Tarzan and the Leopard Woman

TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD WOMAN is the most entertaining of the Tarzan films Weismuller made for RKO. Things were starting to get dreary at the RKO backlot jungle, and this film gave the series a boost. The story of a murderous cult who worship a leopard god, has the kind of plot found in the Tarzan comics I used to read as a kid. The plot seems to be in part based on a real life leopard worshiping murder cult, somewhat like the murderous Kali cult of 19th century India; this secret all male society terrorized East Africa until it was put down by the British. Acquenta is exotically gorgeous as the cults leader, Queen Lea.

So what if TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD WOMAN is only escapist entertainment. If you highbrow types are looking for art, what are you doing watching a Tarzan movie anyway?

This was a little strange to view at first because I had never seen a Johnny Weismuller-Tarzan film of the 1940s. I was only familiar with the earlier stuff with Weismuller and Maureen O'Sullivan as "Jane." By the mid '40s when this was made (and others), Brenda Joyce had replace O'Sullivan. A blonde-haired "Jane" looked strange to me. Their son, "Boy," still played by Johnny Sheffield, was another shock of sorts. He now was a teenager with muscles and a changing voice. That didn't look or sound right!

Tarzan himself had become a regular English-speaking person, even though he still lived in the jungle. He came into town and everyone knew him and talked to him as if he was one of them. It was just all too strange.

Meanwhile, "the leopard woman" (Acquanetta) wasn't as mysterious as she was billed nor was she much of an actress, just a pretty face. She didn't have that big a role, anyway.

All in all, not a video worth keeping.

TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD WOMAN (1946)

A bizarre Tarzan offering featuring a freaky cult of worshippers who dress up in leopard skins with claws and attack people, taking out their hearts to sacrifice to their god! The high priestess of the pack is the pretty Acquanetta (CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN) who was never a good actress at all but is probably used to better advantage here than she ever was before here. Tarzan becomes aware that something's not right when the attacks are blamed on real leopards. A very strange chapter indeed.

**1/2 out of ****

Tarzan and the Leopard Woman (Kurt Neumann, 1946) - This is a touch better than Amazons, with plenty of action (quite well done) and a lively performance by Weissmuller, who'd looked a bit out of sorts in the previous entry. The plot, by now following a path through the jungle wilds so well-trodden it resembles a motorway, sees the Ape Man battling a weird cult with silly leopard costumes that's really into robbery and human sacrifice. Considering the movies were aimed at kids, their marketing is curiously sexualised, with the poster art invariably flagging up the boobs of whichever minor character was most well-endowed. Here it's Acquanetta, who gets shared billing. Her leopard bikini is at least a bit better thought-out than those ridiculous capes the other cult members are wearing.

I rather enjoyed the film, particularly its adherence to near wall-to-wall action, but it provides quite a bit of unintentional hilarity. That comes partly from its incredibly low opinion of natives (who are all duplicitous, hateful savages) and partly from the barely-choreographed dance the leopard men do around the fire. They look like drunk clubbers wearing their wives' coats. One interesting element of the film is "half-native" Edgar Barrier, a Western-educated cultist who denounces the decadence of the imperialists and leads the fight against them. All the RKO series regulars return here: Brenda Joyce is still somewhat one-note as Jane, Boy is entering puberty (giving him an all-new voice and face) and Cheeta hogs the limelight once more. I'm going to be an old cynic and suggest that it's not really him playing that music on the trumpet, though.

This Tarzan adventure is about a cult of leopard worshipers who are incited by one of their own to kill outsiders who want to civilize jungle inhabitants. An educated doctor plots the killing of neighboring tribes to make it look like the work of killer leopards. The killers attack other tribes and caravans as they travel through the jungle until Tarzan figures out that the killings are done by man instead of the big cats. The film has some good moments but the plot is rather silly and illustrates how this venerable series seemed to be winding down after many years of popularity with audiences. Johnny Weissmuller reprises his role as the fearless jungle man, with Brenda Joyce along as Jane. Johnny Sheffield and Cheta round out the usual cast of characters.