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Yoshizo Wada’s Tarzan

Hello there. Today’s pair of instalments are a duo of so okay they’re average mangas by the pioneering illustrator-writer Yoshizo Wada. 

These two mangas, named The Story of Young Tarzan and The Jungle Club, are made in 1949/1959 and 1951-1960 for the Japanese market, during the waxing and waning of Japan’s own Jungle Adventure Boom. They are likely the only full on manga instalments that the Weissmuller films have ever had, not to mention being inspired by the movies themselves as well.  

The Story of Young Tarzan likely focuses on the childhood and youth of Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan portrayal. Even though there are slice of life moments in the manga, it is mostly known as an adventure story. His youth is much unlike in the books, where his canonical counterpart’s mother and father found themselves mutinied on the African coast, which resulted in him being born there. 

Here in the manga, this Tarzan was plausibly shipwrecked into the jungle with his newly ennobled birth parents when he was a little boy. Sickened by the filth of jungle villages being evicted by bad guys right and centre, the father and mother tried to stop it but were imprisoned to death anyway. However, a mountain gorilla found him wearing a loincloth and adopted him into her family. They and fellow animals in their jungle community would also raise him as a result. Years later, Tarzan finally found one of his best friends in the form of Cheeta the chimpanzee when they were youths. 

You know who’s the class clown making jokes at the other animals’ expenses while delightfully running through the bush? It’s Cheeta the tomboy chimp.

In 1951, The Jungle Club likely began life for a kids magazine that only some Japanese seniors would know of. In 1960, a late coming booklet for a distant sequel to The Story of Young Tarzan, named The Jungle Club, was finally released. Tarzan is a more active hero who belongs to a team of wild adult animals who work out. Another difference is that his more openly bisexual partner Jane Parker is an office lady and his nephew/foster son Boy Lancing is leaving the jungle to become an entrepreneur in his native Britain. 

Tarzan of the Jungle

Hello there. Tonight’s instalment is an unofficial 1990s Tarzan movie from Myanmar. 

The film is named Tarzan of the Jungle and was likely released by Golden Mount Pictures in late 1997-early 1998, as a shorter, martial artsy, non-PR0N remake of the Gordon Scott Tarzan films with some bits of Bollywood’s Adventures of Tarzan thrown in, which also doubles as a cash grab on a live action Tarzan tv show which was popular in Canada, most parts of Europe and much of the Tropical Americas. 

It stars a cast of 70s-90s Burmese cinema veterans such as Nyi Min Htat, Tin Moe Myint, Kumudyaur Tat, and Kyaukrai Aung Myat as various characters, such as Burmese Tarzan, Burmese Ruby Shetty, Burmese Michael Hauser and Burmese Esmeralda. 

Is it a cash grab of a Bollywood movie? Funnily enough, it seems inspired more by both the Ron Ely tv series and its 1990s Mexican French Canadian reboot than by Bollywood’s Adventures of Tarzan. 

The plot begins when a spirited young lady named Burmese Ruby and her well meant father, Burmese Professor Shetty, were looking for treasure, but as a part of a crappy expedition led by gangsters. As a result, she was nearly assassinated until a long haired Tarzan took her and her dad in. 

Even as a Burmese hoodlum take on Michael Hauser stands over his less antagonistic neighbour, Burmese Esmeralda, and talks about his plan to bring the newfound soulmates into his fellow gangsters’ lair, both Tarzan and Ruby just relax and have fun somewhere. 

Mrs Ruby asks Tarzan about a marriage proposal, but he doesn't say about it yet. Three of the gangsters sneak upon the lady and will forcibly touch her without the hero’s own permission. As a result, he fights them with Burmese martial arts! Burmese Esmeralda sometimes interrupts Tarzan’s rather important warning and dares to lure him out of the woods, until he tells her otherwise. 

Meanwhile, both are kidnapped by their own thirsty rivals, who are trying to kill them, if not for their sheer shared luck to survive in the monsoonal jungle. Near the end, after all of the gangsters are implied to be arrested by the much more brutal police, Ruby feels so sad about her own dad dying that she’s going to cry so hard. Tarzan just has to calm her down, by telling her that their future marriage will be made possible within a few years or so. She kind of agrees with him, thus the story ends on a bittersweet note. 

