Tarzan and the Leopard Woman (1946)

Touches You

The Age of Commercialism

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

"Tarzan and the Leopard Woman" is probably the sexiest Tarzan in this series. Since it's 1946, you naturally are not presented with anything graphic, but with nearly all this cast wearing very little, the possibilities are all there for a wild sexual fantasy. Johnny Weismueller has long outgrown his days as a lean, jungle machine. Here, he's big, buff and has obviously worked out. We see his pectorals, his concave stomach, powerful shoulders and thighs. His loin-cloth is almost a bikini. The glorious Acquanetta looks fabulous in her clinging gowns and robes as Lea, the high priestess of the leopard man cult. For once, all the male extras in their brief sarongs are handsome and buff and they really show their stuff when they perform their leopard dance. Just as sexy is Anthony Caruso who shows off his muscular torso as Lea's accomplice. Johnny Sheffield is now a handsome teenage boy and he would soon be making his own jungle series as Bomba, the Jungle Boy. As has been cited by other reviewers, the most erotic scene is when Tarzan is captured and bound to a post in the temple of the leopard cult. HIs handsome body is covered with welts and his chest is thrust out with his hands bound behind him. Lea approaches him slowly, holding her leopard club with claws. The scene is played nearly silently. Tarzan's chest is heaving up and down in anticipation and then, there's an interruption. The nearly naked Tarzan, helpless, must have aroused many a fantasy in 1946 and by millions of TV viewers later when it played on TV. The movie is beautifully photographed and cast. This is one Tarzan movie I play regularly. Rarely did Tarzan have so many attractive cast members to play against.

Tarzan and the Leopard Woman (1946) ** (out of 4) The tenth film in Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan series is without question the dumbest so far as I'm sure a 5-year-old could have came up with a better plot. This time out people are being killed by what appears to be leopards but Tarzan isn't so sure. It turns out that a woman (Acquanetta) has grown tired of the changes going on in Africa so she's brought together hundreds of people who are dressing as leopards and attacking people. Yeah, once you stop laughing over this plot you're going to realize that there's really not too much going on in this film. At 72-minutes the film seems to drag on longer than ROOTS and for the life of me I can't wrap my brain around what the producers were thinking. The only possible explanation is that there wasn't any money left at RKO to hire someone to come up with a good story so they took the silliest thing they could come up with. The biggest problem is that the story is just so far-fetched that it's impossible to ever feel threatened by the killers. Their costumes are all rather silly and seeing dozens of men running around the jungle in these outfits just made one want to laugh. There's never any real drama, no suspenseful scenes and even the comedy bits with Cheetah are just downright weak and they never get a single laugh. Weissmuller, for the first time in the series, appears to be very bored as he doesn't give the character a bit of life and usually you can just see the joy coming out of the actor but that's not the case here. Brenda Joyce is back as Jane and offers up a decent performance but the screenplay doesn't offer her much. Johnny Sheffield is back as Boy and the most shocking thing is seeing how much he has grown since the previous movie, which was shot less than a year before this one. Acquanetta, best remember for playing Paula the Ape Woman in Universal's CAPTIVE WILD WOMAN, isn't given much of a role here but she at least looks good in her outfits. Tommy Cook plays a pretty important role as Kimba, a child spy but his character is so annoying that you really can't help but hate him and want to see Boy bash him into the ground. You can tell that RKO had pretty much given this thing as little attention as possible as the sets aren't nearly as good, the story poor and there's simply not an ounce of energy to be found anywhere in the picture. TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD WOMAN is a pretty bland movie from start to finish and what's even worse is how boring it is even in the Saturday-matinée feel.

