User Reviews

Buster Crabbe plays Tarzan in this short movie that was the first 4 episodes of a serial. He's GOT to be the first blonde Tarzan ever! I heard this was just awful. I admit the plot jumps around and the print I saw was in terrible condition--but I liked it. Mostly it was because of Crabbe--he had a beautiful, muscular body and was much better-looking than Johnny Weismuller. He also acted better--Weismuller always had a blank look on his face--Crabbe changes expression often. Also he wore the skimpiest lion cloth I've ever seen. His acting wasn't bad either--I was pretty surprised! He hated making this though--he said the "damned" monkey who played Cheetah was always biting him! I realize it's a matter of taste but I think Crabbe was easily the best-looking and sexist Tarzan ever.

Worth taking a look at.

In 1932, MGM made one of the best Tarzan movies of all time, "Tarzan the Ape Man". It was so well made that it resulted in a long string of movies with Johnny Weissmuller and it made him a major star. A year after this film, Sol Lesser produced a serialized version of the Tarzan story and in this case the production starred Buster Crabbe. Why Crabbe? Well, like Weissmuller, Crabbe was a gold medal winning American swimmer...and Lesser certainly couldn't afford Weissmuller! No, a Lesser film was known for economy...and because of that, you would expect his movie to be less refined and as well written.

It is important that you understand that I am reviewing the full-length movie version of Lesser's Tarzan film. It also came out in a 12-part serialized version...though apparently it's been lost and the movie version if the only one available today. If I hear about the serial being discovered, I'll try to update my review. And, considering how the film is a whittled down version of a much longer serial, I was not surprised that the movie seemed choppy.

Like Weissmuller, Crabbe's Tarzan is barechested and well coiffed despite being raised by apes in the African jungles. Unlike Weissmuller, Crabbe's Tarzan yell is pretty enemic! Both took advantage of their swimming skills by having them swim during the films.

The story involves Tarzan falling for a blonde who ISN'T named Jane. Unfortunately, she's traveling with some dirtbags who want to kill Tarzan (why???) and in the end, Tarzan saves the day and gets the girl.

So is this Tarzan tale any good? Well, it's not terrible...and the animal scenes (such as when Tarzan fights a lion) aren't bad at all...though, sadly, like too many Tarzan pics, there is also ample use of stock footage and a few non-African animals (such as American alligators instead of African crocodiles). As for Tarzan, while Crabbe looked nice, he wasn't as good in the role as Weissmuller...and mostly said nothing...choosing instead to pantomime much of the time or utter a few goofy laughs. Overall, a cheap curiosity that is watchable but not up to the standards of MGM's series which was begun the year before this one....and much like the quality of Lesser's many B-westerns.

Unintentionally funny in places and downright hilarious in others, he's no Johnny Weissmuller but you can't say you've lived until you've seen Buster Crabbe spank a monkey. I bought this on DVD because one: it was cheap, and two: out of curiosity, as I've only seen Buster Crabbe play Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers which I enjoyed watching as a kid on TV during school holidays. I also loved the Tarzan films with Johnny Weissmuller. So I thought buying this DVD was going tick all the boxes. - I was wrong, so so wrong.

Firstly there was nothing wrong with Crabbe,s Tarzan he has the physique and good looks to easily carry the part. It's just that the filming and script is just all over the place and this lets him down, he also wears the shortest loin cloth and skimpiest briefs I've seen in Tarzan films of this era. But what stands out for me is the scene at the beginning of where we see Tarzan spank his monkey - THIS IS NOT A EUPHEMISM!

Tarzan The Fearless has swimming icon Buster Crabbe in the role of Edgar Rice Burroughs noble savage of the African jungle. What I'm reviewing is a condensed version of a Tarzan serial which this film was.

Condensed when referring to serials is never good. I'm not a big fan of serials in general, but editing them down to feature film you lose a whole lot of continuity. I have to confess I gave up trying to follow the plot.

Crabbe though was one magnificent specimen. We have a blond 'Jane' played by Julie Bishop who with her fiancé Edward Woods is on an expedition to find her scientist father E. Alyn Warren. Bishop and Woods have a pair of treacherous guides in Philo McCullough and Matthew Betz who've got an agenda of their own which is to locate a fortune in emeralds from the lost people of Zar whom Warren is trying to locate and study.

Crabbe even in the condensed version is wrestling with lions and crocodiles and the people of Zar bailing these intruders out of trouble. All in all viewed today it's pretty silly.

