah then just lives in the jungle for the next fifteen or so years alongside the tiger's cub, who ends up looking pretty healthy for a fifteen-year-old tiger. Ulah apparently has some rapport with the local monkey population, who hang out with her despite her tiger companion, though she's never said to wield any literal power over animals.

A group of white hunters come looking for zoo animals, and their party includes Chris Powell (Ray Milland) and his fiancee Ava (Molly Lamont). They're warned by natives of a legend of a "laughing tiger," but this is a superstition that's grown from the locals having heard Ulah's girlish laugh when her tiger friend was roaming about.

Chris ventures into the jungle, where he's attacked by Ulah's tiger, but Ulah appears and orders the tiger to leave him. Ulah takes Chris to her cave to care for him, and almost immediately falls for him. She can only speak what Chris calls "baby-talk Malay," but this common ground gives the hunter the chance to teach Ulah some English. Though it's unlikely that Ulah knows what human sex entails, her body language suggests an intense desire for propinquity at the very least.

Once Chris returns to his camp with Ulah in tow, everyone's glad to see him, but Ava's not the least glad to see Ulah. Ava conceals her hostility, but when Chris invites Ulah to eat with the group at a European-style dinner table, Ava sees an opportunity to make Ulah look bad. She tries to take advantage of the sarong-clad beauty's ignorance by dressing her in foolish clothes. But in a moment that probably gratified female viewers in 1936, Ulah senses what's going on, dumps the bad clothes and cobbles together an impressive outfit that makes Chris appreciate her even more. To his credit, he realizes he's fallen out of love with Ava and tries to be honest with her, though she doesn't want to hear it. 

The natives, still fired by superstition, cage Ulah's tiger and plan to kill it, believing it a demon. They nurture the same plans for Ulah, and when the whites get in the Malaysians' way they're scheduled for sacrifice too. But somehow Ulah's monkey friends (one of which is prominently an African chimp) find out about her peril and come to her rescue, swarming into the Malaysian village and causing havoc. Thanks to the distraction the white hunters are able to escape with Ulah, and later she and Chris are implicitly united, with Ava being a belated good sport about it.

Dorothy Lamour, a former New Orleans beauty queen, enhances her formidable looks with a light, enticing personality. The sarong-look is almost certainly derived from stories about South Sea Island vahines, and though it's hard to tell from the black and white print, it looks to me like the makeup people might have darkened Lamour's skin for the role. In theory Ulah might be at least partly Malaysian, since nothing is said about her mother, and Ulah patently learned her pidgin-Malay from someone. But the broad implication is that Ulah is white, though it's also hard to judge even the father's ethnicity from his brief appearance. As with Tarzan, Ulah is a figure that potentially allowed audiences to flirt with breaking racial codes, in that the character is technically white but suggests the possibility of dallying with someone from the other side of the ethnic tracks.

In addition to the animals' rapport with the sarong-girl, the legend that grows up about "the laughing tiger" fits my category of the phantasmal figuration, even though in this case it arises from a social misapprehension.

SHEENA, QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE (1956=57)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

TUBI is now showing sixteen of the original run of 26 TV episodes, shot cheaply in Mexico and featuring the statuesque Irish McCalla in the role of Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. For all that I know, these episodes may be the only ones extant, given that the series was never circulated in many markets, so I may as well review what survives. It's not very likely any of the unavailable episodes deviate from the basic mediocrity of the available ones.

Nevertheless, SHEENA isn't without some significance. By 1956 Hollywood was no longer making either adaptations of comic-book heroes or B-films with continuing characters, except for some of the Tarzan movies. Television had caused those markets to dry up, but the small screen did release a handful of low-budget series that functioned as had the old B-films, only with a much shorter run-time. And a tiny number of these were based in properties from comic books or strips. Superman is the only such series that's well remembered today, but there were also adaptations of Dick Tracy, Jungle Jim, and Sheena. 

