Cliff Stockwell (James Whitmore) is hell-bent to bring irrogation to
the heart of Africa, even when everything seems to conspire against him,
like when his right-hand man is killed by - of all animals - a tiger. This
is of course a fact he refuses to believe, since there are no tigers in
Africa, but the problem is that the natives do believe it and refuse to
work on his project. Heck, even Tarzan (Ron Ely), who has been living in
the jungle for all his life, believes it, and rather searches the jungle
for the tiger than help Stockwell with his irrogation project - even if
it's a project that all the natives would profit from. Of course, there
really is a tiger in this part of the jungle, brought here by shady
businessman Devereaux (Oscar Beregi jr) and his associate Findley (Michael
Pate), who want to stop the irrogation project at any cost, so much so
that at one point, Findley even sets the jungle aflame. Their efforts
amount to little though because Tarzan has soon found out about their evil
shenanigans and not only brings them to justice but also defeats the tiger
and the fire, and he saves Stockwell's life, who wanted to go
tiger-hunting on his own despite suffering from malaria. Rather
pointless run-of-the-mill jungle adventure that never really manages to
kickstart its plot and looks more like discussions of the protagonists
interrupted by jungle stock footage (or is it the other way round?). Only
the fight Tarzan against the tiger is pretty exciting and well executed
because it's apparent this is really a fight between man and animal and
not just a striped rug thrown at an actor. Still, the fight's too little
too late to turn this episode around ...
|