Tarzan the Mighty Man

Hi there ERB Freaks. Today’s subject is a Turkish compilation film. 

The film is named Tarzan the Mighty Man, which is partly based upon the first few Tarzan talkie films and was hastily written by the king of Turkish Mockbusters, Kunt Tulgar. Released in the Summer of 1974, it was a Mockbuster which preceded Dingo Pictures’ own, equally so bad it’s good, Lord of the Jungle by about 25 years. 

The film’s main stars are the late handsome wrestler Yavuz Selekman as the definitive Turkish Tarzan and Gülgün Erdem as a Jane Parker expy named Ayşe. Guest starring unofficially are a bunch of hurtfully messed up lizards playing dinosaurs from the first 1 Million BC movie.   

Is it a ripoff? Although it stole many scenes from both the first Tarzan the Apeman and Tarzan’s Revenge, it isn’t a full on ripoff, but rather an unofficial ashcan copy package film. Was it partly filmed in an orchard near Istanbul? Definitely! 

As with the Hollywood source materials, the story began with a team making an expedition into a mysterious escarpment, which was where a wild man made friends with the jungle’s various animals, after likely being shipwrecked as a baby. Professor Farouk and his gang unexpectedly bumped into the Turkish Tarzan and his stock friend Turkish Cheeta, thus the fun would begin. 

The Professor’s daughter Ayşe steadily fell in love with the mop haired wild man, but was regularly kidnapped by a terribly corrupt chief, who also wreaked havoc on his own fellow villagers. Meanwhile, Turkish Tarzan had to face some of the team’s more unscrupulous members and a bunch of mean creatures before rescuing her. Then they finally made a future marriage bargain by living together in the jungle, once and for all. 

The film is a crowning glory of badness for non-English Tarzan movies, which is definitely an achievement even by 1970s standards, so it’s fair to say that the film would inspire more foreign mockbusters to come from the 1980s to the 2010s. 

Dingo Pictures’ Lord of the Jungle

Hello there MockBuster fans. This is the most infamous unofficial Tarzan movie ever made in a minority world country. 

The short movie’s name is Lord of the Jungle, which was made by the venerable Dingo Pictures in 1999 to compete with Golden Films’ more middling Tarzan of the Apes. Their strange co-release was made possible, since they were partial ashcan copies of two likely rejected scripts for the House of Mouse movie that we all know and love today. 

Is it a ripoff cash in? It kind of is, although it mainly rips off a few scenes from the 1960s and 1990s Tarzan shows, Greystoke, the first four Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies and their two spinoff reboots in colour. It also adds a few scenes from the actual Tarzan books too, which makes sense as it also has a rarely seen picture book tie in! 

The film’s story began in the 1930s when a baby, the future Lord Greystoke and his parents (but only the mother was shown onscreen!) were on a crappy old plane which crashed so hard that it killed the latter two. The baby boy doesn’t seem happy about it either, but he frankly survived the ordeal and had to live in the Ugandan Bwindi rainforest as a result. 

Then again, he survived the crash, was adopted and brought home by a mountain gorilla named Shina. She brought him to her troop, where he was ridiculed for being different from the rest of them. Otherwise, the trouser pooper baby is allowed to stay on the condition that he is to go if he causes any trouble. Shina named him Lord and he quickly adjusted to life as a gorilla. Baby Lord was messed over by Dragan during his time amongst the gorillas. Shina taught him to climb and jump but got ridiculed by the other animals and was rewarded with only a banana. Lord eventually adjusted to the gorillas’ ways and became close with them. 

A couple of years later, young Lord Greystoke was a seemingly wimpy school aged kid, who otherwise made friends years ago with Tabor the savanna elephant and Raja the butt violin baboon, who happened to be an expy of Cheeta the chimp. He then goes with his friend to a lake with Dundee the crocodile. Lord climbs up a tree and closes Dundee's jaw with a rope, but the croc cries and is let go. He goes home and is again told off by Dragan, who asks hims for the rope, but the butt violin boy gives it to him and the head gorilla puts it over his head and makes an idiot of himself. While the rest of the gorillas laugh, Lord was unfairly scolded by Shina again.

