MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS (1958)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological*


Jack Arnold's final 1950s sci-fi opus, MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS, isn't on the same level as his more celebrated classics, such as IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE and THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON.  In essence, CAMPUS might be best regarded as "Mister Hyde Lite."  That said, CAMPUS easily blows all or most of SYFY's monster-fare out of the water.

David Duncan's script may be regarded as somewhat "by the numbers," in that he seems more concerned with making the various plot-points link up than creating interesting characters.  Still, Duncan's plot-points communicate a genuine love of sci-fi concepts.  Donald Blake, the university prof doomed to regress to the level of a Neanderthal man, is not guilty of any Faustian attempt to gather forbidden knowledge.  He shows a certain pride in humankind's ability to advance from bestiality, and though he studies prehistoric life, he doesn't seem fascinated with the subject in any obsessed manner.  And though the film's first scene shows him joking about having a woman helpless in his power-- his fiancee, who's being kept immobile while he models a plaster mask upon her face-- Blake shows no special animus toward the female of the species.  If anything, Blake's rather bland in comparison to most versions of Doctor Jekyll, who usually does have some unhealthy preoccupations.  At the same time, I don't think the script would have been improved had Blake been more three-dimensional.

In a way the monster is brought into being by nothing more than a series of unfortunate accidents.  Blake, being a student of things prehistoric, orders a preserved coelocanth sent to his Dunsfield college. He's curious to find out what properties have allowed the prehistoric fish to survive the mutative forces of evolution.  Of course, the idea of a special factor that resists such forces runs counter to the actual theory of evolution as it was known in that era.  No scientist would have countenanced that evolution was a "force," but the fudge-factor works fine as a sci-fi concept.  Unbeknownst to Blake, the natural evolution-retarding factor of the fish is enhanced by the shippers' use of "gamma rays" to keep the creature from putrefying.  The gamma rays give the dead critter's blood the power to cause temporary "throwback" mutations in any organism.  A dog and a dragonfly both drink the fish's blood, while Blake takes the blood into his body via a cut in his hand.

The events that lead "the Beast of Dunsfield" (as a newspaper-headline dubs him) to commit murder are reasonably well constructed, and Blake's attempts to avoid seeing the truth are very much in the Jekyll tradition.  Unlike Jekyll, though, as soon as Blake realizes what's happened to him, he sets himself up to be killed.  Granted, neither the script nor actor Arthur Franz completely convey the character's guilt at having taken life, despite the fact that he's innocent of conscious wrongdoing.  Arguably Blake, once he's regressed to the savage state to which he deemed himself superior, prefers death to any rehabilitating cure.

The film is noteworthy for having possibly some minor impact on two Marvel Comics features. The name "Donald Blake," alter ego to the Mighty Thor when he debuted in 1962, is at best a minor and probably unintentional influence, assuming that one of the two creators saw the film.  A more substantive influence is the script's citation of "gamma rays," which are indirectly one cause of Blake's transformation, just as the same rays directly cause the bestial mutation of the Incredible Hulk.  It's interesting, though, that whereas the Hulk followed in the footsteps of many other monsters created by radiation from military weapons, "the Beast of Dunsfield" is created by a nuclear-derived technology designed for mundane peacetime usage.  At present it's the only example I can recall where a movie-monster resulted from "better living through the Atom."  

TARZAN'S NEW YORK ADVENTURE (1942)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

The last MGM Tarzan film is a definite step up from the previous entry, though once again it's another Boy-centric story. 

For once the evil white men intrude on Tarzan's paradise by accident-- they almost run their plane into the local escarpment-- and while they are looking for lions to trap for their circus, they aren't particularly looking to trespass on Tarzan's domain.  Despite Tarzan's own dubious history with lions over the years, he won't allow any animals to be trapped, and gives the circus-people-- principally deep-dyed villains Rand and Sergeant-- their walking papers. 