Sheena is the first major female continuing character in comic books, getting published for nearly twenty years before her company closed its doors. Both jungle men and jungle girls in comic books at best offered only junky pulp thrills. SHEENA the comic was also junk, but I've found a little more creativity in at least some of the stories, which is more than I can say of most other jungle-serials. And Sheena the heroine is one of the first tough heroines of the medium, knifing crocodiles and outwrestling grown men with the best of the jungle boys.

I can't claim that any of the sixteen episodes are anything but extremely simple adventure-fare, and they don't even offer many fight-thrills. Once in a while, Sheena swings from a tree and kicks some malefactor, and in one episode she knife-kills a croc, possibly her only defeat of a jungle-beast. (Most of them appear in the show courtesy of stock footage.) Even her male confidante, jungle guide Bob Rayburn (Christian Drake) barely does anything more than pot-shot the occasional wild beast. Apparently the budget was too limited to even make possible the limited fight-scenes of TV westerns like LONE RANGER and CISCO KID. The only time any of Sheena's enemies provide a halfway interesting threat is in "The Rival Queen," in which a hypnotist mind-controls a white woman into stirring up trouble with the natives.

In the comics, Sheena has little interest in the world outside the jungle, but she speaks full sentences and is often good at planning strategy against evildoers. In contrast, the show's producers chose to have her talk baby-talk as in the early Tarzan films. She doesn't really command any animals, but in place of a Tarzan-yell, she would occasionally blow a horn at the opening of each episode, as if to announce her sovereignty over all she surveys.

Irish McCalla, while no great actress, gives her limited lines a fit level of brio, and at least she's always treated as a formidable presence, The Black African tribes aren't given any deeper characterization than anyone else, but I didn't think they were overly offensive either. They're certainly not shown as being over-awed by Sheena's Miss Clairol blonde locks, and in general she and Bob always argue for tolerance of tribal customs. All that said, the show's main significance lies in being the first adaptation of a prominent female comics-hero, which is more than other ephemera of the period can claim. Also, it's the only way anyone can ever see a live-action Sheena in her classic leopard-skin attire, since that outfit has been effectively banned in later adaptations, probably to keep from triggering animal rights activists.

TARZAN IN MANHATTAN (1989)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

This TV-movie may be the only time that a version of Edgar Rice Burroughs' ape-man, rather than some unreasonable facsimile, was used for purposes of light romantic comedy. Judging MANHATTAN as a comedy allows me to forgive the film's shortcomings in the thrills department. 

The hero's origins are partly rewritten to give him slightly greater cognizance of the world outside his jungle upbringing. This time Tarzan (Joe Lara) was a very young boy when a plane carrying him and his parents crashed in the African jungle, resulting in the deaths of his parents (still English lords) and his adoption by an ape named Kala. There's just one line in the whole film where it matters that Tarzan has some childhood memories, and since it's not a very important line, I suspect the film's makers wanted to play down the sense of Tarzan as a pure product of savage life.

Nothing else from the origins of Book-Tarzan apply to the film, except that Kala is still alive as the movie opens. In the novel, Kala is slain by a tribesman hunting for food, which sets up Tarzan's antipathy with said tribe. Here, however, a group of hunters from America kill Kala and abduct Tarzan's chimp friend Cheetah (essentially identical to all the other chimp-buddies of Movie-Tarzan). Tarzan finds clues that indicate the hunters went back to some part of New York, and he makes it his business to rescue his chimp-friend and avenge his ape-mother.

Despite putting his best semi-civilized foot forward, the ape man gets detained upon entering the U.S, for reasons the script doesn't bother to clarify. He breaks out of jail (this Tarzan shows off his supernormal strength more than most do) and wanders through Manhattan in his loinclothed getup. By chance he engages a cab being driven by feisty Brooklyn girl Jane Porter (Kim Crosby), and a friendship of mismatched backgrounds is born. 