A while later, Lord was pathetically stalked by Dundee in the water. Here, Lord saw his reflection and freaked out over how different he looks from everyone else. In an effort to be like everyone else, he covers himself in mud. He gives up when Raja tells him the mud will dry and decides to run away. Shina finds him and tells him that he looks like his birth father, a ‘white monkey’.

Sometime later, the gorillas travelled south to find more food. Lord found the plane crash he came from. Shina never knew if it was a bird that crashed and burned everything, while Dragan said ‘this is where everything started’. He doesn't follow this up. Then Lord found a tree house once belonging to a dead grandpa Lord Greystoke and decided to explore it. Meanwhile Dragan finds a gun and shoots it. The boy got down from the tree house and went back up into it, despite Raja’s protests. 

Lord Greystoke found a book (likely a picture book) containing pictures of upper class Brits (aka ‘white monkeys’). Raja meanwhile found a knife and cut himself unintentionally, while his human friend tried it out and cut some bamboo down. Lord and Raja abandon the tree house and go back to the plane crash. Here, he discovered a medallion, opened it later and found a picture of some people.

Being a dastardly mastermind of his band, Dragan was so antagonistic towards the unlucky boy and his sole main friends that even his fellow gorillas couldn’t stand him anymore because he also cheated upon Shina and her friends a lot. Which implied that, with Tabor’s warnings coming true, Lord Greystoke had to rip Dragan’s hand unintentionally with his birth father’s dagger before that. As a result of an unintended revelation, he finally became respected by fellow animals and also began to make frequent trips to Grandpa Lord Greystoke’s dormant tree hut to read the books.

Flashing forward into adulthood is when the main plot will truly begin. As time goes by, the younger Lord Greystoke is now a scruffy young adult man who lives in a simple treehouse, minding his own business while dealing with crocodiles and other beasts alike. As he is an adult, he now learns that Dragan has died and that the jungle needs a new king.

Although they were following orders, a ruddy brunette butt violin lady named Linda Jane and her well meant father were not feeling happy about being misled by hooning Stewart himself. Just as everyone in the jungle elects Lord as their new king, an expedition, led by a notorious butt violin logger named Stewart, comes to the jungle by looking for which native tree to destroy and which invasive crop to grow. One of them finds Lord’s treehouse and explores it. Dundee comes and is shot at by Stewart. Linda Jane and her father find Lord’s journal, while spotting him outside right as he runs off.

Discount Archimedes wanders around looking for rare plants, as he comes across a monkey who almost immediately runs away. It is then revealed that the scientist is being stalked by a hungry lion. Lord saves the scientist and takes him to a river side. After Lord leaves, the scientist is met by rip off Jane and the explorer (who is now introduced as Sir Stewart). They reveal to him that they found a hut that they say currently belonged to a new Lord Greystoke.

Lord tells Tabor and Raja about the first ‘white monkeys’ he has seen since his babyhood. He describes how beautiful Linda was, while Raja the baboon teases him about her as the three wonder what the white monkeys want. The next day, the scientist discovers that the hut is indeed occupied currently by a newer Lord Greystoke. They read the last entry in his journal which details how excited he was to see his family. Stewart comes and tells them about a plane crash he had just found. After Linda and discount Archimedes blow him off, he starts plotting to hunt elephants with a bunch of natives. The scientist gets to work with Linda Jane. Suddenly, Lord appears! Discount Archimedes introduces them, as he snatches her while the latter shakes this off as a ‘locally widespread custom’. 

