Tarzan and the Jungle Boy (1968) – Review

Tarzan and the Jungle Boy was the last of the Sy Weintraub Tarzan movies and after this installment Weintraub moved the Lord of the Jungle off the big screen and onto television with Ron Ely starring as Tarzan. In this final chapter Tarzan returns to Africa but in reality its filming locations were all in the Jungles of Brazil along the Amazon River and turned into Africa with a very liberal use of stock footage of African wildlife.

This final film is more in keeping with the classic Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan than most of the Sy Weintraub produced movies in this series, Tarzan is still the eloquent badass we have come to love but it does have many of the tropes from the early Tarzan days; white people come to the jungle for Tarzan’s help, native porters will get killed, appearance of a jungle boy, and of course we get lots of “comic” relief from the chimpanzee Cheeta.

Who doesn’t love a drunken chimpanzee?

In a departure from the series this entry begins with a prologue where we witness a geologist breaking camp and packing up his supplies into his canoe, along with his supplies he loads up his seven year old sleeping son and a baby leopard and then pushes off into the river. The canoe almost immediately enters dangerous rapids and is flipped over, spilling its precious cargo into the turbulent waters.

At least they didn’t hear banjo music.

The movie then jumps ahead six years to the present where photo journalist Myrna Claudel (Aliza Gur) and her assistant Ken Matson (Ron Gans) parachute drop into the jungle to meet Tarzan (Mike Henry). It seems that a local oil company took some aerial shots for a survey and in one of them is what looks to be a thirteen year old white boy. Myrna tells Tarzan that though the body of the geologist was found all those years ago the boy’s was never recovered; this could be the missing boy Erik Brunik (Steve Bond).

The Fourth Estate drops in.

Myrna asks Tarzan to guide them through Zanuga territory in the hopes of finding the missing boy. He at first wants the two journalist to stay behind, but because Myrna is a hard nose career girl she forces Tarzan to allow her and Ken to accompany him. From a friend who runs a local outpost Tarzan learns that the Zanuga tribe are currently holding a contest in a nearby clearing to decide who will be the next chief. Our group head over. It’s kind of a two man decathlon that involves pole vaulting over spears, hurdling spears, and throwing spears at each other.

I’m sensing a motif here.

The two competitors are the Chief’s sons Buhara and Nagambi (played by real life brothers Edward Johnson and Rafer Johnson) and when Tarzan stops Nagambi from winning through cheating he earns his hatred and Nagambi vows to find the Jungle Boy first and kill him. On the other hand Buhara shows his gratitude by offering to look for the boy who their tribe know as Jukaro, “Boy of the Trees.” Tarzan wants to help but the land that the boy has been most spotted in happens to be sacred land that only a Zanuga tribesman is allowed to enter. It is their oldest law and if Tarzan breaks it Buhara would be forced to kill him. Because Tarzan is Tarzan he crosses over into Zanuga lands anyway.

No one puts Tarzan in the corner.

Of course it’s one thing for Tarzan to break the rules but he orders Myrna and Ken to stay at the outpost with drunken Cheeta as it would be too dangerous for them to enter the Zanuga lands as they were rumored to be headhunters at one time. This does not sit well with Myrna so she decides to hire some porters to take her and Ken into Zanuga territory and use Cheeta to track Tarzan.

No one puts Myrna in the corner.

What is not explained is how she got local porters to travel into these forbidden Zanuga lands. Sure, a bunch of them take off once they get to the border, but then why in the hell did they sign on in the first place? Worse is the two that do stay with her and Ken end up getting killed for their troubles. This harkens back to the early Tarzan films that usually had the highest casualty rates among the native bearers on whatever safari the white man hired them for. On the plus side good ole white dude Ken also bites it as well so I guess that’s a bit progressive.

Her editor is going to give her such grief for this.

Though the movie is billed as Tarzan and the Jungle Boy much of its running time deals with the power struggle between the two brothers of the Zanuga tribe. Nagambi doesn’t take losing the chief spot very well and quickly hustles up a posse of loyal men who ambush Buhara and stake him to the ground. The plan here is to have Buhara be eaten by a passing lion allowing Nagambi to return to the village as the new chief. That he leaves his brother’s predicament in the care of an underling, and doesn’t stay himself, shows he is the right man for political office.

Jungle politics is harsh.

Jukaro the Jungle Boy happens along just as a lion is about to eat Buhara and rescues him with the aid of his leopard. He takes the wounded Buhara to friends in a nearby village but they are tracked by Nagambi and his men and have to flee to Jukaro’s secret cave home. An enraged Nagambi kills the leader of the village and has his men set fire to all the village huts.

“I hope this doesn’t hurt my re-election chances.”

Eventually Tarzan locates Jukaro/Eric and they bond over their similar history. Tarzan explains to Eric that he needs to return to the world of rollercoasters and proper education and then the two kick back and have fun playing together in the water and lounging around the shore.

“Eric, do you like gladiator movies?”

The movie wraps up with Tarzan having to rescue Myrna from being sacrificed by Nagambi. Tarzan sets fire to the bamboo walkway separating the tribe from the tied up Myrna but before Tarzan can cut her loose Nagambi jumps him and we get another brawl between Tarzan and the villain of the day. This is less exciting than it sounds because the Rafer Johnson who plays Nagambi also played the main villain in the previous film Tarzan and the Great River making it kind of old hat (not helped by the fact that this is clearly the same location), and Tarzan doesn’t even have to kill him this time around as Eric arrives with the injured Buhara to challenge his brother. Who will rule the Zanuga people is once again solved with spears.

“I want a re-count.”

This isn’t a bad Tarzan movie, but as a final entry in this series it’s kind of a disappointment as it slides into familiar tropes without adding anything new, and Mike Henry’s issues with these productions dealing with safety have made him less than happy off screen as well as on. That all said the Sy Weintraub series still contains some of the best Tarzan movies out there and certainly worth checking out.

You can find all my Tarzan movie reviews here: Tarzan at the Movies