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TARZAN’S GREATEST ADVENTURE
Rating: 
UK. 1959.
Director – John Guillermin, Screenplay – John Guillermin & Bernie Giler, Story – Les Crutchfield, Producer – Sy Weintraub, Photography – Ted Scaife, Music – Douglas Gamley, Art Direction – Michael Stringer. Production Company – Solar Film Productions.
Cast:
Gordon Scott (Tarzan), Anthony Quayle (Slade), Sara Shane (Angie Lowering), Niall MacGinnis (Krieger), Scilla Gabel (Toni), Sean Connery (O’Bannion), Al Mulock (Dino)
Plot: A group of white men disguised as natives massacre a native encampment and steal a supply of dynamite. Tarzan comes by not long after and realizes that the white men are led by his old enemy Slade. Slade and his men head upriver by boat to a diamond mine, whose location only Slade knows, where Slade intends to use the dynamite to unearth the entrance. Joined by downed pilot Angie Lowering, Tarzan gives pursuit, determined to stop his old enemy.
Tarzan's Greatest Adventure was the 24th in the series of Tarzan films that began with Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) starring Johnny Weissmuller. By the point of Tarzan's Greatest Adventure, the Tarzan series was over three decades old and the title role has passed through two studios – MGM and then RKO Radio Pictures – and the loincloth has passed between three actors – Johnny Weissmuller and Lex Barker, before ending in the hands of Gordon Scott. Most of the other Tarzan films had settled into a comfortable, easy formula – Tarzan swinging on a vine, speaking pidgin English; routine plots concerning evil white trappers/evil natives etc; and comic relief frolics with Cheetah. That all changed with the entry of producer Sy Weintraub into the series, which began with Tarzan's Greatest Adventure. Sy Weintraub made a concerted effort to take the Tarzan film back to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ original conception – that of a primal hero who speaks perfect English and can operate with equal agility in both civilized society and the world of the jungle. Sy Weintraub would make six other Tarzan films – Tarzan the Magnificent (1960), Tarzan Goes to India (1962), Tarzan’s Three Challenges (1963), Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1967), Tarzan and the Great River (1968) and Tarzan and the Jungle Boy (1968). Many of these invariably rank among the best considered of the Tarzan films by fans.
Tarzan's Greatest Adventure is directed by John Guillermin, who would later go onto to also direct Tarzan Goes to India and became best known in the 1970s for The Towering Inferno (1974) and the infamous Dino de Laurentiis King Kong (1976) debacle and its sequel King Kong Lives (1986), as well one further venture back into jungle adventures with Sheena (1984). It is immediately apparent that care and attention has been placed into Tarzan's Greatest Adventure. John Guillermin gives the film a gritty realism that had been lacking in the Tarzan series since at least 1934. There are some exciting action sequences – Tarzan hunting through the jungle, firing down on his pursuers with arrows, an incredibly tense scene where a tarantula crawls up Gordon Scott’s leg, Tarzan trapping Slade’s boat with fallen trees and they throwing dynamite to try and kill him, Sara Shane’s suspenseful venture into the villain’s boat to get medicine for Tarzan, and especially the fabulous climactic clifftop fight between Slade and Tarzan. Gordon Scott’s Tarzan is given a toughness that you would never see in Johnny Weissmuller’s far cuter version of the role – at one point, he shoots a man at point blank range with an arrow. At the end of the film, we see Gordon Scott standing atop the cliff looking down as Sara Shane’s boat passes by on the river below – something that clearly emphasizes that Tarzan's Greatest Adventure contains none of the warm fuzzy romantic fadeouts that the other Tarzan films do.
Gordon Scott was rather wooden in the role of Tarzan in his initial entries but has grown comfortably into the part – without the pidgin English, his Tarzan comes with a grimly determined conviction. The villains are also depicted with an unusual degree of convincingly rough-hewn complexity – Slade is one of the few villains ever created in the films that was a worthy nemesis for Tarzan. One can also note one of the early screen appearances of Sean Connery – and in a rare villainous role for him – as one of Slade’s gang who gets killed off by Tarzan.
Copyright Richard Scheib 2004
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