Tarzan et les Amazones

The ninth movie in the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan series (and third since the series moved from MGM to RKO) is also the first to feature an actress besides Maureen O'Sullivan playing Jane. In the first two RKO films, Jane was off helping with the war effort in England. Now it's time for her to come home but, alas, O'Sullivan wouldn't return to the part so it was recast with Brenda Joyce. Maureen is certainly missed but Brenda does a decent job and would play Jane for the remainder of the Weissmuller films. As I said, Jane returns home to Africa but she doesn't come alone. She brings with her some archaeologists who are interested in the lost city of the Amazons, a tribe of women warriors. Tarzan knows where the city is but won't tell them. If you've seen even one Tarzan movie before this, you should know the outsiders won't leave it alone. They convince Boy to lead them to the Amazon city, where they are not greeted with open arms.

I noticed Johnny Sheffield, the actor playing Boy, is in the middle of puberty by this point and his voice is noticeably deeper than the last film in the series. It's the sort of thing you probably only notice when you watch the series back to back. Sheffield's enjoyable, though Boy's a bit of a brat in this one. Cheeta, the series' regular scene stealer, is great as always. Henry Stephenson plays the kindly old lead archaeologist who has no clue how rotten his friends are. Barton MacLane makes a particularly slimy heavy. The Amazons are lovely young women in skimpy (for the time) outfits. Nothing wrong with that. Pretty Shirley O'Hara is the one given the most to do. Their leader is the awesome Maria Ouspenskaya. She's always a treat to watch. Nice sets and matte paintings. The Amazon stuff is lots of fun. As with all of the RKO Tarzan movies, this is a solid escapist adventure film. Nothing deep but good to watch on a lazy weekend.

TARZAN AND THE AMAZONS (RKO Radio, 1945), directed by Kurt Neumann, the first theatrical "Tarzan" release since 1943's TARZAN TRIUMPHS and TARZAN'S DESERT MYSTERY, and the third installment under Sol Lesser productions for RKO starring Johnny Weissmuller, brings forth some notable changes: Tarzan having a bigger waistline and sporting an upgraded larger sized loincloth, while Johnny Sheffield, not quite a teen idol yet, still the curly haired adolescent Boy of about 13 or 14, whose speaking voice no longer in a higher pitch of a child, coming close to the physical height of Weissmuller, sporting a darker colored but smaller sized loincloth. Most importantly, however, is the return of Tarzan's mate/wife, Jane, formerly played by the redheaded Maureen O'Sullivan at MGM, now enacted by the blonde Brenda Joyce. With Joyce tackling over the part, Boy no longer addresses her as "Mother" but by her first name. After two previous entries bearing World War II related themes and invasion of Nazis, the series returns to basic formula of white hunters on a friendly mission to become dangerous intruders to the Tarzan family when greed of gold is concerned.

AMAZONS opens with Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller), his son, Boy (Johnny Sheffield) and their pet chimpanzee, Cheetah, setting out to meet with Jane, who is scheduled to return home from her trip in England. While rafting down the river, Tarzan rescues a girl from a lion attack. An ankle injury has Tarzan return Athena (Shirley O'Hara), carries her back to the secret city of Amazon woman in Palmeria ruled by a middle-aged queen (Maria Ouspenskaya). As much as Tarzan is the only outsider to know of this kingdom, Boy, who disobeyed Tarzan by remaining behind, secretly observes at a distance. After the reunion with Jane (Brenda Joyce), accompanied by archaeologists, Sir Guy Henderson (Henry Stephenson), Bannister (Barton MacLane), Anders (Don Douglas), Splivers (J.M. Kerrigan) and McClour (Steven Geray), Boy becomes fascinated by these visitors, especially after witnessing items new to him such as a microscope and their stories of the outside civilized world. Cheetah, who earlier obtained an emblem dropped by Athena, presents it to Jane. Sir Guy finds the emblem belongs to a lost Amazon tribe and asks Tarzan for help in locating them. He refuses and orders them to go. Not wanting his new friends to leave, Boy escorts them to the civilization himself, leading to all sorts of trouble in the horizon for all.

Aside from the standard routines normally found in "Tarzan" films, the writers of TARZAN AND THE AMAZONS toss in some routinely situations found in family life. Tarzan and Boy have their one-on-one arguments as any father would have with his son. Sheffield's Boy, who usually looks up to Tarzan in a hero worshiping sense, as would any little boy towards his father, show signs of adolescence by acting out his frustrations, questioning authority, namely Tarzan's. For Boy, who has known no other existence except roaming around half-naked throughout the jungle, boredom has now taken its toll, causing Boy to have an attitude, especially when finding the archaeologists more interesting in comparison to Tarzan. Tarzan, believing that Boy will forget these men, invites him to go hunting as promised, but Boy stirs up trouble by saying he never wants to go hunting with him again. Tarzan's frustration is sensed when breaking Boy's hunting bow. While this doesn't really make as strong a statement as father and son relationships are concerned, this does prove that these two characters are just like anyone else. In typical fashion when father and son are on non-speaking terms, it is usually the mother, Jane in this case, to come to Boy's aide, and not taking sides. Boy, showing no signs of wanting to burst out singing, "Oh, My Papa," can be just as stubborn than Tarzan. Tarzan believes Boy will eventually calm down and return home, unaware that he and the researchers are being held prisoners by the Amazons, never to be seen or heard from the outside world again.