Lord shows Linda his medallion as she confirms the pictures to be of a former Lord Greystoke and his wife, a Lady Greystoke, and the grandson of another dead Lord Greystoke too. She shows it to the professor and he declares that Lord is the son of a dead Lord Greystoke. Raja complains about Lord spending so much time with the humans, but Lord’s ability to communicate with the baboon fascinates the professor. 

Stewart finally notices that Lord cannot truly be overcome, even as Linda and the professor have thankfully become fascinated with Lord, to the point where they taught him their language. This prompted him to tell them about how he was raised by gorillas and how he became their leader. Eventually Linda falls in love with Lord. The professor and Linda read more into the middle Lord Greystoke's journal. They read a passage detailing about how his son touched a candle which left a permanent burn. After deciding to see if Lord has this burn, Linda declares that she wants to lure Lord back to his likely birthplace of England. Stewart insists that he’s himself a danger and goes off elephant hunting, while Lord comes and shows them the burn on his thumb, proving that he is indeed the son of Lord Greystoke.

Stewart shoots some elephants while Linda tries luring Lord to come with her back to England. Raja arrives and tells Lord that Tabor has been shot by Stewart. All the animals mourn the loss of Tabor and the loss of his tusks, as Lord sets out to smack Stewart off. The professor and Linda are not amused with the fact that Stewart also has killed a bunch of trouser pooper elephants. Just as Lord arrives and kicks him off, it’s only now that the professor finally reveals what Stewart did to him even before arriving into an African safari. They frankly start to leave in disappointment when Linda decides to stay with Lord thanks to dealing with surviving wildlife in much better ways than her seniors do.

The story ends with the epilogue which reveals that Lord and Linda have been married for a few years. Another funny thing is that they finally have birthed a baby boy together, likely naming him after his canonical counterpart Korak, rather than just his semi-official radio/film counterparts Tarzanito, Tartu, Jai and/or Tarzan Jr/Boy. Discount Archimedes, the professor, pops by to visit once a year, thus everyone’s mostly happy for now.

Despite its absolutely terrible animation quality, this is the most iconic minority world Tarzan Mockbuster ever made. It was made as a cash in for a time when the current most popular Tarzan movie in world history was finally being released after about eleven years of development hell. 

The Primal Chinese King

Hello ERB Freaks! Today’s subject is a little known but rather decent Hong Kong jungle movie. 

The film is a lighter and softer Mainland Chinese-Hong Kong coproduction called The Primal Chinese King, which was released on the 10th of January 1940, just only thirty seven days after its Singaporean-filmed competitor named The Adventures of a Chinese Tarzan. 

The movie’s main star was Mainland Chinese born Hong Kong film veteran Fung Fung (1 December 1916-16 February 2000) as the second Chinese Tarzan.

Is it a full on cash in? It was more like a loose Cantonese remake of its two Japanese counterparts, which are themselves unofficial takes on both the first two Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films (and the first two silent Tarzan serials/films ever!), with some elements of the original Tiger Boy thrown in.

The story began when Scientist Cheng Guanghua and his wife Bai Xuemei lived in seclusion in a subtropical jungle to study zoology. One day they were attacked by a ferocious beast and both died. The servant Jiada took away their three-year-old son, but the second Chinese Tarzan was rescued by elephants and raised by them in the Gaoligong mountains of Yunnan. 

When the Chinese Tarzan grew up, he became a savage king who conquered all the beasts. Yun, Mei's brother, has no news about his younger sister, so he takes his daughter Jing Na and his student Liu Xiong to explore the mountains. When they are attacked by soldiers, they climb vines on the mountain top and jump to the rescue. Na was attracted by Tarzan’s majestic appearance, but he didn't know how to speak human language. 

Jing Na gave him a handkerchief as a thank you, but Xiong, who had always been ogling on Na, fired a gun out of jealousy and accidentally injured Tarzan. That night, Xiong violently expressed his love to Na, and Tarzan showed up to rescue Na in a tree cave. Na recovered from her injuries and went to play with him in the deep mountains. 

