Reviewed by Colin Jacobson (April 13, 2025)
First revealed to the public in 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan character has remained a perennial presence on movie screens, albeit with less frequency over the last few decades. For one of Tarzan’s many cinematic iterations, we go to 1935’s The New Adventures of Tarzan.
Various parties covet “the Green Goddess”, a totem located in Guatemala that contains valuable jewels as well as a formula for a weapon that could cause mayhem. On the way to search for the Green Goddess, Lieutenant Paul D'Arnot (Jorge Ubico) disappears.
D’Arnot’s friend Tarzan (Herman Brix) – aka Lord Greystoke – sets out to Central America to find him. Along the way, he encounters dueling explorers, violence, intrigue, and potential romance.
As indicated in the opening to this review, Tarzan enjoyed many cinematic adaptations, and this led to multiple iterations in the 1930s alone. Indeed, a popular version of Tarzan with Johnny Weismuller ran concurrent with New Adventures.
When most people think of Tarzan, I believe the Weismuller iteration remains stuck in our minds. That take gave him the monosyllabic “me Tarzan, you Jane” concept that still seems dominant.
On the other hand, New Adventures opts for a more educated and sophisticated Tarzan. While still a man who prefers jungles to “civilization”, he nonetheless comes across as literate and well-spoken, so we encounter none of the broken English seen in other films.
This offers a more accurate representation of Tarzan as written by Burroughs. I suspect New Adventures delivered a product closer to the source because Burroughs acted as a producer of the serials.
Although this implies a seal of approval, it doesn’t guarantee quality. While Burroughs might’ve helped make New Adventures closer to his original character, the film becomes a bore.
Perhaps I shouldn’t think of New Adventures as a movie in the normal sense since it consisted of 12 chapters. The first segment dominates, as the initial reel lasts a whopping 57 minutes, whereas the subsequent 11 sections obviously use less running time.
As such, the long opening reel comes across as the most coherent, but it also arguably becomes the most boring. Despite occasional snatches of action, the first segment tends to plod.
After that, the shorter serials focus more heavily on adventure over plot. I suspect that the filmmakers knew the brevity of these segments meant they needed to get to the goods rapidly and not waste much time on plot or characters.
It might seem unfair to judge a collection of serials as one large package. However, given that these elements do essentially add up to one long movie, that turns into the most logical way to approach the end product.
In other words: I’m not gonna watch one segment a week for 12 weeks to replicate the “serial experience”. Sorry!
Despite this disjointed theatrical presentation, New Adventures does flow pretty well. That adds to my choice to treat this as one very long movie, as I see no real signs that the filmmakers specifically designed it to be viewed one chunk at a time.
Indeed, some of the transitions can feel clunky. The chapters don’t always end at natural cut-off points, so it can seem like those behind New Adventures concluded serial segments almost at random.
That doesn’t turn into the biggest issue on display. Instead, I find myself more concerned with the general boredom and banality of the movie.
Face it: 257 minutes makes for a long project, and New Adventures absolutely lacks the content necessary to fill that space. As a result, the narrative tends to drag, drag and drag some more.
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Surprisingly, the chapters don’t seem especially redundant. I thought that the structure might resemble that of serial comic strips.
Those pursue an overall story but they progress exceedingly slowly because they need to remind readers of prior events every day. With only a couple panels left, serial strips take forever to go anywhere.
New Adventures manages to avoid that trap. Each chapter comes with a title card to catch up viewers as well as a brief shot from the prior chapter and then proceeds.
This efficient mechanism makes the movie’s sluggishness even less forgivable. Given that New Adventures wastes little time on recaps, it should move more briskly than it does.
Honestly, we get maybe 75 minutes of actual story. Even if we eliminate the credits that come with each segment, New Adventures still runs a good four hours, and that feels like at least two and a half hours too much.
The cast doesn’t help, as we get fairly lousy acting across the board. Under the name “Bruce Bennett”, Brix enjoyed a long career, one that included classics like 1948’s Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
While this indicates Brix/Bennett grew as an actor, in 1935 he was just another former athlete who used his physique to get into movies. Brix does look good here, but he provides a flat and charisma-free performance.
Given its place in movie history, I find it interesting to give New Adventures a look. The final product simply never becomes anything exciting or enjoyable, unfortunately.