In an attempt to cash-in on MGM's successful "Tarzan the Ape Man" (1932) starring Johnny Weissmuller, producer Sol Lesser went ahead with a serial follow-up. Perhaps not expecting its revival would become so valuable a property, MGM had not fully secured the rights. Cashing in on cashing in, the first four chapters of the "Tarzan" serial were edited into a feature-length "Tarzan the Fearless". The full 12-part serial is presently lost. This is not a good film, but it's worth seeing muscularly handsome Buster Crabbe in the lead role; he has a different, more spirited, take on the jungle man. Watchers should be advised that Mr. Crabbe's loincloth seems to be missing half of its backside, but his front is securely covered.

*** Tarzan the Fearless (8/11/33) Robert F. Hill ~ Buster Crabbe, Julie Bishop, E. Alyn Warren, Edward Woods

The Tarzan of the movies was a sissy, compared with the blood thirsty apeman of the early Burroughs novels. The real Tarzan ate raw meat and the blood ran off his chin. Moviegoers might not have been up to this kind of realism. That aside, this is a worthwhile, albeit early, Tarzan film. Buster Crabbe was a better athlete than other actors who played the role; like Weismuller, Crabbe had an Olympic gold medal and was more muscular. He also had a skimpier costume in the pre-Hayes Office days.

The plot skips all over the place, probably because it was edited down from an episodic serial. The chimp is there, playing cute, as he did in almost all Tarzan films. The trapeze or vine swinging work is considerably better here. If Buster Crabbe didn't actually do it, he appeared to be quite high and hanging on precariously. Unfortunately the Tarzan yell, a trademark of these films, is a mild bleat compared with those that came later. I miss that in this version.

All in all, I'd give this a fair to good grade.

TAZAN THE FEARLESS (1933 B&W) features Olympic medal winner Buster Crabbe as Tarzan. On the plus side, Crabbe has the requisite physique for the role and his expressions are more developed than Johnny Weissmuller's blank look; in addition Crabbe has one of the best Tazan yells that I've heard (this is in contrast to another reviewer who panned it). After slaying a lion he lets out a near-bloodcurdling victory cry that well captures the scream as depicted by Burroughs in his books. On the down side, Crabbe wears a loincloth that is ridiculously skimpy on the backside, almost like the costumer was gay and wanted to flagrantly show-off Crabbe's buns. Another negative aspect is that this is a second-rate production compared to the Weissmuller films of the same era, no doubt the result of rival producers wanting to cash-in on the huge success of the Weismuller films.

GRADE: C

Run-of-the-mill Tarzan movie dubiously faithful to Edgar Rice Burroughs , shot in short budget and financed by regular producer , Sol Lesser . The world-wide popularity of the Tarzan stories has prompted the author to tell, now for the first time , a new story of the Ape Man's strangest and most romantic adventures . Here Tarzan , Lord of the Jungle : barrel-chested Buster Crabbe , saves the damsel in distress , the blond Mary Brooks : Jacqueline Welles or Julie Bishop and helps the young girl to find her missing father . The latter falls into the hands of " the people of Zar , God of the Emerald Fingers" . Swing into hot action from the opening shot and thunders on its blazing way .. from daring action to nerve-tingling thrill... from gripping suspense to starting climax ¡.-

Adventurous and routine Tarzan movie with usual ingredients , such as : serial acrobatics , the vine swinging , angry natives taking prisoners and a lot of footage about wildlife . Of course , Tarzan fights enemies and animals , gives the famous cry of the bull ape and vine-swing . Backlot non-sense with good-looking , handsome Buster Crabbe as Lord of the Jungle and Jacqueline Welles as his beautiful partenaire and hammy supporting actors with plenty of opportunity to chew on scenario such as : Edward Woods , Philo McCullough and the usual comical player Mischa Auer . Stars Buster Crabbe , he is much better fared in the now campy Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials than in this average Tarzan film . Co-stars Jacqueline Welles who as Julie Bishop had a decent cinematic career , she plays the kidnapped damsel who seduces the dumb beast , and it is all great fun but really mediocre . Hollywood at its peak but no relation to Edgar Rice Burroughs's hero.

The picture was financed by producer Sol Lesser in short budget and to go on producing several Tarzan movies . As he financed the last films played by the best Tarzan , Johnny Weissmuller , such as : Tarzan's Triumph , Tarzan's desert Mystery , Tarzan and the Amazons, Tarzan and the Leopard Woman, Tarzan and the Huntress, , Tarzan and the Mermaids . Subsequently , Sol Lesser hired Lex Barker as Tarzan producing him the following ones : Tarzan's magic Fountain, Tarzan and the salvage girl, Tarzan's peril, Tarzan and the She- Devil , Tarzan's savage fury . After that, Lesser hired the muscle man Gordon Scott who acted in : Tarzan fights for his life by Bruce H. Humberstone , Tarzan's greatest adventure by John Guillermin, Tarzan and the Last Safari, Tarzan the Magnificent , and Tarzan and the Trappers directed by Sandy Howard and Charles Haas . This Tarzan the Fearless produced by Sol Lesser was regularly directed by Robert Hill. Rating 4.5/10 . Only for Tarzan movies completists and hardcore lovers of the classic personage written by Edgar Rice Burroughs .