Even if she encountered tigers and crocodiles, they were all beaten away by the hero. Yun, Xiong and Na were robbed by the natives one after another and were sent to Shizhai. Na was used as a sacrifice to the tiger. When she tamed the wrongfully captured tiger with her singing, the horrid scholar sent poison arrows, and someone rushed to rescue everyone. Yun Congshan found out from the photos of his parents that he was a nephew and persuaded him to return to the civilized world together, but Tarzan somewhat ignored him for reasons related to the horrid state of his mental health. However, because the hero still loves Jing Na, he finally letted her to live with him willingly in the jungle and both will happily stay there permanently. 

The Primal Chinese King, even though it’s pretty much lost media now, is likely both an improvement of its Japanese spiritual predecessors and a rather okay story in its own right set in the Gaoligong Mountains. Its missing screenplay is also public domain everywhere, although only a still of it can be found on Alice Fung’s online gossip article, via a Hong Kong news website. 

The Leopard’s Fangs: The Japanese Kaspa Manga

Hello Jungle Boys and Girls. Today’s instalment is one of the crappiest and croakiest spiritual adaptations of a British Tarzan Boy work ever made! 

The Manga is a low budget Mitsuo Higashiura (1930-2012) work called The Leopard’s Fangs, released at the end of 1958 for the year 1959. As its vacuous plot suggests, it’s a sugary Akahon adaptation to the beginning of the the first book in the Kaspa series created by C.T. Stoneham. 

The story begins when a toddler got stranded when his parents were attacked and likely killed by agro-loggers on a crashing plane. As a result, he had to live with lions in a monsoonal swamp filled with mangroves. Despite the machinations of a hungry leopard and the greediness of a King Kong like being, the young boy would become a brave and honest warrior beloved by the swampland animals. 

The manga is a saccharine piece of crap which hasn’t been reprinted for sixty five years and counting. One of the reasons is a series of hitherto legal changes which have kept it from reprinting again. Another one is that it’s also a super late and tepid cash in on a decent film serial based loosely on the first Kaspa Book. Also not helping is that the film serial was released twenty five years earlier in 1933! 

In other words, the Kaspa books and footnotes have entered the public domains of many African nations, but their titular Star cannot enter it. A few pulp freaks do think that it’s because he’s recently been trademarked by a fairly well known American pulp writer. Either way, the manga is still a disaster of a would be masterpiece. 

Prince Fan: The Taiwanese Kenya Boy Manhua

Hello Safari Freaks. Today's instalment is a manhua remake to one of the first Weekly Shōnen Sunday manga adaptations in existence.

The manhua, by the way, is the rather obscure Prince Fan, aka Fan Wang Zi. As its name suggests, it is an unofficial Taiwanese (Complex Mandarin) localisation of the Kenya Boy manga written by Souji Yamakawa (1908-92) and drawn by Kyuuta Ishikawa (1940-2018), but the print that it descends from is Toho/Tobo Tosho Shuppansha's Home Run edition. Like its Japanese counterpart in both serial and tankobon forms, it began when Fan (who's likely a rebadged Wataru for reasons related to how much of Taiwan's postwar history worked out) and his sulky father were out into the wild (unlike in the picture story, where they escaped from an army of despicably colonialist Brits) from a somewhat alternate history version of Mombasa, modern day Kenya.

Even more so than the Japanese variant which it was sourced from, the unintentionally derogatory caricatures of actual Kenyan natives (often from various groups loosely inspired by actual cultures) are one of the Taiwanese manhua's many outdated quirks, even though it's not the biggest problem. The actual biggest problem with the manhua itself is that it still is a heavily pirated, poorly redrawn trainwreck. Also not helping is that the Japanese variant is in much better quality, which explains why it has at least three prints in book form and a print in eBook form, whereas the Taiwanese Mandarin retelling cannot be reprinted in any shape and form to this day.