Review of Tarzan and His Mate

Second "Tarzan" entry to star Johnny Weissmuller (following 1932's "Tarzan the Ape Man"), based on the original creation by writer Edgar Rice Burroughs (who may have blushed at seeing his wonder of the jungle shacking up happily with Jane Parker!). The plot concerns two ivory poachers who attempt to woo Jane (Maureen O'Sullivan) away from her savage man, but she and Tarzan are having too much fun to really notice. Well-made for its time, today the movie nearly lapses into camp. Weissmuller was certainly the definitive loin-clothed jungle man of the African coast, yet the movie is structured episodically like an extended Saturday afternoon serial and takes far too long to get Tarzan involved in the story. Tarzan wrestles with a tiger and scuffles with a rhinoceros, but it is Jane's skinny-dipping sequence (originally censored but restored in the 1990s) which lingers in the memory. **1/2 from ****