Unfortunately for Tarzan and Jane, Jane's loose talk about airplanes makes Boy intensely curious about the white men.  He shows off his elephant-training tricks for them, and they get the idea to make off with him and put him in their circus.  The pilot won't go along with it, but shortly afterward a group of natives attack the trapping-party.  Since Boy is in danger, Tarzan and Jane rush to the rescue.  Their vine is cut by a hostile native, and the two heroes plunge into yet another ravine.  For good measure the natives set the brush afire.  The pilot, believing that Tarzan and Jane have been kileld, agrees to let the circus-guys take Boy with them, given that the kid no longer has any protectors.

Tarzan and Jane, learning the plane's itinerary, must then pursue Boy's kidnappers to New York, with Cheetah in tow.  For once Cheetah is not the sole source of comedy relief-- though there's still too much chimp-action-- because Tarzan's encounters with civilization are played for quite a bit of comedy.  To the script's credit, it never completely lets the viewer forget that Tarzan and Jane are continually anxious for their child's safety, though such emotions are certainly played down.

Before the couple arrives in America, Jane warns Tarzan that he may encounter a world made up of nothing but lies and deceptions, in contrast to Tarzan's forthright honesty. Actually, New York comes off pretty well, tolerating most of Tarzan's eccentricities and Cheetah's outright destructive antics.  Things only become difficult when Tarzan finds the circus-villains-- but not Boy-- and gets in trouble with the cops for threatening violence.

Astoundingly, although Tarzan and Jane are able to go to court against Rand and Sergeant to dispute the latter couple's custody of Boy, the court does not demand that the circus-villains turn over Boy to the court pending the decision.  The reason is plain: the villains are allowed to keep Boy in their clutches so that Tarzan can save him from them later.  When even Jane becomes frustrated with the court's judicious wranglings, she gives the ape man permission to cut loose and go rescue Boy.  Full credits are due to those people who devised ways for Tarzan to do his high-swinging-- and high-diving-- stunts within the confines of a modern metropolis, for these scenes are the highlight of the picture.

Inevitably, Tarzan gets back to the circus.  Caged by the roustabouts, Tarzan calls to the circus-elephants, and they acknowledge his authority as much as the beasts of the jungle.  The villains die and Boy is returned to the custody of his adoptive parents.

One distasteful racial joke must be mentioned: when a black janitor (Mantan Moreland) accidentally gets on the phone with Cheetah, and hears the chimp's incomprehensible gabblings, the janitor mistakes him for one of his own people, a "colored boy."  The same essential joke appears, with no racist content, at the end of TARZAN TRIUMPHS.  Strangely, actress Virginia Grey is fourth-billed in the credits, even though she has a nothing supporting part as the pilot's girlfriend.  I suspect MGM was trying to fast-track her into greater popularity with this bit of enhanced billing.

TARZAN'S SECRET TREASURE (1941)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological, psychological*


Although TARZAN'S SECRET TREASURE still boasts A-level production values, it's a much more predictable script.  One DVD commentary asserted that MGM wanted to kill off Jane in TARZAN FINDS A SON! in order to shake up the status quo.  Thanks to pre-screenings by audiences who didn't want Jane to die, she survived-- and TREASURE's script almost seems poised to say, "See, we told you things would get dull if you bosses didn't let us kill Jane!" 

The first three Tarzan films stress the dreadful consequences that would befall Tarzan if Jane were taken away.  The introduction of Boy allowed the scripters to focus on him instead, and like SON the last two MGM Tarzans focus on the consequences of Boy's possible loss.

As in all the previous films, money is the root of every evil that invades the jungle paradise of Tarzan and Jane.  This time, instead of ivory, there's gold in Tarzan's hills.  Jane, in trying to explain the significance of gold in the civilizations of the outside world, unintentionally introduces the serpent into her own Eden, for Boy promptly takes a few nuggets of gold and departs for civilization, giddy with the thought of the new purchases he can make.

