Robert J. Maxwell 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.

Snow Leopard "Tarzan and the Green Goddess" is a reasonable condensed version of a longer serial, providing watchable light entertainment. It has a number of rough edges as a result of this format, with a sometimes choppy pace, and other stretches where the action gets somewhat repetitive. But there is enough going on to hold your attention, and Herman Brix (as he was then billed) is solid enough in the lead role.As Tarzan, Brix (whom a lot of us always think of as Bruce Bennett) cannot come up to Johnny Weismuller's performance in the role, but he does give the character some life. Both Brix's approach and the story also bring out the other side of the character's nature, beyond his rugged jungle life.The story focuses on a Central American artifact and a secret code that goes with it, with the plot mostly a series of confrontations with the bad guys. As others have pointed out, there is some unintentional humor added through the footage of African animals in a story that is supposed to be set in Guatemala.An interesting aspect of this feature is that here the heroine (played by Ula Holt) is presented as more of an equal to Tarzan than usual. Overall, things fit together well enough to make it work all right as light viewing.

henry_ferrill 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.

Michael Bo Nothing in this cheap Thirties flick makes much sense. Endless footage of jungle wildlife, leaping for dear life in the shadow of an intruding chopper, makes up about half of the running time, the plot is in threads, and characters are weakly written throughout. Allegedly Rice Burroughs chose Bruce Bennett for his first own Tarzan, quick-witted and astute rather than brawny and dumb. Certainly, this guy knows where Guatemala is situated, and he knows his French as well, Lord Greystoke indeed, and Bennett is not half bad. He is magnificent from the purely physical sense, he throws a great punch and he is genuinely playful with the chimps. Again, nothing makes much sense here, and the violence of this movie is staggering, really hardcore. It works rather well though, choreography is elaborate, and I was having a jolly good time with what is, admittedly, a rather poor B-flick.