BOOK REVIEW – EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS – TARZAN AND THE LION MAN 1933 New English Library.

 

The seventeenth book in the original Tarzan series is deeply silly and in many ways Burrough’s cynical reaction to the Johnny Weismuller Tarzan film franchise which was beginning in earnest around his creation. Burroughs disliked the films as they dismissed the fantasy elements inherent in the novels. Tarzan’s jungle was as alien a landscape as the Martian plains or the Centre Of The Earth (Tarzan even goes there in one book).

 

The book begins with a film crew preparing to make a movie on location in Darkest Africa. They have a plot centred on a treasure map showing a valley of diamonds. The hero of the film is a wild jungle hero called The Lion man, played by a cowardly actor, who as we learn later, happens to look exactly like Tarzan.

 

The expedition into the jungle goes wrong when hostile native tribes attack them, and Arabs who think the fake treasure map is real abduct the leading ladies.  The Lion man is taken by cannibals, but rescued by Tarzan, who exploits his doppelganger similarity to the actor to the maximum, especially when the actor is wounded and sent away to a hospital (later to die of his injuries).

 

When the leading actress is abducted again, events take a more fantastic turn. Her new kidnappers are talking gorillas. They have been cloned from cells stolen from the corpse of Henry The Eighth, and regard their jungle home as London by The Thames. One ape has declared himself to be their God. He was once in fact human, but he is now messed up, as are the apes, by his experiments in attempting to achieve immortality. Tarzan, passing himself up as the actor, but now with courage, rescues the actress from this absurd rip off of The Island Of Dr Moreu (by H.G Wells), and takes her back to civilization, with a handful of real diamonds (the map was real after all).

 

The finale is a real hoot though. Curious about Hollywood, after seeing the filming, Tarzan goes to Los Angeles to see the film stars, and gets a parting a new jungle film. He isn’t considered worthy to be the new jungle savage, but he is invited to be a victim of the real but tame lion, who will be saved by an actor really playing Tarzan.  When the lion turns genuinely savage, the real Tarzan kills it to save everyone, and gets fired for destroying the expensive animal.  He gets the next flight home, never wishing to have anything to do with cinema again; though the cinema would of course want much more to do with Tarzan for many years to come. This silly, rather cynical book, and great fun to read.