Who?

Who? by Algis Budrys is one of those seminal science fiction novels, one of the many I have not yet read. It's a 1958 cold war yarn about a returned Western prisoner from behind the Iron Curtain who has been changed significantly with the addition of a mechanical arm and face, and who may in fact not be who he is reputed to be.

I picked up this handsome Lancer paperback the other day. And I got it not because of the story, but because of the completely awesome Frank Kelly Freas cover. It a stunner!

I first saw the artwork for this cover in the pages of Frank Kelly Freas - The Art of Science Fiction which I've owned for decades.

The image of the totally inscrutible metal-faced man casually smoking a cigarette while staring at the potential reader is a stunning painting.

The compelling Lancer paperback cover was originally conceived for an issue of Fantastic Universe in which the stort story version of Who? originally appeared. In fact it was this painting by Freas which Brudys claimed inspired the story when he glimpsed it in the Fantastic Universe offices. To read that original story go here.

And it's a pose he replicated to some extent when he rendered Harlan Ellison for this special issue of Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

The Who? cover is one of those exotic sci-fi images which takes up permanent residence in your imagination, at least it has done in mine.

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Tarzan's Greatest Adventures!

Tarzan's Greatest Adventure from 1958 is a real turning point in the series and held is very high esteem by most fans including yours truly. This in fact can safely be argued to be perhaps the single best Tarzan movie ever made though I have high regard for Tarzan and his Mate and some of the silents. Gordon Scott takes his fifth turn as the Ape Man and has grown very comfortable in the loincloth by this time. And I'd argue his acting skills have significantly improved since his first Tarzan effort in which he seemed not always clear of his purpose. The fact he's allowed to speak in full-blown grammatically-correct sentences sure doesn't hurt his ability to communicate a highly serious purpose. The location shooting in Kenya didn't hurt the legitimate atmosphere of this one either.

The plot is a simple one, but one which allows for tons of action. Slade (Anthony Quayle) is an old nemesis of Tarzan's and he has gathered a gang of hoodlums and creeps to exploit a potential diamond mine he's discovered. To do that they need dynamite and to get that they callously murder two men, one of whom knows Slade and manages to communicate that. That info puts the Ape Man on their trail and its with a grim and lethal purpose he starts his trek. Tumbling along is a female airplane pilot named Angie (Sara Shane) who crashes into his path and ends up tagging along, though for the first time ever I feel certain he'd leave her behind if she should prove too much trouble. Meanwhile Slade and his gang made up of his girlfriend Toni (Scilla Gabel) and a German named Krueger (played by The Night of Demon warlock Nial McGinnis), an Irishman named O'Banion (played by an up and comer named Sean Connery), and a guy named Dino (played by the wonderfully named Al Mulock) slither up the river showing off their petty cruelties at every opportunity. Tarzan tries to intercept them a few times with mostly deadly results. The climax of this wonderful and deadly combat is one of the great moments in Tarzan cinema history. Let's just say, that finally at last someone remembers why Tarzan yells.

The whole tone of this movie is stunner, with Gordon Scott unafraid to get his hair mussed, hair by the way which seems far less cleverly done than in movies past. It works. The gang he chases is a vile and debauched bunch who destroy themselves as quickly as does the Ape Man, suggesting something I supposed about the human nature. Tarzan here is grim and even says in so many words that he is part of the unforgiving nature of the jungle and what he does seems to be apart from the judgements of mankind and simply the result of what the natural world demands. For the first time in a long long time Tarzan seems savage.

Tarzan the Magnificent from 1960 alas takes a step back. This one clearly meant to follow in the same vein makes a brutal mistake and weighs down the Ape Man with too many civilized folks to care for, forcing him to remain more than man than the savage. In fact oddly while his mission in the previous movie seemed to be pure vengeance, in this one he's operating as an agent of the law, of civilization itself. Maybe they thought they went too far the last time, but sadly by returning him to his former more restrained self, he loses something which makes the character truly magnetic.

His opponent in this one is a vile robber and killer named Coy Banton (played by Jock Mahoney, the guy destined to be the very next Tarzan oddly enough). Tarzan must take Banton to justice and hot on his trail is the Banton family led by the murderous patriarch Abel (John Carradine) and brothers Martin (Al Mulock again), Johnny (Gary Cockrell), and Ethan (Ron MacDonnell).  Tarzan is assisted and hindered by a veritable gang of tourists stranded in the jungle seeking a way out. Ames is a blowhard (played by Lionel Jeffries) and his beautiful but unhappy wife Fay (Betta St.John returning from her much more benign role in Tarzan and the Lost Safari) don't help much. Of more assistance are Conway (Charles Tingwell) and Lori (Alexandra Stewart), but only barely. Tate (Earl Cameron) is the most useful andthe token black man in this story, but times were changing hopefully.

