Tarzan the Fearless (1933)

Pretty Good

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

This early Tarzan film, produced without the backing of a major studio, is primitive and crudely made, and the story (written by Edgar Rice Burroughs himself!) is formulaic, but it has plenty of action, some impressive animal performances, and, in Buster Crabbe, a Tarzan who is both sturdy and nimble. Lots of beefcake here. It would be welcome news if the entire serial (this movie is only the first 4 chapters) was discovered some day. **1/2 out of 4.

I don't know about the serial, but the movie version is terrible. It's just Tarzan running around in a thong, getting his naked butt cheeks kicked. The movie made him look like a complete idiot. Did the filmmakers hate Tarzan or something? I've seen a lot of Tarzan movies, and this is the only one I really didn't like. It smells worse than Cheetah's armpits.

This movie exists in various versions. It started off as a 15- chapter serial. In the USA, it was cut down to both 85 minutes and 71 minutes. In England, it was cut to 95 minutes. The version I recommend for maximum laughs is the 85 minute cut – and fortunately, this is the version favored by TV stations. Edited with the proverbial meat ax, the story jumps wildly from numbingly senseless situations to ancient stock footage to tattily staged "action" to tedious animal antics to lengthy close-ups of the remarkably wide- eyed heroine (Jacqueline Wells a.k.a. Julie Bishop), to incredibly extended shots of an imbecilely grinning Tarzan. Please note that it's worth persevering right to the climax for some of the most hilarious stuff occurs right at the end. Technically, the film is atrocious. The sets are tatty, the photography so dull and grainy that it looks as if photographers Harry Neuman and Joseph Brotherton used smoked glass instead of film stock. The sound recordist wisely decided not to put his name to his hopelessly primitive attempt in which sound levels vary wildly from scene to scene. I'm amazed that both Buster Crabbe (Tarzan) and Miss Wells/Bishop managed to survive this movie. I guess it was simply their amazingly good luck that hardly anybody ever saw it! That's a pity in a way. This movie is a riot!

Tarzan the Fearless (1933)** (out of 4)Mary Brooks (Julie Bishop) travels into the jungle with some men to search for her missing father. Thankfully she runs into Tarzan (Buster Crabbe) who helps on her search as well as helps fight some of the bad people in her group. TARZAN THE FEARLESS is a pretty bad movie that features all sorts of campy moments but I think it remains watchable because it does have a certain charm thanks to its badness. Originally this was meant to be a 12-part serial but sadly that version is now missing. The producer basically took the first four chapters and turned them into this movie so that will explain why things sometimes don't make sense or that the story is jumping all around the place. Without the serial to see exactly what they did, it's hard to say if they improved anything but most of the time these serial chapters to features don't work. There are quite a few campy moments with this film and most of them are Tarzan himself. He has a really silly and annoying howl here that will certainly make you laugh. As with the first MGM film, Tarzan can't speak here so instead of talking to Mary he always breaks into this weird laugh that makes him seem rather slow. It's clear Crabbe was going for a different type of performance because he makes the Tarzan character more of a mentally challenged person than anything else. Bishop is certainly easy on the eyes as the love interest. Philo McCullough was actually good as the main villain and we get Edward Woods playing the good guy. The film is full of stock footage, fights with lions and of course the eye-rolling moment of yet another beauty getting into their bathing suit and going swimming when of course a croc shows up. TARZAN THE FEARLESS is a real mess of a movie but fans of bad cinema should get a few kicks out of it.I will also say that Turner Classic Movies showed a 87-minute version, which I actually found much better than an earlier version running 71-minutes and included on one of those public domain packs. If you think the fuller version doesn't make much sense try watching that shorter one!