Who payed the critics

Such a frustrating disappointment

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

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.

Tarzan and the Leopard Woman (Kurt Neumann, 1946) - This is a touch better than Amazons, with plenty of action (quite well done) and a lively performance by Weissmuller, who'd looked a bit out of sorts in the previous entry. The plot, by now following a path through the jungle wilds so well-trodden it resembles a motorway, sees the Ape Man battling a weird cult with silly leopard costumes that's really into robbery and human sacrifice. Considering the movies were aimed at kids, their marketing is curiously sexualised, with the poster art invariably flagging up the boobs of whichever minor character was most well-endowed. Here it's Acquanetta, who gets shared billing. Her leopard bikini is at least a bit better thought-out than those ridiculous capes the other cult members are wearing.I rather enjoyed the film, particularly its adherence to near wall-to-wall action, but it provides quite a bit of unintentional hilarity. That comes partly from its incredibly low opinion of natives (who are all duplicitous, hateful savages) and partly from the barely-choreographed dance the leopard men do around the fire. They look like drunk clubbers wearing their wives' coats. One interesting element of the film is "half-native" Edgar Barrier, a Western-educated cultist who denounces the decadence of the imperialists and leads the fight against them. All the RKO series regulars return here: Brenda Joyce is still somewhat one-note as Jane, Boy is entering puberty (giving him an all-new voice and face) and Cheeta hogs the limelight once more. I'm going to be an old cynic and suggest that it's not really him playing that music on the trumpet, though.

Johnny Weissmuller made a name for himself as Tarzan at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio. However, and I am not sure why, Weissmuller and 'Boy' (Johnny Sheffield) jumped from this prestige studio to the less than stellar RKO--where the budgets shrank considerably as did the quality. The scripts got a lot more weird and the films became chock full of poorly integrated stock footage and animals that often weren't even African. Additionally, 'Jane' (Maureen O'Sullivan) remained at MGM and a new leading lady needed to be found. After having the character be 'off on vacation in England' or 'helping with the war effort' in a couple films, RKO decided to re-cast this character with Brenda Joyce--who bore little similarity to O'Sullivan.This film about a silly cult of the Leopard. Its followers don't want civilization to encroach on their part of the jungle and so they kill people in caravans who cross nearby. But to hide that people are responsible, they make it look like leopards did this. Now here is the funny part--these guys dress up like these big cats--complete with metal claws and silly leopard costumes. It's even sillier when they dance about back at their lair--as if it was choreographed by a monkey! Early on Tarzan tells everyone that it is NOT leopards that have been doing the killing. Despite this King of the Jungle ALWAYS being right in the past, he is quickly ignored and the idiots in charge just go out and shoot a lot of poor old leopards. Eventually, this leads to more attacks--including one where four hot school teachers are kidnapped. When they kidnap Tarzan, who's to save him?! Tune in and see the surprising answer (hint: it is neither Jane nor Boy).This is fun to watch (Cheeta is in rare form) but ultimately a pretty dumb outing for the series. While not nearly as lame as "Tarzan and the Mermaid" (by far the worst of the Weissmuller films for RKO), its plot is so silly that it can never be taken very seriously. Worth seeing for fans of the series, but if you are a novice to them DON'T start with this one--you'll assume the others are all equally silly--which they aren't.By the way, in the summary I say that this film signals that the series had 'jumped the shark'. In other words, it arrives AFTER the series has gone into serious decline and the writers are trying desperately to find some way to convince viewers to watch (such as the Leopard angle). Likewise, by this film RKO completely gave up on having extras that looked African in any way. There are no black extras and the leopard cult look as if they are from Central America. In fact, in the final film of this series just a couple years later, the movie was filmed in Mexico--with lots of Mexicans and even Aztec sets!!

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?