The plot reminded me somewhat of the Western classic Stagecoach, a sundry gang of folks with personal issues thrown into a dangerous situation. There's also a bit of High Noon in the mix as well, but as I said that puts Tarzan in the Will Kane role - the defender of the laws of man, not what the last film suggested he might be. Tarzan never loses control really in this one, never becomes less than the stout-hearted brave citizen. That's a great hero, but perhaps not Tarzan who in pure terms plays by different rules.

Whatever the case, these two movies mark the end of Gordon Scott's term as "King of the Jungle". He soon headed overseas to makes some pretty remarkable sword and sandal epics, and got paid well for doing it.

With this post I'm going to get onto other subjects for awhile. The last two weeks plus of Tarzan-mania have been a blast, but other things require attention. Thanks to all who have stuck it out as I bungled in the jungle.

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Gordon Of The Jungle!

When Lex Barker was no longer going to be Tarzan the new guy was someone very visually different indeed. Gordon Scott was a "muscle man", a body-builder type who had mighty arms and a broad back, and frankly he didn't look all that comfortable in the trees most of the time. He didn't seem that he'd be agile. But then he was a different kind of Tarzan in what was soon a different kind of story.

Tarzan's Hidden Jungle from 1955 was the first of Scott's vehicles as the Ape Man, and it was just one more Tarzan movie by the RKO team that produced perhaps far too many since much of the juice seems to have been leeched away from the series by this time. The story is one of white hunters wanting to invade a forbidden territory to get their greedy mitts on the vast herds of elephants, buffalo, and what not which live there. To do that they trick the local doctor into taking them and then it all goes to hell as the natives feeling betrayed want to kill everyone. It's up to the oddly quiet and reticent Tarzan to intercede, first by saving the brave nurse who goes to warn the unwary doctor and then by turning his attention on the hunters themselves.

There's some pretty decent action in this one and Jack Elam as one of the villains while oddly restrained is still pretty good. The big focus in this one is that with Jane missing, Tarzan is left free to flirt with Vera Miles who plays an unremarkable loyal nurse, who if I'm not mistaken actually seems to wear heels in the veldt at one point. She's a pretty but dingy sort who goes off into the jungle and quickly finds all the cliche dangers, requiring the mighty thews of Tarzan to save her. One can clearly see the RKO formula is losing atmosphere quickly in this final Tarzan effort from the studio.

Tarzan and the Lost Safari is a stunner for one simple reason. This 1957 flick is in living color, giving vivid life to the vistas of Africa in which some real shooting was done. Sol Lesser Productions now divorced from longtime partner RKO gave Tarzan's adventures a new gloss at MGM. Jane is still missing in action, thus allowing the handsome Gordon Scott to seemingly woo the beautiful heroine of the piece. He's as always innocent, but it's a significant plot element in a story which finds a plane full of jet-setters having crashed in the wilds of Africa with only Tarzan and Cheeta to save them.

There's frankly little here that wasn't in some of the other movies, but it does seem to play out on a larger canvas and the threat does offer echoes of actual Burroughs content both in content and structure. The enemies in this movie are the "Opar Men", though they are far different from the prehistoric menaces of the novels. Nonetheless they do seem a worthy threat, and are shockingly colored blue in spots which really pops off the screen.

Tarzan and the Trappers from 1958 is the one Gordon Scott movie I've seen a few times since it appears in all the public domain collections. It is actually three episodes of a failed television project strung together to make a less than impressive feature film. It feels like a TV show and that means it doesn't really raise the stakes of the Tarzan experience much if at all. Scott does seem a bit more comfortable in the role and in front of cameras, so that helps.

Jane is back (played by Eve Brent) and blonde finally. Sadly so is the Tarzan Family unit with the addition of Tartu, a  young  boy played by Rickey Sorenson. It makes sense I guess for a TV show that they'd want a solid domestic situation, but this is wacky and Tarzan spends most of his time chasing the titular trappers and not at "home". This story feels small like a TV show of the time, but still we have some decent threats and even a lost city.

Tarzan's Fight for Life also from 1958 is simply stunning to look at. This movie keeps Eve Brent as Jane (even prettier in color) and Ricky Sorenson as Tartu, but really adds some spectacle. The treehouse returns.  The color is intensely vivid and adds to the story immensely. There's some really impressive location shooting which is by and large neatly wedded to the studio material.  Scott looks great though he's still better at grappling and hefting than leaping. Woody Strode is on hand and looks magnificent as a baddie. Also there's a terrific battle with a giant snake which seems to get out of hand.