An altruistic impulse saves Boy from white man's civilization. He sees a young black boy of his own age, busy being chased by a cranky rhinoceros.  Boy diverts the rhino and makes the acquaintance of the native boy Tumbo.  On accompanying Tumbo back to the native boy's village, Boy gets a nasty taste of civlization at the tribal level.  Though Tumbo is unspoiled by his elders' superstitions, the natives-- who happen to be suffering a plague outbreak-- make up their minds that the strange white boy brought the disease into their midst.  Before Tumbo's people can burn Boy at the stake, he's rescued by a safari made up of two good white men and two bad white men.  Tarzan in turn saves the safari from the natives, and takes the white men to safety along with Boy. Tumbo goes along too, for his mother has perished of the plague and so he implicitly has no one to care for him.

Soon enough the bad white men learn about the gold.  Tarzan will countenance no mining-operations in his Eden, so the villains kidnap Jane and Boy.  One of them also manages to wing Tarzan with a rifle-shot, so that the ape-man falls into a ravine.  Tarzan survives, of course, but he's trapped in a ravine with no escape, much as he was in TARZAN FINDS A SON!  Tumbo and one of the good white men, played by familiar Classic Hollywood face Barry Fitzgerald, rescue Tarzan.  While the ape man escapes, the villains-- who have killed off the other good white guy, and who still have Jane and Boy in tow-- are ambushed by another group of natives.  They're apparently supposed to be the same ones from ESCAPES who have the sadistic habit of tying victims between two trees so that the trees will tear them in half.  They're also called "water devils" for no good reason, except that they decide not to kill everyone on the spot, and instead take them to their village for further torture via a group of canoes.  This sets up the film's best scene, when Tarzan and his elephant-buddies show up to attack the natvies' canoes in midstream.  Boy and Jane are saved, the villains are eaten by crocodiles, and Barry Fitzgerald's character survives to go home, with the nice touch that Tarzan and Jane slip some gold into his pack to help him out financially.

Oddly, Tumbo is still with Tarzan, Jane and Boy in the last scene.  It's very unlikely that any of the filmmakers had any idea of keeping Tumbo around in later entries-- and indeed, there's no mention of the kid in any other Tarzan film-- so why not add some explanation that he's going to be returned to his people, or that the droll Irishman will take him into town to be adopted?  Perhaps the writers simply didn't give the kid that much thought.  Though Tumbo doesn't speak English and so is rendered effectively silent for most of the film, he does get the honor of helping to save the hero and thus making his heroics possible, and he's treated as essentially courageous and intelligent.  True, the Irishman does refer to Tumbo as a "pickaninny," but since he does so affectionately-- just as the two of them are about to be eaten by a lion-- the term's context seems more descriptive than deliberately insulting. 

LOOPER (2012)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*


LOOPER is an earnest attempt to resuscitate that category of SF that has been called "thinking man's science fiction."  Writer-director Rian Johnson must be credited with an interesting twist on a familiar film noir trope.  But here, instead of a protagonist investigating a crime and finding out that he himself committed the crime-- and has forgotten it due to some memory-lapse-- here we have a protagonist who realizes that his future self is out to commit a crime, one that springs from his own current-day obsessions.

The bulk of the story takes place in 2044, in which there have been a few changes to the current status of scientific developments.  For one thing, telekinesis has been reliably detected in rare individuals, though it remains a minor talent at best.  For another, though time-travel has not yet been invented, 2044 sometimes gets visitations from the era that has made that breakthrough, 2074.  This future-era is never seen in detail, and one has to take it on faith that in Johnson's world certain criminals have somehow got hold of a time-travel device.  Though on occasion they send individuals back in time to serve as crime-bosses in 2044, the future-criminals' main use of the technology is for the purpose of sending back condemned victims to be executed by hired assassins in 2044, men who are called "loopers," apparently because they close a particular time-loop by ending the life of a 2074 man in 2044.

