This film I suggest, after many decades of Tarzanophilia, came nearer to capturing the ideal Tarzan than has any other such effort. In the MGM B/W version, geared for mental twelve-year-olds as they admittedly were, Johnny Weissmuller was saddled from the outset with a civilization-bred wife, then a child, short-word speech patterns, a lack of mental training and a great difficulty at freeing himself long enough to become involved in interesting adventures or important ones. In "Tarzan's Greatest Adventure", Sy Weintraub's color attempt to create a new and more Burroughsian Tarzan, as Edgar Rice Burroughs had envisioned the "ape man" in his intelligent fantasy series of novels caused him to introduce many changes. In this film Tarzan, played by attractive Gordon Scott, speaks English, has a thoughtful and trained mind, and is respected and deferred to by the local British officials because of his jungle lore and standing with everyone in the area. When a bandit gang invades the territory and murders several men in order to steal dynamite for use in a diamond stealing scheme, Tarzan believes he alone can prevent further murders such as they have just done and that only he can and must stop Slade, a ruthless escaped convict and psychopathic murderer, from becoming a great danger to everyone in his realm. This is not altruism on his part; he knows the man and knows Slade can never rest while Tarzan is alive, and vice versa. He goes after him, and ends up saddled with a spoiled and lovely pilot, with whom he shares a romance and the dangers of a truly great adventure. As Slade's criminal gang quarrel among themselves and try to stay ahead of Tarzan, whom they nearly manage to kill, he is saved by the pilot and finally overcomes and kills the last of them, Slade. Then the pilot has to go back to her world and Tarzan to his. In the very fine small cast the director, John Guillermin, got good performances from such stalwarts as Anthony Quayle, Sean Connery, Niall MacGinnis, Al Mulock and Scilla Gabel. The credit for the very expensive-looking production go to the director, as well as to cinematographer Edward Scaife and art director-production designer Michael Stringer. Music was supplied by Douglas Gamley. The film to me has a jungle look about it that borders on being rather stylish; such exciting scenes as the raid staged by Slade's men, the scenes on the boat by which he and his group proceed upriver, the plane crash that brings the pilot into Tarzan's life, her theft from the group of medicine to help him, and the deaths of the criminals one-by-one are very-well photographed and staged. This is a very good film, with its only drawback the apparently needless introduction into its villain, Slade, of a psychological preference for adventitious killing over even crimes committed for a simple purpose of theft. But overall, this was a very successful adventure, unusually-bright, attractive and well-presented. Connery is charismatic as an annoying type, Gabel very good in a thankless part, and Quayle and MacGinnis powerful as career criminals. Sara Shane was attractive, and as Tarzan, Gordon Scott proved to be a first-rate athlete and a serviceable leading man. A worthy and imaginative recasting of the Tarzan image on film.