As was the case for the Jane in the first Weissmuller film, this heroine's budding romance with Tarzan is counterpointed by her struggles to separate herself from her father's protective aegis. MANHATTAN's father (Tony Curtis) is even given the first name "Archimedes" like the fussy professor of the book, though in this incarnation Jane's dad is a hard-boiled ex-cop with the unfortunate habit of kicking down the apartment door of his grown daughter when he thinks she may be in over her head. He also wants her to join him working as a private eye, but Jane would rather find her own identity, though arguably she just transfers her father-imago to the mysterious half-naked guy from the jungle.

MANHATTAN never gets tired of the "fish out of water" schtick, and to the film's credit a few of the jokes are funny, and the script doesn't ever totally forget Tarzan's main reason for his New York sojourn. The alliance of ape-man, cab driver and New York cop does ferret out an organization doing brain-experiments on captive jungle animals, headed by a nasty pseudo-Nietzchean plotter (Jan-Michael Vincent, in one of his few meaty post-AIRWOLF roles). The tone gets more serious when Archimedes is injured, and Jane wants to seek her own vengeance, though this Brooklyn broad never displays any real toughness. Tarzan still saves the day, and he even displays a new skill, being able to subtly communicate with trained dogs the way other versions of the hero could commune with elephants. In an atypical ending for a Tarzan movie, not only does Jane resign herself to working with her dad at his agency, they both talk Tarzan into sticking around for more New York adventures. This conclusion invites the suspicion that MANHATTAN might have been conceived as a potential pilot for a TV show, though nothing materialized.

Tony Curtis hams things up, but almost all of his movie-roles were hammed-up anyway. Crosby, much more of a theater-thespian than a performer in movies and TV, does her level best with the thinly written Jane character, but I'm afraid no one's going to nominate her as one of the great Janes, even for the small screen. Oddly, though neither of the telefilm's two writers had ever before written anything remotely fantasy-oriented for film or TV, William Gough went on to work on a handful of episodes for the 1991-92 TARZAN series starring Wolf Larson (which series was sometimes dubbed "Tree-Hugger Tarzan").

Though Joe Lara won't be remembered as a great Tarzan, he does consistently imbue the hero with a staunch dignity and an occasional sense of humor. Even though funny things happen around his Tarzan, his ape-man is never the butt of the jokes, and he carries out the few action-scenes with aplomb. This role almost certainly led to his being cast as a very different ape-man in the single season of the syndicated series TARZAN: THE EPIC ADVENTURES. Though EPIC had its moments of pure cheese, I appreciated its attempt to do a television Tarzan who kept getting pulled into all sorts of wild pulp-adventures, like his prose forbear.

DAUGHTER OF THE JUNGLE (1949)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

I saw DAUGHTER OF THE JUNGLE so long ago I remembered nothing about it. From the few online reviews, I assumed it was just a one-off "jungle queen" story that would go through the motions of the usual jungle-adventure story. Yet strangely, the character of Ticoora (Lois Hall) has more in common with the jungle-melodramas of Dorothy Lamour than with the adventure-stories of Bomba and Jungle Jim. 

Ticoora was a small girl when she, her rich father and the pilot of their plane all crashed in some obscure part of Africa. The three white people were unable to make the difficult trek out of the wilderness-- I think because there are hostile tribes all around-- so for something like the next ten years Ticoora grows up with only vague recollections of civilization. 

Ticoora is sort of an anti-Sheena. In the origin of Sheena, the heroine's father dies and the young girl is raised by a native tribe, and thus she becomes a savage fighter. But though Ticoora doesn't receive training from natives, much less from animal adoptive parents, she's often seen swinging around on vines like it's second nature. She and her father eke out their living by treating natives with superior white medicine, but this earns them enmity from the local witch doctor (Frank Lackteen).

Then another plane crashes, and Ticoora meets her first new white men in ten years: Two are cops who have custody of the other two plane-passengers, both of whom are criminals being transported to prison. The four men want to get back to civilization, and I think they're willing to risk the dangerous trek because they have handguns. Ticoora goes with them-- but the meaner of the two crooks, Dalton (Sheldon Leonard), has plans to make sure he also escapes imprisonment.

