Tarzan et les trappeurs

Gordon Scott made some good Tarzan movies, but this is not one of them.

As I watched it, wincing at the bad, obviously interior sets and the hollow wooden "clonking" sounds as they walked across supposedly dirt trails, and cringing at the bad dialog and worse acting among the supporting cast, I kept thinking, "Sheesh! This is TV show level!" Then I find out it was, indeed, three TV show pilot episodes woven seam-fully into one.

It's nice to see Scott get outside (alone), away from the lame sets, in a few of the scenes; and the fights do have some pretty nice moves... but oh, ow, and ouch as to the dialog. And did I mention the acting? Heck, Cheetah (or "Cheta," in this version) was a better actor than most of the humans.

And that's not saying much.

It is kind of a stitch to see a younger Sherman (i.e. Scatman) Carothers acting as a native. But probably not worth the overall time-investment.

This Tarzan feature from the Gordon Scott series has just enough to make it watchable if you like the series in general. Scott definitely looks like Tarzan, and he has enough of a screen presence to be believable, but his wooden acting style takes the energy out of some of the scenes. The story has a few good moments, but at other times the characters and situations are just too unimaginative not to be noticeable.

The story does have a fair amount of action, as Tarzan must first battle a greedy but rather foolish trapper, and then face the trapper's more malicious brother plus a treacherous jungle trader. Plenty of outdoor footage and scenes of African animals are worked in with the studio shots, and most of the time this helps to mask the low production values. 'Cheta', in fact, gets some of the best moments of the movie.

So many Tarzan movies had been made before this one that it must have been hard to come up with new ideas. This one does at least have a worthwhile idea behind the plot, but it is otherwise rather uninspired in the way that it tells the story.

Gordon Scott has a truly magnificent physique ("lucky Jane!" is all I can say), and is an excellent brawler, but his acrobatic ability is questionable at best: nearly all of his vine-swinging is filmed in long shots and appears to be stunt-doubled. Eve Brent is a stunning Jane, but she's barely in the film. The story itself is generic. ** out of 4.

TARZAN AND THE TRAPPERS (Sol Lesser Productions, 1958), directed by Charles Haas and Sandy Howard, became the second and final installment in the series to feature Gordon Scott (Tarzan), Eve Brent (Jane) and Rickie Sorensen (Boy). Unlike their previous entry, TARZAN"S FIGHT FOR LIFE (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1958), this edition was not theatrically released nor filmed in color. In fact, TARZAN AND THE TRAPPERS was reportedly said to be three separate television episodes from a proposed TV series that was never bought by any of the three major networks. Instead, the episodes were edited together to form a feature length 70 minute feature film that didn't get publicly shown until some time in the 1960s. New lettering titles superimposed over different Tarzan and then various animals roaming the jungle are presented for its opening credits before an off-screen narrator introduces how jungle life being "instant death or narrow escapes being the point of every day life" before introducing Tarzan, the jungle warlord hero, as one who befriends the weak and helps the distress. The first part of the story introduces Tarzan and his family going through their daily routine. Their pet chimp, Cheta, rescues Jane from a poisonous snake crawling on her leg. Soon Tarzan hears sounds of frightened animals from afar and swings on the vines to investigate. An elephant has been shot and killed by Schroeder (Leslie Bradley), a hunter and boss man to the trappers, along with his assistant, Rene (Maurice Marsac) and a couple of native tribesmen. Chaining a baby elephant's leg to a tree, Tarzan arrives to free the animal. By doing this, Schroeder holds Tarzan at gunpoint to abduct and cage both Cheta and Boy before driving away. Tarzan isn't far behind to plot his rescue. The second half of the story finds Tarzan receiving a message from tribesman, Tyana (Struther Crothers) that Lepin (William Keene) from the trading post, wants to see him, only to learn this to be a meeting between Tarzan and Sikes (Saul Gorss), brother of Schroeder, who, because of Tarzan, is now serving seven years for his illegal animal hunting. He plots vengeance against Tarzan to give him a two hour start running loose loose in jungle so he can hunt him down like an animal. Later, Sikes and the other men force Tarzan to lead them to the lost city of Zaro where they can acquire richness of hidden gold and jewels. Tightly edited, highly underscored with enough Tarzan yells and well staged battles to remind viewers that this is a "Tarzan" adventure. The scene shifts are obvious, especially during the early portion where Jane's long blonde hairstyle becomes a shorter cut following the opening of the second portion where her Jane gives son Boy an education by reading literary classics like "Treasure Island," before her hair resumes longer-length again as was for the introduction. While Rickie Sorensen's character is often identified as Boy (as in the Johnny Weissmuller series in the 1940s) in the story, there was one time where he's called Tartu (the name used from the previous Gordon Scott adventure of TARZAN'S FIGHT FOR LIFE). Though photographed in black-and-white, the scene of Tarzan riding a giraffe, along with actual African scenery and natives were lifted from that FIGHT FOR LIFE color film into this edition as well. Of the three portions of the story, the first was better while the second shows promise of a re-enactment to Richard Connell's exciting story to "The Most Dangerous Game," where Tarzan becomes the hunted, actually a disappointment due to edits. Jane and Boy are absent through long stretches of time during the second half of the story, leaving Tarzan to be the sole factor of interest through much of the proceedings. The final portion becomes typical scenario for the "Tarzan" series involving greedy hunters where old material is revamped and recycled, if nothing else. A public domain where TARZAN AND THE TRAPPERS was distributed to video cassette by various distributors, often double-billed packaged with TARZAN THE FEARLESS (1933) with Buster Crabbe, the made-for-television edition, also available on DVD, has shown on commercial and public television, along with cable channels as American Movie Classics (1998) and Turner Classic Movies (TCM premiere: September 17, 2011). Not the very best nor the worst of the Scott/Tarzan adventures, TARZAN AND THE TRAPPERS attempts to add something new to material that has seemed exhausted by this time.

