A Vingança de Tarzan

Here Tarzan dispatches hunters who are illegally trapping wildlife for menageries. Along the way , Tarzan manages to free all the captured animals as tigers, leopards , Lioness and their cubs . Meanwhile, he saves the damsel in distress , Eleanor Holm, when is kidnapped by an avaricious Arab, Ben Bey, to add his Harem who has already a lot of women, approx 100 . The latest and greatest of Edgar Rice Burrough famous adventures!. Tarzan calls again and new thrills sweep the jungle wilds!. Spectacularly produced! The Tarzan-thrill of all time!

Tarzan's Revenge is an adventure movie with action, thrills , animal attacks , angry natives , and mean trappers , but dubiously faithfful to Edgar Rice Borroughs . Being mostly shot on Twentieth Century Fox backlots, adding a lot of stock footage of jungle and wild animal. Glenn Morris is a better Olimpic runner than actor in this routine Tarzan movie. Glenn Morris was the fourth Olympic athlete to play Tarzan. He was the 1936 decathlon champion and won the Sullivan Award, outstanding amateur athlete of the year over the more famous Olympian Jesse Owens. Winning the Gold Medal at the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin, Germania, the so-called "Nazi Olympics" and the same Olympics where Jesse Owens upstaged Adolph Hitler. Subsequently, he played this movie hired by the independient producer Sol Lesser but the reviews were so throughly bad that Glenn never made another film. And co-star Eleanor Holm is frankly horrible . As secondary actress appears Hedda Hopper, known as Queen of the Quickies, starring hundreds of support roles and later on, she started a gossipy radio show, shortly after commenced a 30-year stint as a newspaper gossip columnist, rival of Louella Parsons. And, of course, the sympathetic chimpanzee Cheeta, who here steals the show while doing antics, mayhem and frolics. This is only for serious Tarzan fans. The picture was regularly directed by David Ross Letterman.

The film was produced by Sol Lesser in medium budget . Lesser to continue producing a lot of Tarzan movies . As he financed the last movies starred by Johnny Weissmuller, such as : Triumph of Tarzan, Tarzan's desert mystery, Tarzan and the Amazons, Tarzan and the Leopard Woman, Tarzan and the huntress, Tarzan and the mermaids . As well as those performed by Lex Barker, such as : Tarzan's magic fountain, Tarzan and the slave girl, Tarzan's peril, Tarzan and the She-devil , Tarzan's savage fury . And the subsequent Tarzan : Gordon Scott , who starred : Tarzan fights for life by Bruce Humberstone , Tarzan's greatest adventure by John Guillermin, Tarzan and the Last Safari, Tarzan the Magnificent by John Guillermin and Tarzan and the trappers by Charles Haas and Sidney Howard .

Glenn Morris played Tarzan much as author Burroughs' wrote him: He was not a talker -- till later -- and when he met Jane, he said only, pointing to himself, "Tarzan." Then he pointed to Jane and said, simply, "Jane."

No "me" or "you."

In the books, he later became quite articulate, but only after being out in what we sometimes laughingly call "civilization."

In this rather languorous version -- at least three of which can be found at YouTube -- Glenn Morris' Tarzan does not meet "Jane," but he does meet "Eleanor," played by the lovely swimming champ Eleanor Holm.

The writers found a plausible excuse to get her into swim wear only a few times, but that included during the chase scene when the bad guys inevitably captured her.

Miss Holm made a few movies and Morris, sad to say, didn't. I think he should have: He was a great-looking and very athletic man, capable enough in this role and, with training perhaps, he could have played heroic roles into the future.

Other players here, even the atmosphere and bit people, seemed just perfect for what was needed and this Tarzan -- though unique and not part of any series -- is pleasant entertainment.

Yes, it's filled with stock footage, and there is very little violence, but that should not be considered a negative.

If only to watch Eleanor Holm, I'd watch "Tarzan's Revenge" -- a generic title, by the way, and not relating to the story -- again and I recommend it.

This low-key Tarzan feature relies more on the settings and the general situation than it does on the story, which is rather sketchy. It was Glenn Morris's only appearance as Tarzan, and while he certainly looks athletic enough, his lack of acting experience really shows. Some of the other aspects of the movie help out just enough to make it watchable.

The story has an expedition heading to Africa to capture some zoo specimens, with Tarzan indicating a strong preference for allowing his animal friends to stay in the wild. Meanwhile, a lecherous sultan has spotted a young woman in the expedition, and would like to add her to his harem, so he has made plans accordingly. Most of the screen time, though, does not advance the story, instead focusing on a variety of vignettes, and adding a lot of footage of lions, elephants, and many other animals, including a couple of cute lion cubs. The real action consumes just a small fraction of the running time.

Hedda Hopper, in a smaller role, is the liveliest of the cast members, and she has a few good moments with George Barbier, as the aunt and uncle of the heroine. As the heroine, Eleanor Holm is also pretty inexperienced, but she does have a solid screen presence. Morris's flat portrayal of Tarzan means that Holm has to try to carry a number of their scenes.

This is watchable as very light viewing, as long as you're prepared not to be too critical and don't mind a rather slow pace, but it doesn't have enough strengths to be any more than that.

Tarzan's Revenge (1938)

** (out of 4)

Winning a gold medal in the Olympics must have been pretty nice in the 1930s as not only did you get the gold but you also got fame and a role in a Tarzan movie. This time out it's Glenn Morris who takes over the role of Tarzan as he must constantly save a rich girl (Eleanor Holm) who falls into traps, gets attacked by lions and eventually kidnapped by a evil priest. TARZAN'S REVENGE is pure "B" movie non-sense and if you're expecting the quality of the MGM films then you're certainly going to be disappointed. It's clear that the producers of this film really didn't care about quality as it seems they were just happy to have the Tarzan rights, looked at what MGM was doing and just tried to copy it. It really does seem as if the producers would be happy with no flubbed lines so that they could quickly edit the material together and get it released into theaters. There's really nothing horribly wrong with this picture it's just that nothing's very good either and in the end we're left with a rather bland and unmemorable film. Morris really isn't all that good as Tarzan. He certainly has the physical look down but the speech and mannerisms simply aren't there. Holm isn't too bad in her part and we get familiar faces like Joe Sawyer and Hedda Hopper in supporting roles. The stock footage is the typical stuff you'd expect from a movie like this. The biggest problem is that there's just no energy to anything you're watching.

Physically, Glenn Morris is perfect for Tarzan: powerfully built, yet light on his feet. His feats of strength (wrestling with a hyena, bending cage bars, etc.) are almost credible in this context. But he's so taciturn (I think he utters 3 words in the entire movie: Tarzan, Eleanor, good) that he's a bit of a bore. Eleanor Holm is an excellent swimmer and a more than decent actress. This is a fairly polished production, but it suffers from tedious scripting - there isn't enough story for 70 minutes. ** out of 4.