Michael_Elliott Tarzan the Fearless (1933)** (out of 4)Mary Brooks (Julie Bishop) travels into the jungle with some men to search for her missing father. Thankfully she runs into Tarzan (Buster Crabbe) who helps on her search as well as helps fight some of the bad people in her group. TARZAN THE FEARLESS is a pretty bad movie that features all sorts of campy moments but I think it remains watchable because it does have a certain charm thanks to its badness. Originally this was meant to be a 12-part serial but sadly that version is now missing. The producer basically took the first four chapters and turned them into this movie so that will explain why things sometimes don't make sense or that the story is jumping all around the place. Without the serial to see exactly what they did, it's hard to say if they improved anything but most of the time these serial chapters to features don't work. There are quite a few campy moments with this film and most of them are Tarzan himself. He has a really silly and annoying howl here that will certainly make you laugh. As with the first MGM film, Tarzan can't speak here so instead of talking to Mary he always breaks into this weird laugh that makes him seem rather slow. It's clear Crabbe was going for a different type of performance because he makes the Tarzan character more of a mentally challenged person than anything else. Bishop is certainly easy on the eyes as the love interest. Philo McCullough was actually good as the main villain and we get Edward Woods playing the good guy. The film is full of stock footage, fights with lions and of course the eye-rolling moment of yet another beauty getting into their bathing suit and going swimming when of course a croc shows up. TARZAN THE FEARLESS is a real mess of a movie but fans of bad cinema should get a few kicks out of it.I will also say that Turner Classic Movies showed a 87-minute version, which I actually found much better than an earlier version running 71-minutes and included on one of those public domain packs. If you think the fuller version doesn't make much sense try watching that shorter one!

kidboots Buster Crabbe was the Tarzan I most vividly remember from my childhood television viewing days and after getting a chance to re-view "Tarzan the Fearless" after almost 50 years, I can't understand why he wasn't MGM's first choice. He was given a screen test along with many others including Joel McCrea and Clark Gable but Johnny Weissmuller was Metro's final choice. Crabbe was very handsome and had a far better physique than Weissmuller which he did manage to maintain - apparently in 1970 Crabbe returned to swimming in a Senior Sports Swimming meet and managed to set a world record in the 400 metre freestyle event. Even though he didn't catch Metro's eye, Paramount was interested and he pleased them with "King of the Jungle" and later that year starred in a serial "Tarzan the Fearless" which was also re-edited into an 85 minute feature which opened at the Roxy in 1933. As Time magazine said "From the neck down Crabbe easily equals Weissmuller as an attraction to female audiences, from the neck up he is a vast improvement"!!!This is supposedly (according to the preface) Tarzan's "strangest and most romantic adventure" and being a pre-coder there is lots of double meaning dialogue and many chances for Mary to be scantily clad in the jungle. Tarzan is asked by Dr. Brooks (E. Alyn Warren) to take a letter to his daughter Mary (fetching Jacqueline Welles) who is searching for him in the jungle. It wouldn't be a Tarzan movie without crooked safari guides - in this case they want to ditch the pesky girl and get down to the real business which is claiming a 10,000 pounds reward if they can prove Tarzan is dead - oh, and they also plan to look for a lost Emerald mine!!! Tarzan has already made himself known to viewers with an establishing scene that shows off his glorious physique, swinging through the trees (he made it look very real and dangerous) and also shows he is a defender of the weak as he fights a lion to the death to save a defenceless deer. Camping by a river Mary indulges in a near nude swim that brings Tarzan to her rescue when the river turns out to be crocodile infested. He is able to deliver the letter and also guides them to her father's hut but the father has gone to the temple - but wait!! he leaves a map.Being edited from a 12 episode serial there is plenty of action and villains!! Suddenly Bedouins appear (Mischa Auer turns up as a High Priest and beautiful Carlotta Monti as the High Priestess) to kidnap Mary for a Sultan's harem but Tarzan is on hand to save her from a horse stampede and whisk Mary to the treetops at last!! By the end the bad villain is dead, the half hearted villain, who was forcing Mary into marriage with him in return for Tarzan's life has repented and has sent her after Tarzan for the fadeout. At least with this Tarzan, apart from a scene where he is taught to read, there are no scenes to make him feelinferior because of his jungle upbringing - no scoffing at his tablemanners etc. And this Mary (or Jane) looked at him with longing - dare I say lust, she did not try to show she was superior by laughing at him!!! In different books I've read the story goes that once Jacqueline Welles changed her name to Julie Bishop in the early 1940s her career really took off, but looking at her filmography at IMDb she had a pretty big career in the thirties - she was a 1934 Wampas Baby Star and was the female lead in the horror cult classic "The Black Cat" (1934).

wes-connors In an attempt to cash-in on MGM's successful "Tarzan the Ape Man" (1932) starring Johnny Weissmuller, producer Sol Lesser went ahead with a serial follow-up. Perhaps not expecting its revival would become so valuable a property, MGM had not fully secured the rights. Cashing in on cashing in, the first four chapters of the "Tarzan" serial were edited into a feature-length "Tarzan the Fearless". The full 12-part serial is presently lost. This is not a good film, but it's worth seeing muscularly handsome Buster Crabbe in the lead role; he has a different, more spirited, take on the jungle man. Watchers should be advised that Mr. Crabbe's loincloth seems to be missing half of its backside, but his front is securely covered.*** Tarzan the Fearless (8/11/33) Robert F. Hill ~ Buster Crabbe, Julie Bishop, E. Alyn Warren, Edward Woods

longrush The Tarzan of the movies was a sissy, compared with the blood thirsty apeman of the early Burroughs novels. The real Tarzan ate raw meat and the blood ran off his chin. Moviegoers might not have been up to this kind of realism. That aside, this is a worthwhile, albeit early, Tarzan film. Buster Crabbe was a better athlete than other actors who played the role; like Weismuller, Crabbe had an Olympic gold medal and was more muscular. He also had a skimpier costume in the pre-Hayes Office days.The plot skips all over the place, probably because it was edited down from an episodic serial. The chimp is there, playing cute, as he did in almost all Tarzan films. The trapeze or vine swinging work is considerably better here. If Buster Crabbe didn't actually do it, he appeared to be quite high and hanging on precariously. Unfortunately the Tarzan yell, a trademark of these films, is a mild bleat compared with those that came later. I miss that in this version.All in all, I'd give this a fair to good grade.