Last week I watched Tarzan and His Mate (1934) on TCM. Some people don’t like it when these old jungle movie are shown because they think they’re racist. They’re right! This movie makes all the white people look like a bunch of hypocritical, dishonest, petulant, greedy, cheating, bloodthirsty, murderous, back-stabbing thieves! (<Excepting Tarzan and Jane, of course.) I know some of us are like that, but come on! We’re not all like that. I suppose they also make the African natives look primitive and stuff, but they come off a lot better than the Brits! I mean, at least they’re loyal and honest. Even the cannibals eat what they kill, so they’re not doing it out of greed or just to be jerks. One of the white traders shoots a bearer just because he’s tired and he wants to rest for a second. Yikes!
One of the exciting scenes in this movie’s first half has the safari of three white hunters and their native bearers come upon a cliff where gorillas are throwing boulders down onto them. But we can clearly see that these are men in gorilla suits, and not actual gorillas. Oh, and they’re throwing fake rocks, too. But this brings up an interesting point; what’s really scarier: actual gorillas, or men in gorilla suits? I’d have to point out that this is in the steaming-hot jungles of “darkest Africa” (as they used to call it). You’d expect to find gorillas there, and if they were not pleased to see you, it might well be a harrowing ordeal. But imagine for a moment that you are actually on safari in such a hot, humid, remote place, and you come under attack from a bunch of guys dressed up in gorilla suits. These guys have got to be absolutely insane! It’s ridiculously hot out, there are wild animals everywhere, but rather than worrying about that, these guys have dressed up in sweat-box-style plushie suits and are attacking the one group that might afford them protection from everything else. I mean, if they’re crazy enough to do that, and they can take that kind of heat, boredom and punishment, what else are they capable of? I contend that there’s absolutely nothing more terrifying than coming across a group of humans who are so fully bat-shit crazy as someone who would sit around in the 100+ degree temperature jungle in a gorilla suit, waiting for someone to come sauntering by so they could toss phony boulders at you. But that’s just me.
Another reason movies like this one might not be well-received today is that they are a little mean to some of the animals. This might get PeTA’s feathers up a bit. (And remember from the Robitussin ad where they had used an actual orangutan already, that’s no excuse; they had to substitute in a fake digital orangutan instead. So the fact that it’s already been done is not acceptable: just like in elementary school and you run, they make you go back and walk the whole distance again to punish you for it.) Yes, they could be nicer, I’m afraid, to the lions. These big kitties get shot at and burned with torches and tripped with ropes and stabbed with knives and spears, etc. But I could feel sorrier for them, you know. After all, they read the script, and it’s clear that they agreed to do the movie because they thought they were going to get to eat all the people. So they’re not all innocent either. Sure, the fact that they can’t read all that well may have made them easier to fool, but they still intended to attack and consume the cast, so they were still asking for it when you think about it. So enjoy the animal scenes, and imagine how lame it all would have looked with fake lions. If nothing else, that will surely make you feel better.