In this one Tarzan defends a hospital in the middle of the jungle which seeks to serve the local tribes and also do significant research, but which has come under increasing criticism from the local witch doctor after the demise of the old chief. There's the usual back and forth as the doctor, his daughter and the young assistant try to stay brave in the face of the increasing threat. The set design and costumes are really done well in this one, though Tarzan is still the same broken-English speaker we've known for decades. That is about to change.

More on what happens when Tarzan is made for grown-ups next time.

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Lex Of The Jungle!

When finally it was time for the great Johnny Weismuller to leave the trees as Tarzan, the next guy to step into the role was the very handsome and physically impressive Lex Barker. Much was made of Barker's long blonde hair, but for all that he looked the part pretty well, much better alas than than Weismuller had for many years.

Barker's first outing as Tarzan was 1949's Tarzan's Magic Fountain, a curious tale about a hidden society which nurtures a secret which keeps them young for longer than the normal span. A missing woman,a  flyer similar in many ways to Amelia Earhart has lived among these people for some time and only Tarzan has held this secret. A clue turns up which reveals she is alive and Tarzan grudgingly agrees to seek her out since it turns out a man has spent two decades in prison unfairly for a crime she can alibi him for. Tarzan gets her, but her shocking youth (which begins to leave almost immediately) reveals the secret of the hidden land and needless to say  folks want to find it.

This is considered by many the best of the Barker Tarzan movies, but while it's pretty good and has some nice ERB touches, I was put off by the character of the aviatrix played by Evelyn Ankers, who selfishly I think wants to return to the hidden land. It just didn't track. Brenda Joyce who played Jane with Weismuller does the same here, her final bow. In fact weirdly Barker will have a different Jane in each of his movies. I notice that in many of the movies we first see Jane sleeping and Tarzan opens a door in the treehouse to discover her, almost as if to say who will it be this time -- a bit of sleeping beauty there.

Tarzan and the Slave Girl is a raucous action-filled 1950 Tarzan yarn that rarely catches its breath. This one is my favorite of the Barker Tarzans by a good stretch. The story starts with a bang when some weird looking dudes in outfits which seem more at home in a Prince Valiant movie kidnap Jane and some other girls and haul them back to their hidden city, a city with a culture which seems a blend of ancient Egypt and Babylonia. The girls are there to re-stock the population which a disease is slowly decimating. Tarzan needles to say pursues and with watching Barker dash across the rooftops and crypts in this movie is a awesome. He is a fully-developed high-leaping action hero here.

Vanessa Brown plays an above average Jane in this one, and she has some neat company as a chick named Lola also has a hankering for Tarzan and she and Jane have a fine tussle or two before the movie is done. This movie seemed to me to have the ideal blend of action, fantasy, and humor which a good Tarzan flick ought to have, with very little of the latter. Barker's Tarzan is lethal and dangerous, something which went missing in the later Weismuller flicks.

Tarzan's Peril from 1951 is an odd one, blending a lot of legit African footage with the traditional studio jungle action. The African footage is pretty good stuff, but the producers clearly wanted to make the most of it, and as a consequence this one takes a long long time to get started. Tarzan doesn't show up at all in the movie until a fifth of the way in and then only in fits and starts. The story is about some gunrunners who kill their way through the bush. One of them is an old enemy of Tarzan's and of Jane's  (Jane this time is played very primly by Virginia Huston) and Tarzan does even mix it up much with the baddies until the last quarter of the flick.

The pacing hurts this movie, which does have some real texture and some good acting in the villain category. But the wild and dangerous Tarzan we encountered in the last movie seems to have been tamed quite a bit in this one. He and Jane look like a jungle version of Ward and June Cleaver as they eat properly in their quaint  and weirdly domestic treehouse. Dorothy Dandridge plays a beautiful African queen in this one, but she has relatively little to do besides look stunning. One thing this one does do is use blacks to portray Africans, a novel thing at this point in the series since a lot of Tarzan's encounters have been with with non-specific ethnic cultures.

Tarzan's Savage Fury from 1952 picks up the action a notch. Tarzan and Jane (this time played by the beautiful Dorothy Hart) lead an expedition into yet another remote land so that diamonds can be found to support England in its time of need. Tarzan's back story comes into play as an imposter pretending to be his cousin makes the request and is accompanied by a fellow named "Rokov" who clearly seems to be an enemy agent. Tarzan and Jane make a long journey, a full-blown quest not seen since Tarzan Escapes. The action is furious and the "savage fury" referred to in the title does show up with deadly results.

The knock on this one is "Joey". The producers thought for some reason it was a good idea to recreate the jungle family and have Tarzan discover and decide to keep an orphan named Joe Martin who toddles along beside them through the adventure. Truth told he's not too annoying, but his very presence is really unnecessary. Also the guy who plays Rokov seems to have been a magician and his stunts are on display. He's a dandy good actor and a fine villain, worthy of Tarzan and well deserving of his gruesome fate.