What makes TARZAN AND THE AMAZONS worth viewing is the presence of famed Russian actress Maria Ouspenskaya playing the Amazon Queen. Short in size, slow in speech delivery, heavy accented, but no raving beauty to say the least, those familiar with her on screen personality normally feel her presence in any sort of motion picture. Henry Stephenson, who was earlier seen in TARZAN FINDS A SON, appears for the second and final time in the series, while Barton MacLane, most noted for his gangster roles or playing good tough guys in Warner Brothers crime dramas of the 1930s, makes an impressive villain in his first of two roles in the "Tarzan" series.

Light on action and long on dialog during its 76 minutes, TARZAN AND THE AMAZONS makes interesting character study and routine adventure for any juvenile crowd. TARZAN AND THE AMAZONS, along with the others in the series based on the characters created by Edgar Rice Burrough, at one time popular viewing on commercial television in mid-afternoon or after-midnight hours some decades ago, was resurrected on the American Movie Classics cable channel (1997-2001) and Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: June 4, 2011). Never distribute onto home video, it was put on DVD along with the other RKO Tarzans in 2009. Next chapter: TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD WOMAN (1946)(**)

Once again, the African jungle proves to be THE place to find hot, English speaking women: not only is it home to Jane, who has finally returned from Europe after extensive plastic surgery and a dye job, and Princess Zandra of the hidden city of Palandria (from Tarzan Triumphs), but it's also where a tribe of gorgeous, brunette, man-hating Amazonian warriors live in secret, in yet another hidden city situated behind a huge range of mountains (quite how they got there from South America is never really explained).

When Tarzan refuses to reveal the whereabouts of the city to members of a scientific expedition, Boy stupidly decides to help them, and before you can say 'Ungawa', the Amazon women have themselves some new workers to toil in their fields. Unwilling to spend the rest of their natural lives in slavery, the men attempt a daring escape, but as they are leaving, several members of the expedition unwisely decide to help themselves to some of the tribe's gold and its not long before the angry women are in pursuit with arrows a-flying.

A definite improvement on Weissmuller's previous adventure, Tarzan's Desert Mystery, this film wisely goes back to basics with a standard jungle setting, untrustworthy outsiders, animal hi-jinx from Cheetah, and even a good old crocodile wrestling scene! It might not be all that original, but it's never boring. If the ending hadn't been so weak, with Tarzan turning up at the city long after the party has finished and happily collecting Boy from the Amazon women without a fuss, this film would have been a straight 7/10. Instead, I give it 6.5 (which gets rounded up to 7 for IMDb anyway!).

Tarzan and the Amazons (1945)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Johnny Weissmuller's ninth time playing Tarzan has him and Boy (Johnny Sheffield) welcoming home Jane (Brenda Joyce) who also brings with her some archaeologists. They soon learn of a secret tribe of women (led by Maria Ouspenskaya) and ask Tarzan to take them to the ladies. He refuses but Boy agrees to take them not realizing that some of the men in the group have bad plans for them. This entry is certainly a step up from the previous, TARZAN'S DESERT MYSTERY but it's still a long ways off from the early films when the series was still with MGM. With that said, if you enjoy "B" movies and especially those with Tarzan, there are enough good moments here to make the film worth sitting through at least once. As you'd expect, the real highlight comes from the good-hearted performance of Weissmueller. No one would ever call him a great actor but what he lacked as an actor perfectly made him suitable to play Tarzan. If you've seen any of his future Jungle Jim movies then you know his line delivery was pretty poor but when you play Tarzan this actually helps things. Weissmuller might have played this role eight times before but it's clear he's still having fun with it and this certainly comes across and is quite apparent to the viewer. Sheffield is also pretty good in his role as Boy and shares a lot of chemistry with Weissmuller. Joyce certainly isn't going to make anyone forget Maureen O'Sullivan but she's cute enough in the part and her flirtatious ways with Tarzan were quite charming. The supporting cast includes Ouspenskaya (THE WOLF MAN) who is sadly underused, Barton MacLane and Henry Stephenson. For the majority of the running time we get the cheap thrills one had come to expect from the series. These range of lions going on the attack to the crocodiles who are constantly swimming after someone to do damage only to have Tarzan step in. These type of thrills are things we've seen before but they still work here. What doesn't work too well is that there's about 15-20 minutes where the viewer has to just sit still and listen to Tarzan refuse to help the men. There's a long stretch where nothing much happens and the film starts to drag here before finally picking up with the action packed ending. The female tribe run around in skimpy clothing for some sex appeal but I was curious how a group of all ladies were able to reproduce when none of them had ever seen a man.

Well the story lines may be very predictable but you just can't beat a late night movie with Johnny Weissmuller, the five time Olympic gold medal winner playing in his recurring role of Tarzan. In this film the civilized city dweller Jane (played by Brenda Joyce) befriends a couple of so called archeologists who want Tarzan to take them to the fantasy world inhabited by the Amazon woman deep in the jungle.

When Tarzan refuses to be their guide and take these suspicious characters deep into the Amazon jungle, Boy (Johnny Sheffield) agrees to substitute himself as their jungle guide and direct them to the hidden fortress where the Amazon woman live and seem to thrive without men.

It doesn't take long for these greedy archeologists to show their true reasons for wanting to find the Amazon women's fortress, and that reason is for the treasures that the Amazon woman possess.

So the film contains family values, greedy treasure hunters, good looking Amazon woman, Tarzan to the rescue, and of course Cheetah the chimpanzee getting into his usual mischief. It is another very good action/adventure film for all the Tarzan fans out there.

I give it a solid 7 out of 10 rating some 73 years after the films original release date.