Doris (Nadiuska) hires guide Stanley (Paul Naschy) to lead her through
the African jungle to find her brother Paul and bring him some special
equipment for his excavations of King Solomon's Mines. She doesn't know of
course that this special equipment is a strongbox full of guns, and that
Paul is the captive/loveslave of the Goddess, the leader of a local tribe
who wants to use the guns to conquer all other tribes ... and Paul in
return hopes that if he gets her the guns she will let him snatch the
treasure - or somesuch. Anyways, to get them through the jungle, Stanley
enlists the help of Tarzan (David Carpenter), who agrees to accompany them
only if they go unarmed - a rule that Stanley breaks though, and good
thing Tarzan doesn't know what's in the strongbox, either. Anyways, Tarzan
is more interested in Doris than anything else, so he doesn't care all
that much when Stanley kills the bearers when they want to make an escape,
or that Stanley is almost eaten alive by a lion, or that Stanley
eventually teams up with the Goddess's tribesmen. And eventually he even
delivers the strongbox to the Goddess singlehandedly - only there are no
guns inside, because Tarzan has swapped boxes. In the finale, all the
baddies die of course, and Tarzan cuts the Goddess's tribe down to size
when he calls his friends the lions into their village ... well, and in
the end he of course gets the girl. I don't deny for one moment
that I'm a fan of jungle adventures, especially those on the low budget
side that tell highly unlikely, even slightly absurd stories and don't
give a hoot about realism or ethnological accuracy - yup, films just like
this one. And yet, Tarzan in King Solomon's Mines is not a movie
that necessarily impresses me, mainly because it lacks the sense of wonder
so essential especially to bargain-priced genre entries. Basically, the
film is just a by-the-numbers Tarzan-movie, a bit too
obviously filmed in a local safari park, with the jungle footage a bit too
obviously spliced in that especially fails when it comes to exploiting the
wilder parts of the story (like the Goddess's secret lair or her sexual
desires) while putting too much emphasis on just more of the usual. And
while Nadiuska at least has enough sex appeal to carry her role (even if
she looks much too glamourous for a jungle adventurer throughout), David
Carpenter as Tarzan is nothing short of bland. Paul Naschy at least is ok,
but his role is too straight-forward to develop any life of its own. All
that said, I'm sure fans of 1970's trash, low budget Tarzan
and of course Paul Naschy and Nadiuska will all want to see this film, and
to be fair it honestly isn't a total trainwreck - it's just a rather
forgettable jungle adventure that has nothing really going for it!
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