TARZAN THE FEARLESS (1933) ***1/2 Well, first off, one of the greatest titles in the history of people naming things, obviously. It's an Edgar Rice Burroughs tale, but he can't be blamed for the indescribable entertainment value of this aesthetic calamity. Not entirely, anyway-I mean, yeah, arabs running around in the jungle probably seemed sensible enough to a guy mining for gold in Idaho, or whatever. Buster Crabbe is an unimaginative bodybuilder's conception of Tarzan with advanced dementia. My teenage daughter wandered in during the middle of the film and caught him hugging a baby deer that had been caught in a trap. Her look of utter condescension was historic. If Crabbe is the dumbest Tarzan ever imaginable, Jaqueline Wells (a/k/a Julie Bishop) is his soulmate from Century City. While he is arguably the worst actor ever captured on film, home video or otherwise, she is merely competitive, except for the "stupidest smile and laugh" category. It's nothing short of tragic that they didn't team up for 30 films together, culminating beneath the watchful hand of Ed Wood. Stock footage was apparently mixed, so some animals flee the storm, while others run directly into it. I can't imagine watching this thing stoned, it would be the most confusing thing ever. At one point they have a '50s sci-fi soundtrack superimposed on proto-Dr. John organized moaning. They end up beset by a cult of emerald worshippers who live in a cave, and whose high priest wanders around in a bejeweled dunce cap. Nothing is this funny entirely by accident, you have to give Robert F. Hill credit for having an eye of some kind that should never be defined, for fear that it could become contagious. I don't think that either set out to intentionally make "bad" movies, but Ed Wood did seem to have more awareness of what he was doing. That the film continues pointlessly for what seems to be the final hours only adds to its charm, so far as I'm concerned. They must have just had a lot of extra film that day. I burst into fits of hysterics, just thinking about it in a general sense.
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