TARZAN GOES TO INDIA (1962)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: (2) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

Once again I find myself reviewing two Tarzan flicks in which one's very good and the other's just "eh." Unfortunately as time went on the franchise would turn out more of the latter than the former.

I'm going to do the lesser work first, even though it's second in terms of chronology, just because I feel like getting it out of the way. Director John Guillerman's TARZAN GOES TO INDIA registers as a huge disappointment alongside the same director's excellent TARZAN'S GREATEST ADVENTURE, even though the director once again shot the ape-man's adventures on colorful location-settings.

Theoretically the setting in an Indian jungle should have sparked the creativity of the writers (one of whom was Guillerman). India has long been a watchword for the wondrous and the exotic, and even Tarzan's long-standing concern with elephants might have been related to Indian beliefs or customs concerning the animals. But INDIA is not much more than a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC travelogue with a little action interspersed.

The plot is as predictably simple as the hoary ivory-hunter schtick from the 30s films. Tarzan, who just happens to be friends with a Maharajah, is called to India for his elephant-expertise. The Indian government has given an engineering company permission to construct a new hydroelectric dam in a certain valley, in order to bring the prosperity of progress to the locals. Unfortunately, some 300 elephants dwell in the valley, and they'll all be drowned when the dam's building inundates the valley. There's one way that Tarzan and his allies (a young boy named "Jai," and the Maharajah's daughter) can lead the elephants out of the valley, but it means trampling some of the construction-work of the engineers. Most of the engineers, with the exception of heavy Brice (Leo Gordon), don't want to kill elephants (nothing is said of other animals in the valley) but they're desperately trying to finish the dam before the monsoon season, so human progress comes first. Tarzan has a handful of episode encounters with local wildlife (such as a nice struggle with a cobra) before he leads his allies and the elephant-herd through the engineer's construction to safety. Then, with a nod to the importance of progress, he and his allies help the engineers rebuild, and everyone's happy but the villain Brice, who gets killed earlier.

There's nothing horribly wrong with INDIA; it's just flat, as are most of the actors' performances. Jock Mahoney's first of two performances of Tarzan is adequate, but he doesn't quite pull off Gordon Scott's steely-eyed glare at the film's villain. None of the one-shot characters are very interesting, though the character of Jai (played by an Indian actor of the same name) seems to be an early template for another Jai, a support-character played by Manuel Padilla Jr. in the 1966-69 Tarzan teleseries.