Tarzan The Ape Man is a 1959 film with Denny Miller as Tarzan. I was pretty sure I hadn't see it before, but truth be told, it turns out that I had seen parts of it before. MGM has re-make rights to their 1932 film Tarzan Of The Apes so they decided to re-make the film. Sy Weintraub had the rights to the other Tarzan films and he was making Tarzan's Greatest Adventure at the same time.
For an MGM film it seems pretty low budget, making it, rather sadly, a poor addition to the Tarzan film library. Roger Hill beats some words into a screenplay but he doesn't have much of a story. Joseph M Newman directed the scenes that were new to the film. The film makers borrow heavily from the 1932 Tarzan Of The Apes, the 1934 Tarzan And His Mate, and the 1937 King Soloman's Mines. All of those were B&W films and this new one is color. You'll notice that right off. There's a good bit of miss matched color stock footage of animals wedged in there too.
Besides Denny Miller, there's Joanna Barnes, Cesare Danova and Robert Douglas in the cast. Joanna is Jane, Robert her father and Cesare their guide. They encounter a Tarzan that doesn't speak much English. Tarzan fights some critters, Denny Miller fights a stuffed leopard, and Johnny Weissmuller fights a crocodile. That was the footage from Tarzan And His Mate. There's a good bit of tramping through the jungle and some noticeable rock climbing. It's all to the score by jazz thingy Shorty Rogers. I can't say I disliked the movie but it sure wasn't something anyone could be proud of. Since I bought it, I'll keep it, making my Tarzan collection that much more complete.
The Evil Of Dracula is the 3rd of 1970s vampire films from Toho. It's came out in 1974 and once again the style copies the Hammer horror film. A teacher arrives at a school to find the Principal's wife has just died. She's down in the basement for a week. It's a local custom. The teacher has an odd dream about the dead wife. Soon enough it's a battle to the death with the vampires. There's plenty of tooth flashing and dripping blood. It's similar to the other two films in quality. I'm going to keep an eye on the price for the three film set. It'll get cheaper someday or I won't bother with it.
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