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Tarzan's (P. Dempsey Tabler) adventures in the jungle are long a thing
of the past, these days he lives in a mansion in Great Britain with Jane
(Karla Schramm), and the two have a young son, Jack (Gordon Griffith), who
upon the insistance of Jane, has been brought up without the first idea of
the jungle. Tarzan though thinks he hasn't got an ounce of jungle instinct
in him - until Jack sees the performance of trained ape Ajax in the
theatre, the trained ape who has once been Tarzan's best friend but now is
trained by Ivan Paulovich (Eugene Burr), an old enemy of Tarzan's. When
Ajax spots Jack, he thinks it's Tarzan and thrashes the whole theatre ...
and Jack's jungle instincts awaken. Ivan uses that to his advantage and
kidnaps Jack to Africa, but then Ajax turns on Ivan ... and somehow, the
ape and Jack ultimately land in the jungles of Africa - to Jack's great
joy. After slowly adapting to jungle life, Jack finds a girl, Meriem
(Mae Giraci), held hostage by Sheikh Ben Kathour (Frank Morrell), who
claims she is his own daughter even though he has indeed kidnapped her and
there is a reward for her safe return. Jack and Ajax free her from her
captor and take her to live in the jungle with them. There is a rub to
this though: Ivan Paulovich, who has hooked up with a gang of cutthroats
since we've last seen him, now wants to get his hands on the girl to sack
the reward, and he's hell-bent on getting her, thus goes after Jack - but
the Sheikh thinks Ivan has stolen the girl from him, so the two of them
(and their respective gangs/tribes) are at war before too long, and ... Years
later: Jack has now grown up to be Korak the Killer (now played by Kamuela
C. Searle), with Meriem (now played by Manilla Martan) still
by his side. Ivan Paulovich and his cutthroats are still about and loot
native tribe after native tribe, and while most of his gang just want to
make enough dough to make it back home as wealthy men, Ivan still hasn't
given up on tracking down Korak to have his belated revenge on Tarzan. So
after his gang leaves him after a botched up attack, he and two Swedes
team up to capture Meriem for the reward and kill Korak as a bonus. They
do capture Meriem and Korak every now and again alternatively, but it's
always the Sheikh, natives, apes or elephants that spoil all their plans.
Anyways, eventually, Ivan manages to lure Jane to Africa, as he figures he
can get tons of ransom for her and Korak, but that only lures Tarzan to
Africa as well, and suddenly ... Korak gets lost and is believed dead by
everyone, Korak believes Meriem dead, Tarzan and Jane adopt Meriem and
take her to their jungle mansion where they soon invite their British
friends, then Meriem falls in love with one of the Brits, and the two want
to elope. Ivan and the Swedes decide to pretend to help them but then take
them hostage, then Meriem's Brit dies defending her and the Sheikh gets
his dirty hands on her again - but this time, Korak saves her, kills the
Sheikh - and is almost burned on a stake by his tribe until his favourite
elephant saves him. Well, somehow Ivan and the Swedes die too, Tarzan
manages to track down Korak and Meriem, Meriem's father arrives in Africa
to finally come look for her ... and everything ends happily. One
of the lesser incarnations of Tarzan (or rather his son, but
it's pretty much same difference), this was obviously shot on the cheap
and on the quick, which gives the whole thing a very rushed look. Pair
this with a relative lack of imagination considering jungle threats and a
highly repetitive storyline that's nevertheless full of plotholes, leaps
of reason and the like. Now add to that a cast that uniformly overacts to
the point of ridiculeness (even by silent movie standards), and you're
left with - a rather disappointing serial.
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