It seems as if I'm getting on a Tarzan movie kick, so here's a second Ape-Man review. This time we're talking about another hybrid beast, Tarzan and the Green Goddess. Two release years are listed online, because TatGG began as a 1936 Saturday morning adventure serial called The New Adventures of Tarzan, doling out the story in episodic chunks. In 1938, the serial was re-cut into a feature length movie and re-titled Tarzan and the Green Goddess.
If you haven't seen the movie and just got excited-- maybe the Green Goddess is a alien princess or the queen of a lost city! -- don't. The Green Goddess is a stolen idol/pylon that serves as the story's MacGuffin.
A team of scientists protected by Tarzan competes with the evil Raglan and his henchman for possession of the Green Goddess. Why? Because it contains the secret formula for an ancient Mayan explosive that could spell the end of civilization! Of course, the Mayans would have had a lot less trouble with Pedro de Alvarado if they had actually used this ancient explosive. Putting that aside, a secret formula hidden inside a stolen idol is a perfectly good basis for a Tarzan adventure. Setting it in a Central American jungle is a little odd, but seeing Tarzan outside of his usual African setting is always fun (see the novel Tarzan at the Earth's Core).
Herman Brix, yet another champion athlete, makes a convincing Tarzan. He has lean muscles that you can believe would be sported by a man raised by gorillas. More than that, he plays the Tarzan of ERB's novels. He is intelligent and well-spoken, not the "Me Tarzan, you Jane" lunk that most people think of when they hear the name Tarzan. Brix's Tarzan could be a little more enigmatic, slightly more laconic, a touch more feral, but he is a good Tarzan.
Tarzan and the Green Goddess is available on Amazon Prime in both serial and movie form. It is a fun, quick watch, but you will have to watch both versions to really get the full experience. It puts me in mind of Al Jaffee's Mad Magazine Fold-Ins. There's a general immediately visible picture and then another one that only emerges when you connect the two divided halves together.
Initially, I had thought it would be more fun to watch it in serial format. I picked The New Adventures of Tarzan, and I was understandably confused when it started with Part Six and ended around Part Ten with no real cliffhanger, just Tarzan swinging away on a vine. Tarzan and the Green Goddess starts at the actual beginning. A "gypsy party" thrown by Tarzan/Lord Greystoke serves as a framing device (were gypsy parties an actual thing back then?).
Most of the missing material is present in Tarzan and the Green Goddess, but then other stuff is inexplicably cut, possibly in order to trim down the run time? A fight between Tarzan and some henchmen suddenly ends in a semi-conscious Tarzan clinging to a log in the water with no explanation of how it happened. In the serial the two scenes are well apart, and Tarzan's involuntary trip over a raging waterfall after diving after a valuable code book explains his presence in the alligator-infested river.
Tarzan and the Green Goddess makes up for all this by giving us an actual ending. It makes me wish Brix had done another Tarzan serial/movie. I'll have to content myself with searching for a fan cut online that splices everything together the way it was meant to be!