Joe (no surname), played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is an experienced looper, despite being in his twenties.  He was initiated into the business by an older man, Abe, who is one of the future-travelers who now rules his own gang in 2044.  Joe is innured to a rouine in which he executes whatever person the future-crooks send back to his time, and then hides the bodies.  The efficiency of this body-disposal process seems questionable: isn't it likely that the dead body of someone still alive in, say, 2072 might turn up and incriminate those who *will* have that person killed? But the main purpose of this complicated process is to implicate Joe in a corrupt business endeavor, and then force him to question how far he'll go to keep his ill-gotten gains.

For Joe does not wish to remain in the hitman-business; he simply wants to accumulate a good stash of money, in the time-honored tradition of the Protestant work-ethic.  Then Seth, one of Joe's hitman-friends, fails to kill a target because he realizes that it is his own future-self.  Joe chooses not to shield his friend from Abe's goons because Abe threatens to take possession of Joe's stash of money.  But soon Joe suffers the same predicament.  For in no time, Joe has the exact same experience as Seth: the target he's supposed to kill is "Old Joe" (Bruce Willis), his future self from thirty years later.  And once Joe has failed to kill Old Joe, "Young Joe" eventually learns that his future self plans to kill the crime-boss he holds responsible both for trying to kill him and for successfully killing his wife in 2074.  This means Old Joe will kill a child before that child has the chance to grow up and become that crime-boss.

Time-travel stories usually concern the potential effects of changing crucial events in a given time-period.  Johnson is not interested in the usual "step-on-a-bug/cause-the-rebirth-of-the-Third-Reich."  Rather, LOOPER is entirely about personal consequences.  Indeed, the biggest irony of the film is one dealing with the state of Joe's romantic life.  Though he has liaisons in his time with a hooker named Sara, she keeps him at arm's length.  However, it's revealed that she is the mother of the 2044 child whom Old Joe wants to kill.  This forces Young Joe to act as protector to Sara and her young boy, who, just for good measure, happens to possess the aforementioned power of telekinesis, but to the degree that he can hurl people around and cause explosions.  Young Joe's protective act binds him to Sara in a way that he could not achieved had Old Joe never posed a threat.  However, Old Joe never knew Sara to the extent that Young Joe does, simply because in Old Joe's original timeline he never formed a liaison with Sara but left for Shanghai, where he would meet and marry another woman, the wife he seeks to save by killing another woman's child.

LOOPER is a skillful balancing-act, but though it's pleasing it never becomes rivetting.  Although Johnson worked out reasonably credible histories for Young Joe, Old Joe, Sara and her boy, they're all a little too schematic and convey no individuality.  There are some good noir-ish lines, particularly when Young Joe-- who becomes a paternal substitute to the boy-- tries to explain what makes men the way they are:

“It’s just men trying to figure out what they gotta do to keep what they got. That’s the only kind of man there is.”

This is, incidentally, a good thematic statement for the literary type I've called the "demihero:" a protagonist who, unlike the hero, is motivated principally by the need to survive.  Arguably at the film's end Young Joe does save the youngster through an act of heroism.  But his character, first and foremost, is determined by the need to protect "what he's got"-- and this time, instead of ill-gotten gains, he's protecting the future of Sara and her boy, who have become his faux-family.  By saving them, even at the cost of his own life, he essentially saves himself as well.

TARZAN FINDS A SON! (1939)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological, psychological*


TARZAN FINDS A SON! is a decent enough Tarzan film, but it's not quite as strong as its predecessors.  As yet the filmmakers still haven't taken the logical step-- to come up with some legerdemain to get Tarzan and Jane legally married-- and so they must find and adopt a son, the only survivor of a plane crash.