There's very little action in DAUGHTER, and I rate it a subcombative adventure because there aren't any significant fights involved as the heroes try to escape both hostile natives and fierce animals. Ticoora wears an outfit that allegedly was recycled from the 1941 serial JUNGLE GIRL, presumably so that the filmmakers could re-use scenes from that chapterplay. But the heroine of JUNGLE GIRL could fight a little bit, while the only real action DAUGHTER swipes from the serial is a hard-to-see scene with Ticoora slaying a crocodile in a river. Overall she shows no true toughness, screaming when accosted by a gorilla and failing to hit back when Dalton slaps her, requiring one of the cop-characters to come to Ticoora's defense. The only significant metaphenomenality in the flick follows the trope "exotic lands and customs," if only because the witch doctor keeps ranting about using "voodoo" on the outsiders.

DAUGHTER was listed in the Medved Brothers' FIFTY WORST FILMS OF ALL TIME, but it's too dull to deserve that distinction. Its only assets are the good looks of Hall and the gangster-schtick of Leonard. George Blair also directed the oddball fantasy-flick SABU AND THE MAGIC RING and some ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN episodes, but the main distinction of his career was helming the 1960 horror-film THE HYPNOTIC EYE, which I remember fondly though I've not yet found the chance to review it.

TARZAN OF THE APES (1918)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

The very first Tarzan film, starring Elmo Lincoln as the ape man, adapted roughly the first half of Burroughs' book, while a second film, THE ROMANCE OF TARZAN, adapted the other half, or at least something approximating that narrative. ROMANCE so far remains a lost film, but fortunately the first TARZAN stands on its own mythic appeal, despite a few loose ends that presumably would have been clarified by the sequel.

As in the novel, Lord Greystoke and his pregnant wife Lady Greystoke are traveling to Africa when mutineers take over the ship. A well-meaning crewman named Binns (George B. French) persuades the other sailors to strand the English lord and lady on a desolate stretch of the African coast. Lord Greystoke manages to deliver his son but both of the newborn's parents are killed by the hostile apes of the region. Kala, a female ape who has lost her own child, succors the infant aristocrat and raises him as one of her own. Eventually, despite being smaller and weaker than most of his "brethren," the man-child Tarzan eventually becomes "lord" of the other apes and of this corner of the jungle, where he not infrequently comes into conflict with the local Black natives.

Unlike many adaptations of the novel, APES does spend a fair amount of time with Tarzan in childhood, though only at the age of ten, where he's played by one Gordon Griffith. Ten-year-old Tarzan stumbles across the cabin built by his late father and becomes fascinated with the human artifacts. However, in contrast to Burroughs' story, the young ape-man does not teach himself to read the books in the cabin by an unlikely process of deduction.

Instead, Young Tarzan gets introduced to human culture by Binns, the man who saved Tarzan's parents and thus made Tarzan's survival possible. Following the mutiny, Binns gets caught by Arab slavers, and only escapes his captors at the time Tarzan turns ten. The altruistic sailor seeks out the coastline where the castaways were abandoned, and upon meeting the boy, he pieces together what must have happened. Binns stays in Tarzan's company long enough to teach the ape-boy language. Then he leaves, planning to seek out Young Greystoke's family in England while the boy remains with the apes.

I forget what keeps Binns busy for roughly the next ten years, but by the time he does reach England, the boy has grown into a brawny male Tarzan (Elmo Lincoln). Though Binns is never seen again, he apparently convinces the heir to the peerage, William Clayton, to investigate the claim that the true Lord Greystoke still lives. Along with William comes the young American woman he's been courting, Jane Porter (Enid Markey), as well as Jane's father and her maid. In the book, Jane's party comes to Africa in total ignorance of Tarzan's existence.

During the interim Tarzan's mother Kala has been slain by one of the natives, causing even more strife between Tarzan and the Blacks. Tarzan spies Jane from afar and falls in love, though he doesn't stalk her quite as much as he did in the book.

