Penultimate Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan film and the last to feature Johnny Sheffield, who played Boy in eight Tarzan films before getting his own series as Bomba, the Jungle Boy. Patricia Morison heads an expedition to Tarzan's neck of the woods to nab some animals for zoos back in the States. Helping her is vicious big game hunter Barton MacLane. By now, if you've seen even a few Tarzan movies, you should know where this is going. The bad guys take the animals but Tarzan steals them back and, with help from Boy and his animal friends, runs the villains out of Africa. There's also a subplot about political intrigue with local royalty.
Johnny Weissmuller is good but he's basically going through the motions at this point. There's nothing in this he hasn't done before. Johnny Sheffield, who's almost as big as Weissmuller at this point, does well in his final outing as Boy. There's a thread running throughout the movie about Boy learning responsibility ("Boy man now. Do man's work."). Brenda Joyce has little to do as Jane but her few scenes are nice. Lovely Patricia Morison is interesting as the title character (who is not really a huntress). She's written sympathetically most of the way through but it ultimately amounts to nothing as she never switches sides like you are expecting. A major misstep is that the film doesn't give us a catfight between Morison and Brenda Joyce. There aren't a lot of action scenes in this one. Tarzan has a brief fight scene with another man but no tussles with crocs or anything. The climactic animal stampede is exciting, though. The drama is solid and the cute family stuff between Tarzan, Jane, Boy, and Cheeta is always fun to watch. A highlight of the movie for me is the scene where Cheeta flies a bamboo airplane Boy made.
Not among the best of the Tarzan films but still worthwhile. Fans will like it, I think. A couple of final notes: in one scene, Tarzan is freeing the various animals that were captured by the hunters and he is shown releasing two bear cubs from their cages. Why are there bears in an African jungle? In another scene, Morison's character tells the King that "In our civilization, we believe in keeping an open mind." To which the King replies "In your civilization, open mind means that one must agree with what you yourself say." Brother, tell me that isn't as true now as it was 70 years ago!