Interestingly the parents of the infant-- seen only briefly on the plane-- are relatives of a "Lord Greystoke," which as all Tarzan-philes know was the true name of Tarzan before his adoption by apes-- an origin which, surprisingly, the filmmakers barely ever reference directly.  Allegedly Burroughs set strict limits on what they could adapt from his books.  Still, I can't help but wonder if the "Greystoke" reference was some writer's idea of tying in the baby to the line from which Tarzan himself descended-- so that, in time, Boy would be seen to be a real relative of the ape man.  But if so, the idea was never pursued.  The two parents barely register as characters before they're killed, but the script does give them a nice moment where the mother wishes they wouldn't reach their destination, and her husband asks her not to say that.

Through a roundabout series of events, the parentless baby finds its way into the hands of Tarzan and Jane.  The sequence by which Jane instills fatherly feeling in Tarzan-- who initially resents the infant as competition for Jane's attention-- is the strongest section in the film.  Jane finds the downed plane and learns that the bodies have been stolen by natives for their rites, so that she feels free to adopt the child.  Naturally "Boy"-- as Tarzan decisively dubs the child-- becomes a miniature Tarzan, swinging from high vines and plunging into the local rivers-- which naturally leads to incidents where Tarzan must rescue him, as he rescued Jane before.

Again we have an intruding safari motivated by filthy lucre, but as in ESCAPES, they're relatives of a rich family, and they want to ascertain the deaths of the Greystoke couple in order to keep their own control of the Greystoke wealth.  The married couple the Lancings have no scruples in this regard, but noble Sir Thomas sincerely wants to know about the fate of his relations.  He observes family resemblances in Boy, but he initially wants to let him stay with the couple that loves and nurtures him.  However, the Lancings figure out that they can use Boy to control the wealth if they take him back to England.  They manage to play on Jane's concern for her adopted son not long after Boy survives one of the jungle's many dangers.  In the first of Jane's many headstrong rebellions against Tarzan's instinctive wisdom, she traps her husband in a chasm to prevent him from interfering.

However, before Jane can even find out the scurrilous nature of the Lancings, she and their party are captured by ruthless natives who specialize in shrinking not just heads, but whole bodies.  ("That was once a full-grown man," observes a guide of a pygmy-sized corpse.)  After the whole group has been taken prisoner, Jane instructs Boy to go find Tarzan.  When he makes a run for it, she uses her own body to shield him from a native's spear.

MGM initially intended to remove Jane from the story with this development, but advance screenings of Jane's death-scene provokes outrage.  Thus Jane survives, Tarzan's elephants once more arrive to beat the hell out of the nasty natives, and the scheming relatives, despite all their sins, are allowed to return to civilization empty-handed. 

TARZAN ESCAPES (1936)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological, psychological*

TARZAN ESCAPES, third in MGM's series and the last one before "Boy" was introduced, takes most of its cues from the previous entry, though with several new permutations.  Again a safari of Europeans-- headed by Jane's cousins-- ventures into Tarzan's territory with the intention of taking Jane away, and again this "woman-theft" is associated with making money.  But to avoid repeating yet another attempt on the elephants' graveyard, the cousins don't want to take wealth from Africa; they want Jane to come back to England so that they can secure an inheritance.  They also have a desire to bring Jane back to her homeland because they just don't feel she belongs in Africa with a near-naked white savage. 

Instead of a villainous ivory-hunter, this time it's a villainous trapper, name of Fry.  He's less well developed than the previous film's villain, and his desire to put Tarzan in a cage and exhibit him-- as Fry does with the animals he captures-- seems ill-conceived.  Still, trappers are perhaps even a better type of foe for Tarzan than simple hunters, for trappers represent the forces of civilization that hem in nature, and so oppose the virtues of Tarzan and his wild freedom.  Interestingly, when Jane considers returning to England to help her cousins, she speaks of her obligation to them as a "trap."