...this time from the Principal Distributing company and director Robert F. Hill. Buster Crabbe stars as the title character, a white man raised by apes in a remote part of Africa who has become an almost legendary figure among the natives. When a group of Americans and Europeans arrive in the jungle to look for a missing compatriot, Tarzan meets the lovely Mary Brooks (Jaqueline Wells), whom he continuously has to rescue from savage beasts, wild tribesmen, and crooked jewel thieves. Also featuring Eddie Woods, Philo McCullough, E. Alyn Warren, Matthew Betz, Frank Lackteen, Darby Jones, Carlotta Monti, and Mischa Auer.

There's the usual parade of jungle antics: lion attacks (in the jungle again), crocodile attacks (you gotta have an excuse to get Olympic swimmer Crabbe in the water), elephant rides, natives and their "jungle drums". This movie also has the bizarre added bonus of Arab guides who are secretly part of an Ancient Egyptian cult. Crabbe makes for an energetic Lord of the Jungle, and he even appears to be in better shape than Weissmuller was at the time. Wells, who later changed her name to Julie Bishop, is fetching. My favorite moment was when a record player gets cranked up and all of the jungle animals start to dance.

This is a feature version of a 12-chapter serial, although some don't seem to know that the serial exists. As was a semi-common practice of the time, some serials were produced as both a feature and also as a serial. The reason was that some theatres would not book serials but had no qualms about booking a feature edited from a serial, and this practice allowed the serial producer to get a booking in a theatre for his condensed feature that they would not have gotten as a 12-episode serial.

This "feature version" consists of the first four chapters of the 12-chapter SERIAL that was titled "Tarzan the Fearless," , which a great many collectors have in its 12-chapter form (that some don't seem to know exists) and, some of the luckier ones, even have all of the different original one-sheets posters issued with each chapter title, and the full eight-card set of different lobby cards issued with each chapter following the showing of the feature version at theatres that did book serials; and most of those theatres that did book serials didn't bother showing this feature version, opting instead to show one chapter a week for 12 weeks.

The chapter titles for the 12 episodes of this serial (from which the "Tarzan the Fearless" feature version was chopped out of) were: 1. The Dive of Death; 2. The Storm God Strikes; 3. Thundering Death; 4. The Pit of Peril; 5. Blood Money; 6. Voodoo Vengeance; 7. Caught by Cannibals; 8. The Creeping Terror; 9. Eyes of Evil; 10. The Death Plunge; 11. Harvest of Hate and 12. Jungle Justice.

Producer Sol Lesser's plan was to make both a feature version and a serial...and he did both.

Made to ride on the coat-tails of Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan The Ape Man (1932), this adventure for the legendary jungle wild-man stars Buster Crabbe, who would later find fame as the hero of sci-fi serials Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. Crabbe's Tarzan also started life as a serial, the movie version that I saw being cobbled together out of several episodes, which gives the whole thing a rather irritating choppy, episodic feel with obvious scenes originally serving as cliff-hangers.

Crabbe makes for a convincing Tarzan, his athletic swimmer's build making him perfect for the character (although his pre-Hayes code loincloth is a little too skimpy for my liking: there's way too much ass-cheek on display!). Unfortunately, the action primarily consists of Tarzan swinging on vines, and wrassling lions and crocs, which gets fairly tedious after a while (to be fair, in it's original serial format, it was probably only one animal fight per episode). The plot is forgettable stuff: a young woman, Mary (the gorgeous Julie Bishop) goes in search of her father, but her guides have other plans, aiming to collect £10k for the vine-swinger's body and to relieve a local tribe of their ceremonial emeralds.

Of course, Tarzan puts paid to their plans and gets the girl, and all the jungle animals dance to some music played on Mary's gramophone.

5/10. Worth seeing if only for Crabbe's silly grin that makes him look like a simpleton.

TARZAN THE FEARLESS (Sol Lesser Principal Productions, 1933), directed by Robert F. Hill, stars Larry Crabbe, better known as Buster Crabbe, Olympic swimming champion, to the role of Edgar Rice Burrough's creative jungle hero, Tarzan. A year after the highly successful TATZAN THE APE MAN (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1932), which introduced Johnny Weissmuller, another Olympic champion swimmer, as Tarzan, this latest installment was an attempt to reinvent the Tarzan character on an independently scale with new supporting characters. As the opening introduction states, "The worldwide popularity of the "Tarzan" stories has promoted to another tale, for the first time, a new story of the ape man's strangest and most romantic adventures." Initially released in both 12 weekly serial installments and tightly edited feature length film, it's the 85 minute edition that is seemingly available for viewing and reviewing by today's standards.

