Tarzan's Secret Treasure (1941)

Tarzan's Secret Treasure is the fifth in the MGM series of films starring the Olympic Gold medal winning swimmer Johnny Weissmuller as the definitive depiction of the vine swinger. It has all the expected elements to be expected, both positive and negative, as well as some surprisingly physical love scenes, and an approach to racial themes that is not as straightforward as it may first appear.

Tarzan is enjoying a life of splendid isolation in the African jungle, with wife Jane, adopted son Boy, a pet chimp called Cheetah, and a menagerie of all creatures great and small. An expedition team arrives on the hunt for a lost tribe, but when Boy inadvertently reveals the presence of gold, two of the party get greedy and kidnap Boy and Jane.

The film moves at an unhurried pace to begin with and we get plenty of scenes showing the home life of the Tarzans, as well as some comedy relief bickering among the non-human inhabitants that would not pass animal welfare regulations today.

After about twenty minutes the actual plot kicks in when the expedition team appear, rescuing Boy from a crowd of angry natives. Head villain Medford is played in suitably oily fashion by Tom Conway, (the brother of George Sanders, from whom he took over the role of debonair detective The Falcon), while Barry Fitzgerald as his dogsbody O'Doul is such as broad Irish stereotype that his main purpose seems to be to distract from the stereotyping of the Africans. Also, look fast for a cameo from Johnny Eck of Freaks fame, here in full costume, playing a bizarre looking jungle bird.

The pace picks up once Tarzan leaps to the rescue, and from then on, the action doesn't let up, thanks largely to the astonishing physical presence of Weissmuller, particularly when he is in or under the water.

The first and most striking thing that occurred to me while watching this film was how, on one level, the Tarzan clan is very much you average nuclear family, with Dad going out to work (gather food) while Mom stays at home to cook, clean, and raise the child.

But the Tarzan family is also a little more unconventional than that. The love scene between Tarzan and Jane is surprisingly sensual and physical for the time, with little separating the husband and wife (who presumably did not marry in a Christian church) other than a skimpy dress and a loincloth. The depiction of the Africans as backwards, superstitious, and communicating in a gibberish language is unflattering, if standard for the time, but I think sufficient time has gone past that we can recognise it as no more realistic than the depiction of Indians in Western films. Moreover, the focus is on Tarzan, a man who has turned his back on his own society and culture, and refuses to integrate with those of the country he now calls home, putting him more in line with the ideals of the pioneer spirit. Lastly, don't forget, this is an idyllic situation that he has made, learning to live alongside the natives, and things only go wrong in this world when white people turn up.




Tarzan's Secret Treasure Trailer by trailerapi

I Walked With A Zombie (1943)

Despite the painfully lurid title, I Walked with a Zombie is not a horror film, but an unsettling melodrama with lashings of ambiguity and ambience.

Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) is a nurse, sent to Haiti to care for Jessica (Christine Gordon), the wife of sugar plantation manager Paul Holland (Tom Conway). Jessica, always seems to wandering around in a silent stupor, and the Voodoo practising natives think she is a zombie. But is there something more to it than that? Something that involves Paul's missionary mother and his jealous alcoholic half-brother Wesley?

This was the second collaboration between French director Jacques Tourneur and RKO producer Val Lewton, following their box office smash Cat People. Both films share a visual palette steeped in shadows, a plot steeped in ambiguity and uncertainty, and a shocking advertising campaign from the studio.

However, unlike Cat People there are no jumps or shocks, as Tourneur prefers a slow burning atmosphere of creeping dread. The world of this film is one of unresolved conflicts and contrasts - light and dark, Caribbean Voodoo and Western Christianity, science and superstition, slavery and freedom, none of which are ultimately resolved.

The script is the other strong point for this film, with characters that are not as straightforward as they first appear, and a refusal to provide any easy answers. It is also refreshing to see our zombies were originally presented on screen, a world away from the flesh eating, rotten corpses we are used to nowadays.





I Walked With A Zombie (1943 horror film... by Altair_IV

The Falcon's Alibi (1946)

The penultimate entry in the RKO series of Falcon mystery thrillers, The Falcon's Alibi is one of the most enjoyable, thanks to two actors who nearly outshine the lead, as well as the film taking a more "hard boiled" approach to crime than usual.

The story starts with the Falcon aka Tom Lawrence (played as usual by the suave and charming Tom Conway) befriending a lady at a racetrack. The lady in question is Joan Meredith (Rita Corday), secretary to wealthy socialite Gloria Peabody. Mrs Peabody is unaware that some of her expensive jewels are missing, and Joan is concerned that suspicion will fall on her. Lawrence steps in to help, but along the way falls foul of the police, a gang of LA crooks, a terrified nightclub singer, and a radio DJ who may not be everything he appears to be.

The format for these films is solidly in place by this stage, with Lawrence stumbling into a mystery without even trying, aided and abetted by a sidekick (in this case the semi-regular character Goldie Locke) and dimwitted police detectives, charming his way to a rather rushed conclusion. However, what lifts The Falcon's Alibi above the norm is the intriguing supporting cast, and their story. Elisha Cook had his big break playing the creepy but hapless low-rent crook Wilmer in John Huston’s groundbreaking version of The Maltese Falcon and here as Nick, the local radio DJ he brings the same sort of unsettling intensity. He is excellently complemented by the alluring Jane Greer as Nick’s wife, nightclub singer Lola Carpenter. Greer gives her a believable vulnerability and likeability. Their doomed, crumbling relationship becomes a more intriguing storyline than the missing jewels, to the point where you sometimes feel, jumping between them and the Falcon, as though you are watching two different stories, one of which is not going to end well.

Cook and Greer would continue to shine in Film-Noir classics such as The Big Sleep, The Killing, and Out of The Past, but sadly the future was not so bright for the Falcon, as the waning popularity of the series would see RKO make one more before pulling the plug.

The Falcon in Danger (1943)

The Falcon in Danger, the sixth of RKO's Falcon films, is an unremarkable affair, where an annoying sidekick, a dull script and flat direction undo the charming lead.

The story starts intriguingly, with freelance crime solver the Falcon, aka Tom Lawrence (played by Tom Conway) somehow getting roped into investigating a plane crash at an airport in New York. Missing from the wreckage is the pilot, two wealthy businessmen and $100,000 in securities.

Sadly instead of spending time developing this mystery properly, there is instead too much attention given to the Falcon's grating fiancée Bonnie Caldwell, and her, ultimately unsuccessful, attempts to keep Lawrence out of crime fighting. It is not that a character like the Falcon cannot work with a female sidekick; it is more that, whoever that sidekick is, they need to serve a function in the storytelling, whether that is getting the hero into or out of scrapes, or providing somebody for the hero to explain plot points to, for the benefit of the audience. Given that the film only has just over an hour to tell the story, the fiancé diversions are a mistake, and when we do return to characters and elements related to the crash, they feel rushed or poorly thought out.

Tom Conway took over the character of the Falcon from the original star, his brother, George Sanders, and while Conway is no George Sanders – who could be? – he still manages to be suave, (even when on roller skates) and entertaining enough to keep us watching, and make for mostly pleasant, if unessential viewing.