AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Fluentiama Perfect cast and a good story

Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

JohnHowardReid 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!

Michael_Elliott 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!

bkoganbing Tarzan The Fearless has swimming icon Buster Crabbe in the role of Edgar Rice Burroughs noble savage of the African jungle. What I'm reviewing is a condensed version of a Tarzan serial which this film was. Condensed when referring to serials is never good. I'm not a big fan of serials in general, but editing them down to feature film you lose a whole lot of continuity. I have to confess I gave up trying to follow the plot.Crabbe though was one magnificent specimen. We have a blond 'Jane' played by Julie Bishop who with her fiancé Edward Woods is on an expedition to find her scientist father E. Alyn Warren. Bishop and Woods have a pair of treacherous guides in Philo McCullough and Matthew Betz who've got an agenda of their own which is to locate a fortune in emeralds from the lost people of Zar whom Warren is trying to locate and study.Crabbe even in the condensed version is wrestling with lions and crocodiles and the people of Zar bailing these intruders out of trouble. All in all viewed today it's pretty silly.

Poseidon-3 Landing far towards the bottom in many folks' ranking of the Tarzan films, this one has far more charms than it's usually given credit for. Produced separately (and far more cheaply) than the famed Weissmuller/MGM films of the era, this one stars former Olympic champion Crabbe as the ape man. He has befriended a gentleman explorer and researcher (Warren) whose daughter (Wells), along with her suitor (Woods), is en route to find him in the dense jungle. When the safari guides spot Crabbe, they decide to kill him in order to collect a 10,000 pound reward on his head from his enemies in England. Wells, however, is rescued from an alligator by Crabbe and she falls for him, determined to do whatever it takes to save him from slaughter. Meanwhile, a fanatic religious cult, a riled up band of natives and assorted lions add to all the troubles in the jungle. If it sounds like a crowded plot line, it's because the storyline was part of a 12 episode serial and this film is cobbled together from parts of the larger whole. As a result, the story is choppy, the editing is awkward at times and it lacks the coherence of a work intended to be a self-contained feature film and not a prolonged saga. However, especially for Tarzan enthusiasts, there are some pluses. Crabbe is stunning to look at. His adorable face and thick, curly hair compliment his impressive physique. His rather startling loincloth is brief, to say the least (except, oddly, in the swimming sequences when it is inexplicably replaced by a pair of leopard-print trunks!) He approaches the role with complete physical abandon, thrashing animal-like when excited, barely speaking at all and doing a significant amount of his own stunts. When Wells annoys him, he gives her a thump in the shoulder and when Tarzan says it's bedtime, it's BEDTIME! The rope swinging (and there is PLENTY of it!) is among the most realistic of all the films and there are some striking tussles with lions that certainly beat the one Victor Mature did in "Samson and Delilah". Some of the aspects of the film are laughably bad, such as the Eqyptianesque fanatics and crude editing which features people looking at things in the wrong direction or running the wrong way or not being able to see something that is in full view. Stay tuned for the scene near the end when a man in a gorilla suit enters the fracas when trying to get an elephant to rescue Crabbe from a pit!! There is also a lot of pausing before and after lines of dialogue, a symptom of the early days of sound film-making. Still, it's certainly worth a look and Crabbe will not be easy to forget, not only for his looks, but for his charm. The kooky finale has a chimp and an elephant dancing (!) along to music from a phonograph!!