While improvements were developed in future installments, recasting the Tarzan character (after Scott turned in his loincloth by 1960) to the form and likes of the thin Jock Mahoney (1962-63) and the muscular Mike Henry (1965-1968), before the Edgar Rice Burrough's jungle hero eventually became a prominent figure in his very own "Tarzan" television series (1966-1969) starring Ron Ely. Next in the series: Gordon Scott minus Jane and Boy in TARZAN'S GREATEST ADVENTURE (1959). (**)

The Tarzan you grow up is likely to always be "your" Tarzan, so for the generation which came of age in the 1950s, that means Gordon Scott. He might not have been the best Tarzan, (that's always a matter of debate), but he was certainly a good one. His "Tarzan and the Trappers" is a minor work, apparently stitched together from some TV episodes, but it demonstrates how the Tarzan character reflects the changing moods of the times.

In this case, the times are the Eisenhower Years and so Tarzan, Jane, and Boy come across here as a typical suburban family not that far removed from, say, "Ozzie and Harriet." Of course, the father in this particular family seems to speak with a third-grade education and he must spend an awful lot of time in the gym, but these are minor points.

"Tarzan and the Trappers" also reflects the prudish morality of the 1950s. Tarzan and Jane, for example, seem to have two side-by-side but separate treehouses which allows for "proper" sleeping arrangements. Care has also been taken to downplay Tarzan's sexuality, moving him away from his powerful masculinity toward a tamer, almost neutered status. Gordon Scott's loincloth, for instance, rides high enough on his torso to completely hide his navel, which must have caused some problems during filming. ("Sorry, Gordon, you'll have to do it again. We saw your belly button.") And in that inevitable scene in which Tarzan is captured and put into bondage, his arms stretched up and tied high above his head, we see that Gordon Scott's armpits have been carefully shaved. Apparently male body hair, either on the chest or in the armpits, was a "no no" because it emphasized the actor's sexual nature. Despite these efforts to "housebreak" and "domesticate" Tarzan, however, Gordon Scott still manages to exude an undeniable appeal and for us Eisenhower kids, he'll always be "our" Tarzan.