The original story for this serial featured munitions runners, Alice and Gordon mistaken for spies and pursued by the Guatemalan police, and Ula Vale as a mysterious figure revealed in the final episode to be an undercover government operative. The script was rewritten during production and these elements dropped. However, the original treatment was used for the pressbook synopsis and the original chapter titles were retained despite lacking relevance any longer (e.g., "Operative 17" as the final chapter). Virtually all Tarzan/serial film "historians" continue to refer to the pressbook synopsis, also, instead of watching the serial, and thus fail to accurately present the story that was finally filmed.
CHAPTER TITLES: 1) New Adventures; 2) Crossed Trails; 3) Devil's Noose; 4) River Perils; 5) Unseen Hands; 6) Fatal Fangs; 7) Flaming Waters; 8) Angry Gods; 9) Doom's Brink; 10) Secret Signals; 11) Death's Fireworks; 12) Operator No. 17.
In scenes of Tarzan fighting the lion, it is actually Mel Koontz and his trained lion Jackie. Jackie was the MGM lion seen at the beginning of MGM movies. He was the second lion used, and the first lion to roar at the beginning of movies; MGM studios referred to him as Leo the Lion.
Urban legend has it that the sound quality was so poor that the actors had to be redubbed for theatrical release or TV. In fact, the only redubbing done was on the 59-minute British reissue print of the feature version for reasons unknown. A disclaimer was inserted into the credits of this version claiming that the soundtrack had been affected by "variable atmospheric conditions" in 1935 Guatemala, where parts of the serial were shot. In fact, the bad soundtrack was the result of the cheap equipment used on the British redub (see The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935)). No such disclaimer ever appeared on the serial release prints' original titles, and the originally recorded 1935 soundtrack is heard there as well as in the second feature version Tarzan and the Green Goddess (1937).