In Burroughs, one of the great apes, not able to get busy with any female apes, abducts Jane from her camp, and she's rescued by Tarzan, after which the primeval man courts the civilized woman. The movie keeps the skeleton of this arrangement, but, perhaps wisely, chose to have a lustful native carry Jane away for a fate worse than death. I'm sure some viewers will assume that the filmmakers meant to equate Black men and apes. I just think it was easier for them to use a Black guy than a man in an ape costume.

The fight between the two big guys, White and Black, is the film's highlight, even though the finish is inadequately filmed and cutaways to Enid Markey screaming spoil the fight's continuity. Tarzan wins, of course, and Enid/Jane becomes a little less histrionic for the romance portion of the story. The plighting of their troth serves as the end of the film, though presumably the sequel would have found new complications to keep them apart, as the books did.

Silent-film director Scott Sidney handles things in an efficient if pedestrian manner. He also directed Lincoln in a 15-chapter serial, THE ADVENTURES OF TARZAN, of which ten chapters survive. Lincoln suggests a stolid nobility but does not project as much charm in the role as his successor Frank Merrill did in TARZAN THE TIGER, to say nothing of being able to touch the hem of Weismuller's leotard. But it's pleasing that the first TARZAN does a better than average job of telling the hero's unique origin story.

TARZAN THE APE MAN (1981)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

When I finished watching John Derek's TARZAN THE APE MAN in the theater back in 1981, I would have fully agreed with the reigning current opinion that it was one of the worst films ever made. Not only did it fail to deliver on the larger-than-life adventure I expected of a Tarzan film, it was ponderous and pretentious, and seemingly more interested in Jane (Bo Derek) than in the titular Ape Man (Miles O'Keeffe in his breakout role). Back in 1981 I doubt that I knew that the director was the fifty-something husband of his twenty-something star, whom he'd married when she was 19. I'm sure I had heard that TARZAN was the first major role undertaken by Bo since her breakout success in the 1979 comedy "10," and that the filmmakers were clearly trying to capitalize on Bo's newfound prominence as a sex symbol.

I also might not have seen in 1981 the movie on which this film was based: the granddaddy of the Tarzan sound films, the 1932 TARZAN THE APE MAN, which cemented Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O'Sullivan as Tarzan and Jane as far as most moviegoers were concerned. In this 2013 review, though, I downgraded the John Derek film thusly:

Since the 1981 TARZAN film made so much of Oedipal currents in the relationship between Jane and her father, it should be noted that yes, [in the 1932 film] Jane does pull off her dress in her father's presence, and joke about how he shouldn't mind since he used to bathe her.  But I don't believe the writers intended this as part of some sexual complex.  The real context would seem to be that Jane, resenting her separation, is teasing him a little with her maturation in order to fluster him and thus have a little power over him.  Old Parker never seems other than paternal toward Jane, though it must be admitted that his death at the film's end does sever Jane's ties with civilization and make it easier for Tarzan to possess his new mate.

What was a minor aspect of the 1932 movie-- a modern young woman's involved relationship to her absentee father, which parallels nothing in the Burroughs book-- becomes ratcheted up to become the main theme of Derek's TARZAN. To be sure, in both films, the father of Jane perishes at the climax, which could imply the story's need to dispose of him to clear the wild man's access to his beloved. But it seems likely that Derek, who wrote other films with Bo, instructed the scriptwriters to build up the Oedipal currents in the triangle between Tarzan, Jane Parker, and James Parker.

Neither film is all that clear as to why Englishman James Parker has remained in Africa for close to twenty years, allowing his daughter to grow from childhood to womanhood in his absence. However, the 1981 film offers a rough reason in that its version of James, as essayed by Richard Harris, is a narcissist obsessed with finding glory through big game hunting, not looking for ivory and "the elephant's graveyard" as seen in the 1932 movie. Harris' James is also a good deal less monastic, for when Jane makes her unannounced trek to her dad's outpost, James has some Kurtz-like affair with a very young Black native woman, seemingly no older than Jane is. 