The final Barker Tarzan from 1953 is titled Tarzan and the She-Devil. This one has the Ape Man battling ivory poachers yet again. The "She-Devil" of the title is plays by Monique Van Vooren and she's a little exotic, but that's about it. The real spice in the villainy is supplied by a dastardly Raymond Burr and a conniving Tom Conway. Joyce MacKenzie plays Jane and does a good enough job, though most of the time she's stumbling through the jungle oddly helpless after all these years. Tarzan does eventually stop the poachers and the poachers discover that elephants are really really big animals to fool with.

The weirdest thing about this Tarzan outing is that for much of the flick Tarzan believes that Jane is dead. The treehouse is burned down (symbolically perhaps too as it doesn't return in the next movie starring Gordon Scott). Tarzan goes mildly catatonic, seemingly losing his will to live. That doesn't track at all with the Ape Man I know and sadly makes Barker mope around sit listlessly a lot in his last bow. He does snap out of it eventually, but it takes a while. This is easily I think the weakest of the movies Barker is in, as it just doesn't seem to have enough plot to keep it going.

Overall Barker's Tarzan was an upgrade from Weismuller who was kept in the loincloth too long for everyone's good. (I'm talking to you too Roger Moore.) Seeing someone with youth and vigor battling for his life was nice and spoke to the adventurous essence of the classic eternally-young Tarzan character.

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Tarzan - The Lost Adventure!

Raymond Verdaguer

The way I understand it, the story behind Tarzan - The Lost Adventure is that they discovered an unfinished Tarzan manuscript by ERB himself tucked away in a vault. After decades of wrangling it was decided to finish this untold Tarzan tale and make it part of the official canon. At the time Dark Horse had the Tarzan license and so they got the privilege of bringing forth this "new" Tarzan. Not everyone was happy with it, but then that was never in the cards.

Dean Williams

Joe R. Lansdale, a writer mostly famous for his quirky horror stories, including the tale which inspired the movie Bubba Ho-tep (go here for more on this seriously awesome flick), was tagged to finish the saga which ERB had begun so many decades before. Admittedly I find Lansdale an odd choice, but not necessarily an unworthy one. Anyone given this task would have found it a thankless one. 

Before being published in both hardback and paperback, the story was serialized (a nice traditional way to originally present the story) in four parts. The covers for each of these four installments was done by Arthur Suydam and the interior illustrations were done partially by Tom Yeates, the same artist who had made his Tarzan mark on the earlier "The Beckoning" from Malibu. Gary Gianni, Charles Vess, and Mike Kaluta also contributed.

As I recollect these four books, which I have tumbling around here somewhere, featured not only the "new" Tarzan story, but also showcased some vintage John Carter of Mars newspaper comic strips by ERB's son John Coleman Burroughs.

I later bought the distinctive Del Rey paperback, which sported an oddly attractive woodcut-like cover. It's been many years since read this one. It might be time to dig it out again.

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Tarzan - The Beckoning!

 

For a few years in the early 90's Malibu Comics had the license to the Tarzan properties. In cooperation with Semic Interational three limited series were produced. All of them were vigorous portrayals of the Ape Man, but the most completely successful was likely the seven-part story illustrated by Tom Yeates and written by Yeates and Henning Kure titled "The Beckoning".

This sprawling yarn offers up Jane and Tarzan in Los Angeles battling poachers, discovering a new hidden culture in another dimension, and such like. Many purists object to the Malibu/Semic comics as not being sufficiently Burroughsian, but I liked them fine. They added some salt to a character who can with too much fidelity to tradition become stale very quickly, as Burroughs discovered himself and the later novels prove all too well.

I'm not aware that this story has ever been collected, but it certainly should be. It's a Tarzan story worth the time and effort to discover for yourself, if only for the beautiful Yeates artwork.

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Lord Tyger!

As evidenced by the past week I've been entranced with all things Tarzan, the fabulous creation of the late Edgar Rice Burroughs. And now I'm in search of my next novel to read. Having just finished a delightful Sherlock Holmes pastiche, I'm thinking it might be time at long last to read Philip Jose Farmer's "deconstruction" of the Tarzan myth, a book titled Lord Tyger.

I picked up a paperback of this ages and ages ago, but never got around to reading it. I bought it again as part of the wonderful Titan Wold Newton books many months ago, and finally the time seems more than ripe to plumb its depths.

Knowing that Farmer adores Tarzan, and having recently read his "biography" of "Lord Greystoke" and his doppleganger creation Lord Grandith in "The Secrets of the Nine" stories as well as the Time' Last Gift singular hero Gribardson, it will be interesting to say the least to sample yet another Farmer "Tarzan".

I'll have more to say when the quest is completed.

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