Tarzan the Fearless (1933)

Too much of everything

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Buster Crabbe takes on the role of Tarzan a year after MGM produced its blockbuster smash hit epic with Johnny Weismmueller. While that certainly is made on a higher budget and very good, this serial which was edited down to a 90-minute feature is equally entertaining and often even better because of the low budget it was made on. Crabbe isn't as eloquent in his performance as Weismuueller would become over the decade and a half that he played the role, but there's something more realistic and manly about the way he played Edgar Rice Burroughs famous character. Jacqueline Welles, AKA Julie Bishop, isn't playing Jane here, obviously not allowed to use the character's name because of the rights owned by MGM, but with the basic story being in the public domain, this version was allowed to adopt it. She's an American girl searching for her father who happens to know Tarzan, and she's accompanied by a man who has instructions to find the supposedly missing Tarzan in order to give him an inheritance. But greed takes over, not only with the attorney's representative, but other members of the explorer's party who discover that there is valuable treasure to be found in the African jungles. Tarzan realistically fights lions, saving one of the villain's life, temporarily saving his own, and battled a high priest played by an unrecognizable Mischa Auer whose staff is in a combination of fashions representing what Hollywood believed native Africans to wear, also looking like ancient Egyptians or Arabs. A cute little chimpanzee is Tarzan's best friend, and there are lots of other adventures involving animals. Tarzan battles lion to save a cute gazelle and shots of large snakes, elephants and other jungle creatures are part of the stock footage utilized to give this an authentic look. It's all very entertaining yet impressively done inside of obviously being made cheaply. Music heard the previous year in the Bela Lugosi horror film "White Zombie" is mixed in with the modern music that seems absolutely out of place in the African jungle where Tarzan resides. I would much prefer the edited feature version over the serial, because the future retains the book of the action yet cut a good hour of story edits out.

This movie exists in various versions. It started off as a 15- chapter serial. In the USA, it was cut down to both 85 minutes and 71 minutes. In England, it was cut to 95 minutes. The version I recommend for maximum laughs is the 85 minute cut – and fortunately, this is the version favored by TV stations. Edited with the proverbial meat ax, the story jumps wildly from numbingly senseless situations to ancient stock footage to tattily staged "action" to tedious animal antics to lengthy close-ups of the remarkably wide- eyed heroine (Jacqueline Wells a.k.a. Julie Bishop), to incredibly extended shots of an imbecilely grinning Tarzan. Please note that it's worth persevering right to the climax for some of the most hilarious stuff occurs right at the end. Technically, the film is atrocious. The sets are tatty, the photography so dull and grainy that it looks as if photographers Harry Neuman and Joseph Brotherton used smoked glass instead of film stock. The sound recordist wisely decided not to put his name to his hopelessly primitive attempt in which sound levels vary wildly from scene to scene. I'm amazed that both Buster Crabbe (Tarzan) and Miss Wells/Bishop managed to survive this movie. I guess it was simply their amazingly good luck that hardly anybody ever saw it! That's a pity in a way. This movie is a riot!

Landing far towards the bottom in many folks' ranking of the Tarzan films, this one has far more charms than it's usually given credit for. Produced separately (and far more cheaply) than the famed Weissmuller/MGM films of the era, this one stars former Olympic champion Crabbe as the ape man. He has befriended a gentleman explorer and researcher (Warren) whose daughter (Wells), along with her suitor (Woods), is en route to find him in the dense jungle. When the safari guides spot Crabbe, they decide to kill him in order to collect a 10,000 pound reward on his head from his enemies in England. Wells, however, is rescued from an alligator by Crabbe and she falls for him, determined to do whatever it takes to save him from slaughter. Meanwhile, a fanatic religious cult, a riled up band of natives and assorted lions add to all the troubles in the jungle. If it sounds like a crowded plot line, it's because the storyline was part of a 12 episode serial and this film is cobbled together from parts of the larger whole. As a result, the story is choppy, the editing is awkward at times and it lacks the coherence of a work intended to be a self-contained feature film and not a prolonged saga. However, especially for Tarzan enthusiasts, there are some pluses. Crabbe is stunning to look at. His adorable face and thick, curly hair compliment his impressive physique. His rather startling loincloth is brief, to say the least (except, oddly, in the swimming sequences when it is inexplicably replaced by a pair of leopard-print trunks!) He approaches the role with complete physical abandon, thrashing animal-like when excited, barely speaking at all and doing a significant amount of his own stunts. When Wells annoys him, he gives her a thump in the shoulder and when Tarzan says it's bedtime, it's BEDTIME! The rope swinging (and there is PLENTY of it!) is among the most realistic of all the films and there are some striking tussles with lions that certainly beat the one Victor Mature did in "Samson and Delilah". Some of the aspects of the film are laughably bad, such as the Eqyptianesque fanatics and crude editing which features people looking at things in the wrong direction or running the wrong way or not being able to see something that is in full view. Stay tuned for the scene near the end when a man in a gorilla suit enters the fracas when trying to get an elephant to rescue Crabbe from a pit!! There is also a lot of pausing before and after lines of dialogue, a symptom of the early days of sound film-making. Still, it's certainly worth a look and Crabbe will not be easy to forget, not only for his looks, but for his charm. The kooky finale has a chimp and an elephant dancing (!) along to music from a phonograph!!

The Tarzan of the movies was a sissy, compared with the blood thirsty apeman of the early Burroughs novels. The real Tarzan ate raw meat and the blood ran off his chin. Moviegoers might not have been up to this kind of realism. That aside, this is a worthwhile, albeit early, Tarzan film. Buster Crabbe was a better athlete than other actors who played the role; like Weismuller, Crabbe had an Olympic gold medal and was more muscular. He also had a skimpier costume in the pre-Hayes Office days.The plot skips all over the place, probably because it was edited down from an episodic serial. The chimp is there, playing cute, as he did in almost all Tarzan films. The trapeze or vine swinging work is considerably better here. If Buster Crabbe didn't actually do it, he appeared to be quite high and hanging on precariously. Unfortunately the Tarzan yell, a trademark of these films, is a mild bleat compared with those that came later. I miss that in this version.All in all, I'd give this a fair to good grade.