Jane has come to Africa because her mother is dead, leaving Jane a substantial fortune, and she wants to become acquainted with the father who neglected her for so long. Her attitude toward James is more contentious. Not only does Jane not approve of James shacking up with a very young woman (who isn't Jane?), she doesn't doff her clothes in James' presence, but claims that she's so rich she could buy and sell him. This of course makes the big game hunter rail in florid Shakespearean fashion, but it also makes him desire to prove his worth to his daughter-- who, as one might expect, favors her mother.

Seemingly out of nowhere, James announces his intention to hunt down a mysterious "White Ape" dwelling on a remote escarpment. He doesn't intend for Jane to go along, but she's as bullheaded as he is, and so she joins the expedition. There's a small irony here, for in a sense James creates his own rival by taking his daughter into the ape man's territory.

The script is silent as to how the inarticulate "white ape" happens to live in the jungle, communing with real apes and elephants. However, when the expedition trespasses on his terrain, he kidnaps Jane, which loosely parallels an event in the 1932 movie. The 1981 James Parker, though, fumes and rages like a jilted lover, swearing to mount and stuff the white ape's body.

Though Jane is initially terrified of the vine-swinging man-ape, she eventually becomes fascinated with his male beauty (probably helped by the fact that he doesn't talk). Jane gets wet several times, making it possible for the viewer to enjoy the wet-shirt effect, and she has a few scenes showing off her bared cleavage as well. It's not entirely certain that Tarzan understands that she's the opposite sex or what he might want to do about it, though, and this gives Jane some time to warm to him. She persuades Tarzan to take her back to her father, but James shoots at the ape man, wounding him. Jane makes her choice and helps Tarzan back to a refuge where she can clean his wound and care for him, bonding them even more.

However, the escarpment is also home to a tribe of weird Africans who like to paint themselves diverse colors, like white and green. The natives capture both James and Jane-- I frankly forget what happens to the other members of the party-- and the natives prepare Jane for her wedding to their chief, a big brute called "The Ivory King." The natives' ritual for the impending bride is to coat her with white paint, a foretaste of her coming degradation. This ritual strongly reinforces the idea that Derek had input in the script, for the scene resembles one in 1978's MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD. The victim of the painting-ritual in that film? Derek's ex-wife Ursula Andress, to whom he was married from 1957 to 1966.

While Jane is being prepared for her nuptials, James keeps shouting assurances about how she can distance herself from her impending rape by imagining herself to be the goddess Aphrodite. Neither this, nor James's self-flattering casting of himself as Zeus, make any difference to the savages, and the Ivory King spears James to shut him up.

Tarzan arrives with a troop of elephants and engages the chief in single combat while the other natives look on, presumably cowed by the elephants. The fight between Tarzan and the chief isn't all that great, but after so many long soft-core romance sequences, at least it was Tarzan doing a Tarzan type of thing. The film ends with Jane choosing to remain with her jungle lover, and, as in the 1932 flick, there's no mention of marriage.

The film's best asset is its gorgeous location photography, executed partly in Sri Lanka. Derek, who was also cinematographer, showed far more skill in shooting nature than he did in pacing the romance of Tarzan and Jane. O'Keeffe looks imposing but he's not given anything interesting to do compared to the business given Weismuller in 1932. Harris is allowed to flamboyantly overact at fever pitch, and that may have some appeal in an ironic sense. Bo Derek would later become a decent though not stellar actress, particularly in television roles, but at this point in her career her talents were pretty raw. Nevertheless, her performance includes some good moments, apart from her photogenic qualities.

Both versions of TARZAN THE APE MAN position the hero in terms of his erotic and protective appeal to the female lead. The 1981 film-- initially given the risible working title "Me, Jane"-- comes close to suggesting that the young woman has conjured up Tarzan as a solution to her Oedipal conflicts. This might be the reason the white ape's life in the jungle is barely elaborated. Thus Derek's film doesn't focus purely on Tarzan, as do all the other books and movies I've encountered. The 1981 movie is structured more like a standard romance-film, in that both lead male and lead female are equally important to the narrative.