Like TARZAN AND HIS MATE, the purpose of the film is to celebrate the rare romantic bliss of Tarzan and Jane, and in some ways ESCAPES exceeds MATE in this respect.  Tarzan is deeply hurt by the possibility that Jane may leave him, even for a short time, and Johnny Weismuller, whose portrayal of Tarzan was somewhat one-dimensional in previous films, communicates his woundedness with an almost childlike soulfulness.  The couple's sexiness is toned down somewhat, which is a natural consequence of the theme of threatened separation, but director Richard Thorpe still arranges one scene of masterful understatement.  Jane, playing with a flower by a riverbank, is approached by Tarzan.  Her face changes to an expression of anticipation, and the camera pans away from her as she allows the flower to drift away on the river-- quite as good an image of sexual activity as the falling of Persephone's flowers after her "rape" by Hades.

ESCAPES is notorious for having been almost entirely reshot due to negative audience reactions to an early version.  There is some strong violence in the reshot version, particularly when an evil African tribe ties one of its victims between two bent-over trees and then let the trees implicitly tear the man in half.  If Thorpe and his crew left this in, one can only wonder what they left out.  The only thing  we know got left out was a scene in which Tarzan, Jane and the safari-members attempt to return to their hidden land through a misty swamp.  Originally the party was supposed to encounter vampire bats and nasty pygmies, but the sequence was axed and dropped, though the redone version does include some giant lizard-creatures.  I debated as to whether to consider them "marvelous" entities, but since the lizards are about the size of Komodo dragons, it's possible that their origins are not quite so distanced from regular reality.  Fry, after having conspired to cage Tarzan and lying to him about Jane wishing to help trap him, meets his fitting doom by getting "trapped" in the deadly swamp.  The cousins reveal that Jane doesn't really have to come back to England, and they take their leave, while once more Tarzan and Jane are happily reconciled.

This is also the first film to start the overemphasis on Cheetah's antics for almost all the comedy relief, which some may like better than I.

TARZAN AND HIS MATE (1934)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological, psychological*

Though TARZAN THE APE MAN catapulted the Tarzan franchise into film immortality, TARZAN AND HIS MATE provided the template for most of the early adventures.

The first film dealt with two white men seeking out the elephants' graveyard in order to make a big score of ivory.  Both men are reasonably upright specimens, but future Tarzan films would deal more heavily with less attractive fortune hunters.  Often such scurrilous villains would attach themselves to safaris led by essentially worthy persons, but the presence of these looters often threw a pall over the alleged good motives of their associates.  The looter in TARZAN AND HIS MATE is a bit more realistic than most of those that followed.  When Arlington arrives in an African port to meet his old friend Holt-- the only survivor of the APE MAN expedition-- it's established that Arlington is a man who had wealth but somehow lost it, and that he's desperate to recoup on this African adventure.  He's also a  roué, given that when Holt meets him on the boat Arlington can't quite conceal that he's had a tryst with a married female passenger, very nearly under the nose of her unsuspecting husband.  Brief though the tryst is, it may be read as an indictment of the corruption of civilization-- an idea that Edgar Rice Burroughs often promoted in the Tarzan books.  The ilicit tryst makes a contrast with the soulful marital bond between Tarzan and Jane.  As yet there's still no mention of a legal marriage between them. 

In any case, Holt-- who believes that at the end of the first expedition that Tarzan gave him leave to come back someday and raid the elephants' graveyard-- allies himself to Arlington.  At Holt's request Arlington has brought with him a load of female accoutrements-- dresses, shoes, makeup, perfume-- in the hope of charming Jane, possibly to lure her back to England, definitely to grease the wheels so as to get Tarzan to guide them to their destination.  Arlington observes that Holt is still in love with Jane, but Arlington himself is more of a "player."  When Holt tells him that the natives are dancing to promote fertility, Arlington inquires, "Personal or agricultural?"  Though Arlington isn't as deep-dyed a villain as most of the fortune hunters in later entries, the script skillfully shows that he's a man willing to do anything for his advancement.  This is illustrated by an incident as the safari starts out. One of the bearers decides he wants to leave the safari because of his fears of the taboo territory they're aproaching.  He makes the mistake of waving a spear in a threatening way, and Arlington shoots him dead.  Holt disapproves rather weakly-- "the whip would worked just as well"-- and Arlington does regret his action, since he needs all the bearers he can get, to help carry ivory.