Hoo boy, being an illegal adaptation simply reveals that it’s one of the worst budgeted unofficial Tarzan movies ever made, even though the writing is itself quite okay for a Mockbuster from a hopelessly pillaged backwater (let alone coming from one of the world’s most corrupt nations). Despite being not so well executed in some parts, its potential as a hidden Mockbuster gem is made obvious by the rather comically serious acting of its cast also saves the movie from being outright horrible, so it deserves to get affectionately referenced by more people outside of its country of origin. 

Jungle Diper Tarzan

Hello Bangla B Movie Fans! Today’s subject is a decaying film released in Bangladesh only over a decade ago. 

The amusingly bad film is named Jungle Diper Tarzan, directed by Shujar Rahman Shuja and inspired by both the Miles O’Keeffe Tarzan the Apeman film and Bollywood’s Adventures of Tarzan, as well as the Zimbo movies of decades past. 

Its main stars are Rony and Poly as a discount Tarzan and Ruby Shetty/Jane Parker pair. Also starring are Mehedi, Jhumka, Arbaz, Shimana, Afjal (Afzal), Beauty, Munni, Shiba Shanu (born 1974) and Miju Ahmed (1952-2017) as various other characters. 

Is it a ripoff of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films? It’s more likely that Disney’s Tarzan has made a much bigger impact on the movie’s making than either the Miles O’Keeffe movie, the Johnny Weissmuller films which inspired it or their Bollywood equivalent. 

The story supposedly began in 1932, when a pair of scientists were embarking on a risky East African adventure for nearly a year, in order to check if there are animals to be photographed by them. To their inevitable chagrin, they violated the rules of a small kingdom peopled by stereotypical Safari natives, who drove the mum off to smithereens. As a result, such a situation ensured that their toddler son would be raised by both monkeys and elephants, becoming the definitive Bangla Tarzan in the process.

21 years later, Bangla Tarzan finally becomes an adult who enjoys his life with Bangla Tantor and his family in a poorly disguised stand in for the Ugandan Bwindi jungle. Meanwhile, Bangla James Parker spoke to his daughter about her ex-mobster mother’s passing as a recluse. She understandably cried with tears of sadness. 

A day later, Bangla Ruby Shetty, Bangla Hazel Strong, Bangla Esmeralda, and Bangla James Parker embark on a jungle expedition to find a bunch of treasures owned by both heroic and villainous natives alike, only to see Tarzan for the first time. 

Here comes the Bangla discount knockoff of William Cecil Clayton, but he’s more of a comic relief like his Hollywood counterpart Mr. Feathers. Along with Bangla Hazel and Bangla Esmeralda, Bangla Mr. Feathers joins in to annoy the small kingdom’s hideously horrible ruler at all costs. Later on, Bangla Tarzan meets a Harry Holt expy, who happens to be a hard hitting foil trying to attack him off until something worse comes out. A woman allied to him isn’t pleased about it and tries to end their arguments about who is the best dude for her. 

Hmm, who cares if the ruler of a small kingdom was estranged from his own slightly more sympathetic ex-ally for so long? Let’s introduce the knockoff Rabba Kegga, who is a half blind pirate with an eyepatch. Bangla Rabba Kegga pesters around Bangla Mbonga about who will become their kingdom’s next ruler. Bangla Mbonga isn’t amused and threatens him to leave his palace permanently, even as Bangla Mbonga’s son Bangla Kulonga seems to become a potential ruler, if not for his sheltered and messed up upbringing. Cue the hokey love song!

Thus, more cat fights and arguments will follow until the Bangla Rabba Kegga gets arrested by the colonial police! The main villain’s arrest results in all of them surviving. Not only is Bangla Tarzan reuniting with his own birth dad thanks to Bangla Tantor’s efforts, but he and Bangla Ruby ultimately win each other’s love for the better. 

This film is the most in name only of any unofficial Tarzan film adaptation! In fact, it’s so amusingly bad that it made its own (end of the 20th Century) inspirations look like The Simpsons in comparison.