GUNGALA VIRGIN OF THE JUNGLE (1967), GUNGALA THE BLACK PANTHER GIRL (1968)

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PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

I hadn't intended to watch two jungle-girl films this morning, but I watched the second of the two first because I got the impression that there was only one film starring jungle-heroine "Gungala," given two different titles. Unfortunately, though there was a subbed version for the second film available to me, the first one, GUNGALA-- VIRGIN OF THE JUNGLE, was only in untranslated Italian.

I don't think I missed much, though. It starts off with two thieves in Africa, attempting to steal a diamond from the fetish of a neighboring tribe. The two have a falling out and the skinny guy shoots the fat guy. Much later, three Europeans mount an expedition into that area of Africa. One is a heavyset fellow, Wolff, who may be the same guy who was shot, while the second is a guide named Chandler and the third is a hot young blonde woman, Fleur (Linda Veras). Two online reviews claimed that the trio were looking for uranium but I didn't see any of them doing scientific things. (And how many lady scientists go by a name like "Fleur?")

After the threesome listen to local legends about a mysterious female spirit named Gungala (Kitty Swan), they bungle around in the jungle for a while, and then run into the jungle virgin. Wolff promptly shoots at her, and she runs away with a superficial wound. Natives then capture all three Europeans, tie them to stakes, talk to them for a while, and then-- just let them go. The hunters go back to hunting whatever they're looking for, while Gungala watches them from hiding. She sees Fleur exchange a little spit with Chandler, and Gungala's curiosity is clearly aroused, among other things. After a fair number of talking-head scenes, Gungala comes into the group's camp, clearly hoping to have sex with Chandler. Wolff shoots her once again, and this time, it's clear that what he wants is a big diamond on her necklace, which I must assume is the same as the one from the first part of the film. I doubt the film even explained how she obtained it. Wolff, for his part, proves himself a bad shot once again. Gungala, again just superficially wounded, revives and calls up a band of leopards and lionesses to rip Wollf to pieces (offscreen). Then she reclaims the necklace and runs off. As Wolff dies he relates to Chandler and Fleur the origin of Gungala: that her father's plane crashes in Africa with her on board, and that though the father died the little girl grew to womanhood among the animals. There may be some other points of interest in his revelations, but it's such a dull film I don't know why anyone would care.

VIRGIN's director/co-writer Romano Ferrara had only a very short cinematic career, and aside from the Gungala series I know him best for the above-average Eurospy flick SPY IN YOUR EYE.

In contrast to almost all of other Euro-jungle films of this period, VIRGIN's sequel GUNGALA THE BLACK PANTHER GIRL-- directed by Ruggero Deodato and only co-written by Ferrara-- boasts an opening in which we see a modern African city with people living modern lives. A narrator tells us that the main action of the film will be in an "Africa of our dreams," which is a nice touch.

The film finds an adequate excuse to re-unite the jungle waif with explorer Chandler (though the character is played by a different actor this time). Viewers learn Gungala is a potential heiress, so her late  father's company wants to find her, in order to settle the division of her father's estate.The company hires Chandler to escort a small expedition into the area where the Black Panther Girl holds sway over a still-savage tribe, the Bakendas.  In addition to Chandler, the expedition includes Gungala's cousin Julie (Micaela Pignatelli) and another jungle guide, one Morton, with whom Julie had an earlier affair. Thus, for once a European expedition doesn't plan to despoil the tribes of their resources. Gungala herself wears a huge diamond necklace, which makes a taboo presence to the Bakendas. At one point, Julie covets the rock, but the gem is not the primary motive for the adventure

This time a devious, unnamed Arab fills in for greedy Europeans. The guy's got some grand scheme for a "united Africa," though he may only be using this as an excuse to filch the huge diamond at the first opportunity. He's seen briefly at the opening but mostly fades out for the first half of the film. 