After a grueling trek and a dangerous encounter with local natives, the safari ascends a perilous escarpment, only to be bombared by rocks thrown by killer apes.  Again Tarzan's cry sounds, and the apes disperse.  Tarzan remembers Holt as a friend and accepts Arlington on the same terms.  Jane welcomes both men fulsomely, but like Tarzan she fails to see that both of them regard her with barely concealed lust, and accepts the gifts they bring at face value, taking girlish pleasure in their finery.  She only learns Arlington's real nature when he manages to hang a lip-lock on Jane.  Arlington lucks out in that Tarzan just happens to miss seeing the incident, and Jane, the epitome of the polite hostess, urges that they both forget about it.  At no time do the two adventurers really manage to seduce Jane to their side, though it's true that she has no compunctions about letting them raid the graveyard. 


I made the following comment in my review of the first film:

The ethics of raiding the elephants' graveyard only proves dubious a few times in the script, and even Tarzan-- who would become far less permissive in later movies-- doesn't seem to mind Parker and Holt seeking to plunder the remains of his elephant friends. Perhaps Tarzan is a little too besotted with Jane to care much about setting boundaries.

The second film establishes that Tarzan, Adamic innocent that he was, had no idea that the original safari invading his territory meant to plunder the ivory of the elephants' graveyard.  When he does comprehend that Holt has returned with Arlington for that very purpose, the ape-man wants no part of it.  This film, more than its predecessor, comes down on the side of the wilderness against that of progress.  As sympathetic as the audience may be to the impecunious situation of Holt and even to some extent Arlington, they are intruders in Eden.  True, it's a dangerous Eden, where the elegant water ballets of the couple are prone to be interrupted by assorted man-eating predators. But Tarzan's rapport with many of the animals-- he's saved by a friendly hippo at one point-- is clearly an ideal the film places above mere money-making.

When Tarzan refuses his aid, Arlington takes the next step: he shoots an elephant so that the dying beast will lead the safari to the graveyard.  Arlington is saved from Tarzan's wrath by Jane's intervention, and again Holt must dance with the devil that brought him.  However, no sooner does the safari reach the graveyard, than Tarzan shows up with a regiment of elephants, all willing to squash Europeans to preserve their ancestors.  Arlington feigns acquiescence, waits for his chance, and then pot-shots Tarzan from hiding.  Holt sincerely tries to locate Tarzan to help the agonized Jane, while Arlington supplies a cock-and-bull story about the ape-man being eaten by an alligator.  The two men persuade Jane to return to England with them, and she doesn't oppose their taking the ivory because nothing matters to her with Tarzan dead.

Tarzan isn't dead, of course, but before he shows up again the safari is attacked by a murderous horde of natives.  In addition to forcing the safari-members into a "blind alley," the natives show a sadistic edge.  After capturing the safari's headman, they stake him out within the sight of the remaining defenders and call up a pride of lions using special "lion-horns."  To his credit Holt dashes out and tries to free the headman from his bonds, only to lose his life to the lions.  This is certainly one of the few times in 1930s cinema where a white character put his life on the line for a black one, rather than expecting the black character to give his life for his white overlord's benefit.   Arlington is also killed by the lions.  Jane shows considerable wit and fortitude in defending herself from the predators until Tarzan shows up with a troop of elephants and routs both the natives and their leonine allies.  After the triumphant elephants bear their ancestors' remains back to the graveyard, the film ends once more on an image of Tarzan and Jane's union.