Das Geheimnis der grünen Göttin

I got this movie in a box of Weismuller movies and this movie did feel so awfully compared to the MGM movies of Weismuller. The story starts somewhere in the middle (the beginning being the New adventures of Tarzan)about a statue of a goddess, hence the title. It takes place in Central America, and some of the nature shots seem borrowed from other continents. Bruce Bennet looks very Tarzan, but his acting is terrible, Weismuller is oscarmaterial compared to this man. The action scenes in this movie looks bad, the big fight in the beginning of the movie looks so stupid and silly that it takes the need to watch any further away. But I like punishment and occasionally am surprised on the end. It did not happen. As a movie it is awful and I am not sure that the serial is that good either.

This movie has none of the fun a good Tarzan movie should have. It leaves his viewer bewildered which is not good. My advise ignore this "movie" unless you are a Tarzan fan, then you have to watch it I guess.

"Tarzan and the Green Goddess" is a reasonable condensed version of a longer serial, providing watchable light entertainment. It has a number of rough edges as a result of this format, with a sometimes choppy pace, and other stretches where the action gets somewhat repetitive. But there is enough going on to hold your attention, and Herman Brix (as he was then billed) is solid enough in the lead role.

As Tarzan, Brix (whom a lot of us always think of as Bruce Bennett) cannot come up to Johnny Weismuller's performance in the role, but he does give the character some life. Both Brix's approach and the story also bring out the other side of the character's nature, beyond his rugged jungle life.

The story focuses on a Central American artifact and a secret code that goes with it, with the plot mostly a series of confrontations with the bad guys. As others have pointed out, there is some unintentional humor added through the footage of African animals in a story that is supposed to be set in Guatemala.

An interesting aspect of this feature is that here the heroine (played by Ula Holt) is presented as more of an equal to Tarzan than usual. Overall, things fit together well enough to make it work all right as light viewing.

This is a condensed version of the 1935 series that has not been so badly hacked in the edit as many similar "adaptations". Lord Greystoke recounts the tale of his exploits as our eponymous hero in Guatemala where he helped in the quest for the "Green Goddess" - an idol worshipped by the local tribes. Unbeknown to the locals, though, their statue contained a hidden formula for a powerful explosive and so, of course, their task isn't that simple. The evil Hiram Powers also wants the formula and his henchman "Raglan" steals it from "Tarzan" leaving us with a cracking (big) cat and mouse adventure... It is actually quite a decent formula for Bruce Bennett, and he carries the adventure - with the aide of some restless natives and lions well for this 70 minute abridgement. He hasn't quite the presence (or the yodel) of Weissmuller, but it's still quite a fun watch with some chemistry-set special effects.

Talk about recycling! As a Zorro fanatic, I have watched a couple of the old serials that used to show in movie theaters. You had to come back every Saturday to see the next part of the story. The original 12-part serial, The New Adventures of Tarzan, was re-edited into two movies, this being one of them.

The most interesting thing about this movie is the star, Bruce Bennett, or as he was known then, Herman Brix. Brix was given this role after losing out on a previous film, Tarzan the Ape Man, which cast an unknown BVD underwear model, Johnny Weissmuller. A shoulder injury prevented Brix from getting this role. The rest is, as they say, history. Weissmuller went on to be the greatest Tarzan of all time, and Brix had to eventually drop out of acting, take acting lessons and change his name before returning.

Tarzan and the Green Goddess (1938)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

In 1935 a serial called THE NEW ADVENTURES OF TARZAN was released in 12-chapters but then the producers got cheap and wanted to make some extra cash so they released a feature version of it. Then, three years later, the producers decided to re-edit some more footage and throw this thing out as the second feature taken from that serial. What we basically have here is the second portion of the serial as Tarzan (Herman Brix) travels to various locations trying to track down the Green Goddess and destroy the evil ones doing harm to get it. That's pretty much all the story you need to know or better said it's pretty much the only story I could come up with. It's always hard to judge these features that were trimmed down from serial simply because you're missing so much footage. You certainly can't judge the original serial from just these features. With that said, this here was pretty hard to get through for a number of reasons but the biggest is that it simply never makes any sense. It's clear that this production was trying to stay close to the source material as Tarzan is well spoken and is even able to dress nice. These touches are so fast that you really don't get to know this "other" Tarzan as it doesn't take long for him to be in the loin clothe and swinging around on vines. The performances are all rather bland and the added running time doesn't help. Fans of cheap "C" movies might get a kick out of this but it's probably best looking for the uncut serial.