Le mystère de Tarzan

This is probably my favourite Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movie.

In this one, Tarzan and Boy (Johnny Sheffield) set out across the desert to get a medicine from a particular plant to send to Jane who is in Britain helping the war effort. She needs it to help wounded soldiers to fully recover. On the way, they bump into Nancy Kelly who plays a magician.

After escaping the Arab city, they reach the jungle where they discover time has stood still. The dangers they encounter trying to get the medicine are stock footage prehistoric monsters from One Million BC, giant man-eating plants, lions and, best of all, a giant spider whose web Boy gets trapped in. He escapes and the spider eats one of the baddies.

All the stars in this movie take good parts, especially the two Johnnies and Nancy Kelly, who makes a good substitute for Jane.

I enjoyed watching this movie and have seen several times. Watch it if you get the chance.

Rating: 4 stars out of 5.

Tarzan's Desert Mystery (1943)

** (out of 4)

Jane, who once again sends Tarzan a letter saying she isn't coming home, also asks her boyfriend to get a secret formula that can cure troops fighting in the war. Tarzan, Boy and Cheetah set out to do this but end up fighting Arabs. I found it incredibly difficult to stay awake while watching this film and it took several viewings to be able to do so. I thought the first forty-minutes of this thing were deadly dull and lacked any nice comedy or action. The female lead also wasn't very interesting, which hurt matters. The film eventually picks up at the end when Tarzan must enter a mysterious jungle full of living vines, prehistoric creatures and a huge spider. If only the entire film had taken place here. This is the first Tarzan I've actually been disappointed in to the point where I probably won't watch it again.

Edger Rice Burrough's Tarzan was never meant to be muscular although as portrayed by Elmo Lincoln, Frank Merrill and Gordon Scott's Tarzan was indeed very much so. Young Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan was lithe, strong and athletic with a beautiful manly body. In Tarzan and the Desert Mystery, Johnny Weissmuller looked big , strong and the way he lifted the Arabs --accompanying the American girl magician Nancy Kelly who was providing a free performance in the middle of a desert-- and threw them by mistake despite protests from Kelly was very impressive and entertaining. The second scene that was equally entertaining was the scene in which Tarzan was attacked after being falsely accused of stealing the stallion. Here we find Tarzan throwing the opponents about like little toys and fighting like a majestic lion. I think only Weissmuller could give such a splendid performance. He looked every inch a Tarzan and I should think he was much better built than perhaps Lincoln and Scott. Scott had weight lifter's build and became an extremely believable Tarzan in later films and Lincoln so long as he was in the jungle proved to be a very popular Tarzan with the moviegoers. Nancy Kelly's performance was very humorous and at times very very perceptive. Johnny Sheffield's performance as boy was as to expected , excellent. Cheeta was a great fun to watch and interestingly besides the usual quota of animal extras viz lions, elephants, wild horses, monkeys a number of mysterious prehistoric creatures were included and also a gigantic spider. The stallion that Tarzan rode added an extra element of interest and a novel feature and instead of stampeding wild elephants we have horses stampeding in this movie. The story is quite what one could expect if one is familiar with Newspaper Tarzan Comic Strips as drawn by Hogarth, Manning, Celardo and Foster. These news paper comic strips gave Tarzan a personality and ultimately made it popular enough to be made into movies. The story is a good change but what one could expect for a good Tarzan yarn. Another feature one notices in this film is instead of the " repetitious" vine swinging one finds in in some of excellent MGM films the vine swinging is a refreshing change in this RKO film. I enjoyed it very much and it is an excellent fare for the whole family. I have seen it several times.

Tarzan and Boy meet a magician entertaining troops in North Africa, Nancy Kelly, on her way to warn a sheik about evil Nazi plans to steal horses. Tarzan and Boy are wrongfully put in jail for stealing the horses, but break out to stop the evil Nazi plan. It's the usual Tarzan nonsense you'd expect, but it's all quite enjoyable, which includes giant lizards, killer spiders, and a man-eating plant. Top that all off with Hollywood WWII propaganda and this is something of a bizarre must-see film for it's era. Otto Kruger also appears in the film (as a Nazi, of course).

Tarzan and Boy receive a letter from Jane dropped from a plane. Tarzan has to travel across the desert to retrieve a plant for medicine. Meanwhile, magician Connie Bryce is given a secret message from the Sheik to be delivered to the Allies. Three Arabs convinces her to perform the sawing-in-half act. Tarzan mistakes it for being real and 'rescues' her.

I like that they do some of the scenes outside especially in the desert. The interior sound stage scenes are expected. It's a silly Tarzan movie. Jane is not on screen and they put up a different type of blonde. She has a lot more sass. It's a B-movie. I do appreciate that it fully embraces its B-movie nature by turning it into a monster movie. It doesn't get more B than that.