With the end of WWII, every Hollywood studio faced some major financial problems (a return of the high-priced talent, under contract and expecting to work, smaller audiences, as people had other ways to pass the time, increased production costs, government investigations into the industry), and for the smaller studios, the effect was most pronounced, as shooting budgets would be slashed on many features. TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD WOMAN marked the beginning of the decline of the RKO-Johnny Weissmuller films, with a BIG drop in quality from the previous year's TARZAN AND THE AMAZONS.The film is a routine tale of a leopard cult which terrorizes the local African community, while attempting to thwart the government's plan to 'bring civilization' to another village, by capturing caravans and killing everyone, dressed in some REALLY cheesy, leopard-skin, clawed costumes! A dying survivor only has time to utter "leopards" before he expires, and while Tarzan quickly realizes this wasn't the work of animals (and HE would KNOW!), nobody believes him, and the cult turns loose an actual pack of leopards on the next caravan, to discredit him. Even Jane (Brenda Joyce, in her second outing in the role), thinks the Ape Man is getting a bit 'balmy', so Tarzan shrugs off his suspicions, and returns home to do some plumbing work on the tree house(??!!) Naturally, the cult, led by their 'plant' in the government, Nazi-like 'Dr. Lazar' (Edgar Barrier) and buxom, exotic high priestess, Lea (Acquanetta), worries about Tarzan again disrupting their 'Master Plan', so she sends her weaselly little brother (Tommy Cook) to spy on the Ape Man and his family.Eventually, Tarzan DOES again get involved; he, Jane, and Boy are captured, and dragged into the cult's cave headquarters to be executed, so, of course, Cheeta has to save Tarzan (as always...) The Ape Man rescues the innocents, kills the baddies, and destroys the cult and their hideout...but, by this point, who really cares? The film has little to offer, other than some silly, if unintentionally camp 'cult dances', the ever-reliable humor of Cheeta, and the novelty of seeing Boy (Johnny Sheffield) in the midst of puberty. Johnny Weissmuller, at 42, looked more 'middle-aged' than ever, and his once-graceful swimmer's physique had packed on some pounds! The series was definitely on a downward slide, and things would only get worse...

MY favorite of the Johnny Weisemuller Tarzan movies, contains great B-movie over-the-top performances and classic lines. The Tarzan family's shopping trip to Zambezi is cut short by the arrival of a bloodied,dying man, the only survivor of a caravan apparently attacked by leopards. But the Jungle Man knows something is not quite right. "Man not killed by Leopard" he declares, pointing out that leopards use not just their claws but their teeth to kill. Challenged by skeptics to give an alternative explanation, he responds with the classic line "Something Leopard that isn't Leopard". That something is this freakish cult of Leopard people,who enjoy dressing up in animal skins, attacking people, and ripping out their hearts to sacrifice to their god. They are led by Lea (Aquanetta) (based loosely on the character of the high priestess "La" in the Tarzan novels) and her lover, Lazar, a proto-environmentalist?- who is obsessed with stamping out civilization - a great "over-the-top performance by Edgar Barrier.("Away with them! Down with them!")But the character to watch is "Kimba" Lea's brother, deliciously portrayed by Tommy Cook - as a conniving, sadistic little creep, who despises Lazar and harbors a not-so-secret lust for his sister and for Jane, the "lady with golden hair". Taunted by his friends for his pretentiousness,Kimba boasts "When I come back,I will show you a heart". Kimba ingratiates himself into the Tarzan family, then turns on the unsuspecting Jane and Boy declaring "Now I take back TWO hearts". It stretches credulity when the bumbling Boy temporarily overpowers the clever and calculating Kimba.Tarzan knows more about the ways of the jungle and its inhabitants than anyone, so of course NO ONE in the movie takes his warnings seriously until another caravan is attacked, and the "Zambezi maidens" (student teachers who have been hired to civilize the natives)are captured, along with the entire Tarzan family, and all are bound and prepared for sacrifice to the leopard god. Following classic adventure movie logic, the leopard folks bind Tarzan to the main support beam of their temple, providing him (with the aid of the ever-helpful Cheetah)not only with the opportunity to escape but to literally bring down the house. In a final moment of dramatic retribution, the dying Kimba finally gets his coveted heart - Lazar's heart.As a kid, I just loved this movie, and I wish it were available on video or DVD. Does anyone know if it is going to be released?