When a young couple (MORTON LOWRY and LARAINE DAY) are killed in a plane crash over the jungle, only their infant son survives. Cheetah rescues the baby from the plane and brings it to the jungle hideout of Tarzan and Jane (JOHNNY WEISSMULLER and MAUREEN O'SULLIVAN). Sullivan decides the boy's name will be simply "Boy" because that's what Tarzan wants.
So begins this formulaic fourth in the series from MGM, given a bigger budget than usual but still lacking Technicolor for all of the great location photography and underwater scenes. It's good looking in B&W thanks to the glossy MGM photography and Richard Thorpe manages to keep things moving busily enough despite his reputation for being a slow paced director.
A search party looking for the boy is headed by HENRY STEPHENSON, HENRY WILCOXON, IAN HUNTER and FRIEDA INESCORT, their mission being to find the boy and profit from his having inherited quite a bit of wealth. It's up to Tarzan and Jane to decide whether to hand over the boy or not. Things get a bit complicated from that point on, but the predictable happy ending is never too far out of sight--even though it was changed to have Maureen O'Sullivan survive her wounds when the original ending met with a platoon of negative protests. And incidentally, she looks lovelier than ever.
It's a well-produced jungle film with all the familiar ingredients tacked together neatly enough to please Tarzan's fans. The water sport playfulness between father and son is nicely filmed in a series of underwater segments.
Only drawback: Boy's laughter seems artificial and forced every time he thinks a situation is hilariously funny.
