Tarzan and the Green Goddess (1938)

Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Disappointment for a huge fan!

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Tarzan holds a gypsy-themed party at his Greystoke estate after returning from an expedition. He gets an old Gypsy fortune teller to narrate the story of his latest adventure. Along with Major Martling, Tarzan tried to retrieve the Green Goddess, an ancient Mayan relic that is being used as an idol by a small clan of worshippers in the Dead City in Guatemala. An unscrupulous explorer has stolen the statue in the hope that he can use an ancient secret formula hidden in it to manufacture a super-explosive that has the potential to change warfare forever. Tarzan & his companions get into various situations in order to stop the formula from getting into the wrong hands.Tarzan and the Green Goddess was a feature-length (at only 72 minutes long) reedit of some episodes of the old serial The New Adventures of Tarzan. It featured a good performance by Bruce Bennett, who plays Tarzan in a rather unique fashion – this is the only time on film that you see a Tarzan who speaks English articulately & appears to be well-educated (although his Tarzan yell sounds like a stoned coyote). As far as the rest of the feature is concerned, the original serial was far better. It omits the spectacular theft of the idol & instead has plenty of cheap theatrics & cheaper action scenes. Although the scene where Tarzan faces off with a lion was slightly exciting, the rest of the film was one-dimensional & the idea of the hero going to all the trouble to obtain the secret formula only to have his female companion burn it in the end was kind of stupid. The worst aspect was the villain, played by Ashton Dearholt, who made a pathetic & often-put-upon villain.

It's a trial to sit through this travesty. First, Bruce Bennett is not Tarzan. Johnny Weissmuller is Tarzan. True, Bruce Bennett, like Wiessmuller, was an Olympic Champion, but Bennett is merely bland and well spoken, while Weismuller is majestically stupid and has poetry. This takes place deep in the jungles of Guatamala, so deep that the hand of man has never set foot there, and which some will be surprised to find teeming with African animals like giraffes. The country is primitive. The natives of Guatamala worship a stone idol that is sought by rival teams of explorers. Why? Because hidden inside the idol is an ancient Mayan recipe for a salad dressing which was dreamed up by a chef in San Francisco's Palace Hotel in 1923. Spoiler Alert:1 avocado, peeled and pitted; 1 cup mayonnaise; 5 anchovy fillets, rinsed and chopped; 2 tablespoons chopped green onion1 tablespoon lemon juice; 1 clove garlic, chopped; salt and pepper to tasteIn a blender combine the avocado, mayonnaise, anchovies, green onion, lemon juice, garlic, and salt and pepper. Process until smooth, then chill for 24 hours before servingThe first words out of this well-groomed Tarzan's mouth are: "Good-bye, old man.""Tarzan and his band of intrepid followers" must get this secret recipe back to Livingston, whom I thought long dead, before an "unscrupulous band of crooks" can get their hands on it and become "a menace to the whole world."I frankly don't know whether they made it not. I got so hungry that I shut the movie off and made a chef's salad. But, looking at the shape the world is in today, threatened from all sides, my bet is that they didn't get to Livingston and that the formula fell into those unscrupulous hands.

Watching these two films culled from this location-shot epic back-to-back may be the best way to enjoy this serial. The editing of the individual chapters is better than in, say, the Flash Gordon serials, which are best seen in their original format. There is no Queen Kia-Kia here to foster laughs as in the first feature, but there is a batty high-priest character to carry the unintentional comedy load. In all, if you watch these two features together, you may find the experience to be enjoyable. These do not measure up to the MGM features, but they are an OK time-waster that do feature some fascinating location photography. There are also some hair-raising stunts in both features that look pretty authentically done.

I'll take this movie to comment on as my platform for the Tarzan yell. There is still none better than Weissmuller's to this day. I've only started to watch Tarzan the Tiger, with Frank Merrill, quite possibly the best physical Tarzan there was by the way, and his Tarzan yell was "YAAAA! YAAAA!!! YAAAA!!!!" It pales in comparison in imagination to Herman Brix' yell, but Herman Brix yell is none too pleasing. "AAAAaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH MAAAAAAANNNNGGGAAAAAAANNNNEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!" While quite amusing, it's too long and therefore loses its significance. In the Weissmuller films, it's used to call man or beast, or signify that Tarzan may be in trouble. More accurately in Herman Brix' films, it's used as the victorious cry of the bull ape after a successful conquest, as it should be used. But it shouldn't be a pronounced cry, but rather a savage, eerie, unsettling cry that most would loath to associate with a human.