In the surviving copy often shown on Turner Classic Movies since 2011 (as opposed to shorter 72 minute editions presented either on commercial, public television and video tape since the 1980s), TARZAN THE FEARLESS, set in Africa, opens with Tarzan (Buster Crabbe) vine swinging to the delight of his chimpanzee companion. Tarzan is lord of the jungle, friend of the animals, and hero to those he rescues from danger. Next scene introduces a safari consisting of Mary Brooks (Jacqueline Wells), Bob Hall (Edward Woods), her fiance; and jungle guides, Jeff Herbert (Philo McCullough) and Nick Moran (Matthew Betz), on a trail searching for the missing archaeologist, Doctor Brooks (E. Alyn Warren), Mary's father. Studying ancient tribes and seeking for a lost Aryan civilization and rare emerald, Brooks has been abducted by worshippers of the ancient god Zar. As Tarzan follows the safari from a distance due to his interest in Mary's blonde beauty, it is also learned that Nick Moran also wants Mary for his wife. After locating her father's cabin, Mary is abducted and held captive by the evil High Priest Eltar (Mischa Auer). Frank Lackteen, Carlotta Monti, Ivory Williams and Everett Brown also support the cast.

While Buster Crabbe first leading role in the movies being KING OF THE JUNGLE (Paramount, 1933), by which he was cast as Kaspa, the Lion Man, which proved popular, rather than starring Crabbe in a new jungle series based on the Kaspa character, he entered the world of Tarzan in a whole new different adventure. Comparing this to the Weissmuller adventure would be typical for audiences and reviewers, with many favoring Weissmuller over Crabbe. Though Weissmuller had a good physical build to become Tarzan, so did Crabbe with his bigger chest. In the existing prints, there is no origin to the Tarzan character as to how a white man, with no method of speech except in grunts and calling himself Tarzan, ended up in Africa. Maybe there was more plot development to him and other actors to the story in the serial that appears not to be available for present viewing.

Unlike Weissmuller, Crabbe's Tarzan, who sports a leopard spot skin loincloth, bears a different sounding war cry many than Weissmuller. This is the same jungle yell used in latter independent Tarzans of the 1930s featuring Herman Brix and Glenn Morris. Heavily underscored using similar stock music used for some independent productions, TARZAN THE FEARLESS relies more on some exciting Tarzan/animal fights, last minute rescue or near death experience for attention purposes. As much as Buster Crabbe wasn't bad as Tarzan, Weissmuller really made this jungle hero his own, becoming the longest reigning and best known Tarzan of the screen (1932-1948) for years to come.

A public domain title made available from various video and DVD distributors, TARZAN THE FEARLESS has its moments, but with uneven plotline with numerous jump cuts make this a little hard to comprehend and appreciate. (**)

Does anybody know why Tarzan is Lord Greyfriar instead of Greystoke in Tarzan the fearless? I looked for information and couldn't find it on IMDB. In the note offering 10000 pounds for evidence of his Tarzan's death, it says the note is from the executor or something of the late Lord Greyfriar. Was there some licensing agreement or did someone just make a mistake.

Tarzan the Fearless (1933)

** (out of 4)

Mary Brooks (Julie Bishop) travels into the jungle with some men to search for her missing father. Thankfully she runs into Tarzan (Buster Crabbe) who helps on her search as well as helps fight some of the bad people in her group. TARZAN THE FEARLESS is a pretty bad movie that features all sorts of campy moments but I think it remains watchable because it does have a certain charm thanks to its badness. Originally this was meant to be a 12-part serial but sadly that version is now missing. The producer basically took the first four chapters and turned them into this movie so that will explain why things sometimes don't make sense or that the story is jumping all around the place. Without the serial to see exactly what they did, it's hard to say if they improved anything but most of the time these serial chapters to features don't work. There are quite a few campy moments with this film and most of them are Tarzan himself. He has a really silly and annoying howl here that will certainly make you laugh. As with the first MGM film, Tarzan can't speak here so instead of talking to Mary he always breaks into this weird laugh that makes him seem rather slow. It's clear Crabbe was going for a different type of performance because he makes the Tarzan character more of a mentally challenged person than anything else. Bishop is certainly easy on the eyes as the love interest. Philo McCullough was actually good as the main villain and we get Edward Woods playing the good guy. The film is full of stock footage, fights with lions and of course the eye-rolling moment of yet another beauty getting into their bathing suit and going swimming when of course a croc shows up. TARZAN THE FEARLESS is a real mess of a movie but fans of bad cinema should get a few kicks out of it.

I will also say that Turner Classic Movies showed a 87-minute version, which I actually found much better than an earlier version running 71-minutes and included on one of those public domain packs. If you think the fuller version doesn't make much sense try watching that shorter one!