On the way to the country of the Bakenda tribe, Julie comes on to Chandler, but doesn't completely cut off Morton from her affections, and she shows some jealousy of the men's pursuit of the jungle girl even before she's met her wild cousin. Then the Bakendas attack, slaughtering the bearers and stealing most of the expedition's supplies. The surviving whites make camp, but this doesn't stop Chandler from venturing alone into the jungle. This time when he meets Gungala, the two of them enjoy a mild romantic tryst, despite the fact that Gungala can only communicate in hisses, growls and whoops, like the animals in whose midst she was raised.

When Chandler gets back to camp, Julie comes up with the bright idea of impersonating Gungala to get clear of the natives. She dresses up like the panther girl, but she doesn't have the identifying diamond. Conveniently, Gungala gets caught in a native-made spring-trap, giving Julie the chance to swipe the big diamond. Julie runs off, hoping to deceive the natives into giving them supplies. Morton, however, won't leave the panther girl to the natives, who may no longer esteem her once she's lost the diamond. He cuts her free and Gungala runs away. However, when Morton gets caught by the hostile natives, she frees him with the help of her animal friends. 

Gungala takes Morton to her jungle home and, after she introduces him to some of her animal friends, she canoodles a little with Morton. Usually if Italian jungle-moves have a good girl and a bad girl, the good girl is true to her first love while the bad girl will do anybody. I don't know if the writer intended it, but the effect is as if he were saying that Gungala and her cousin Julie inherited the same horny genes. Anyway, the jungle girl and the civilized man, despite sharing no common language, cavort on the African veldt, and Morton, who doesn't intend to capture Gungala as his bosses ordered, gets her to pose for photographs. Though the panther girl can have no idea what Morton's doing, she responds to his attention by striking poses anyway.

Then Morton and Gungala find out that the Bakendas have captured both Chandler and Julie, and that the Arab has talked the tribesmen into sacrificing Julie, specifically because they think she's the hitherto taboo Gungala. Morton asks the panther girl to intercede and she breaks up the sacrificial ritual by riding into the village on the back of an elephant. The Arab escapes with Gungala's diamond, but just as his tribal accomplice says that he's realized the Arab means no good for Black Africans, the Arab steps into quicksand. Morton arrives too late to save the malefactor, but does recover the diamond. He arrives back at camp, where Chandler has taken Julie, apparently immobilized by pre-sacrificial drugs. Julie comes out of her trance just as Chandler and Morton get into a fight about who's going to return the diamond to Gungala. The natives attack again, but this time Gungala repulses the Bakendas with an army made up of elephants, leopards and chimps. Morton, Chandler and Julie all escape in a boat, but Gungala has eyes only for Morton as the film ends with her romantically pining on the river-shore.

The original Gungala film was both directed and co-written by Ferrara, but even though I couldn't follow the dialogue I found its mise-en-scene pretty dull. Yet PANTHER, directed by Deodato and only co-scripted by Ferrara, was much more entertaining, and I think that even without dialogue I'd have still responded positively to all the sheer number of melodramatic incidents, which may be the result of plot-tinkering by Deodato. None of the actors distinguish themselves in this derivative escapism, with the exception of Kitty Swan. She's as dull as the others in VIRGIN, but in PANTHER her performance is appealing, putting across the innocence of the Biblical Eve, communing with the simple beasts of her realm, and yet also showing, when necessary, the dynamism of a jungle queen. No, Gungala doesn't slug full-grown men as does comic-book Sheena. But she has a couple of scenes where she swings on a vine so as to kick bad natives in the face, and she does have an unquestioned rapport with four or five species of jungle-denizen, who come to her defense in approved Tarzan-fashion. So while VIRGIN is no better than any other Euro-jungle flick, PANTHER stands as one of the three best, alongside 1968's EVE and a selection I've not yet made since most of these movies are so torpor-ific.