Customer Reviews

Son Of Tarzan

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After all of these years Son of Tarzan still holds up as a very exciting serial. I'm not going to comment on the quality of the print because considering the film's age I found it very watchable. And I'm just happy to be able to add to my film collection a movie that I have read a lot about over the years. Kamuela C. Searle who plays Korak/Jack Clayton (the name Boy was first used in the MGM series) the son of Tarzan as an adult (Gordon Griffin who played Tarzan himself as a youth in the original Tarzan of the Apes film plays the young Jack Clayton)is the most impressive looking ape man (or son of the ape man)to appear on screen since the series began. And I don't think any another actor looked as impressive until Herman Brix played the ape man in the New Adventures of Tarzan. Sadly Perce Dempsey Tabler looked terrible as Tarzan. The man should never have taken off his shirt because as Lord Greystroke in London he is passable but as the bare chested jungle lord his belly is much too big. Its been years since I've read the novel that Son of ... is based on but as I remember the original work this serial seems to follow it pretty closely. An urban legend that has been long associated with this serial is that Searle was badly injured while filming one of the last chapters and later died from these injuries. Recently I've learned that while he was badly injured and had to been poorly replaced with a body double for the remaining filming he did recover and actually made more films. Sadly he did die young a few years but from cancer.

About eight years ago I bought a DVD collection from a publc domain company called

Buyer's Gallery out of Canada. They sold their silent Tarzan films in three separate sets each .

The quality of the original sets I bought were quite good but I was hoping that with this one, seeing the packaging was so well produced, that the product inside might be better as well. After the watching the set it did not take long to realize frame per frame "IT'S THE SAME FILMS". It's obvious where it was ripped from.

The same can be said for The Adventures of Tarzan Series 1921 and their Elmo Lincolns which I also bought and feel cheated on. Identical to my original Buyer's Gallery versions, right down to the flaws and edits

Needless to say I'm beyond disappointed. But being puiblic domain footage I guess that there's nothing stopping them from taking another company's work.

Maybe someone will come along one day and really do these films justice

If you are a silent movie fan and/or you collect everything of Tarzan. Then you will enjoy this DVD. It is really something only for collectors.

Kamuela Searle was my great-grand uncle so, of course, I wanted to see his movie. As a result' I was disappointed that there wasn't more of him to see in the movie. I laughed thru many scenes but I thought the overall storywas good but the picture quality and text editing wasn't that great.

While the four hour long serial might be a poor quality print, here's an oportunity to see one heck of a good sequel to the first "Tarzan." The stories are thrilling and it's obvious that the actors all did their best when this 15 part serial was made. I tried to watch it one chapter at a time, but I couldn't wait to see how the whole thing turns out in the end.

If you had read the book, "The Son of Tarzan" this film follow along pretty close to it. If not then you should buy this DVD.

John