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Guest Column
EUROPEAN MOVIEMAKERS WHO APE TARZAN
BY MICHAEL ALAN FERGUSON
Tarzan for North American audiences is long dead and gone. More than five years have passed since the end of the television series of the same name. American viewers grew tired of the Apeman due to the weekly exposure that the small screen provided. As happened with the western, which died in the United States in the early sixties, European producers cranked out their own Jungle Man epics to fill the gap. This trend actually started some years earlier but did not pick up steam until recently.
Throughout the history of Tarzan in the cinema, the Jungle Man has found himself in many shapes and sizes, under a dozen different names, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ hero by this time had become an international figure and had appeared in a number of illegal films.
The Italians, as they do to every type of film, finally caught up to the King of the Jungle in the early sixties, beyond the usual spoofs such as "Toto Tarzan." The first European Tarzan was made around 1961 and was called “Tarzan, King Of The Brutal Force. " Joe Robinson starred in the title role. Upon learning of the film's existence the Burroughs lawyers forced the producers to remove all mention of Tarzan from the film. To avoid a long court battle Tarzan was called Thaur in Europe while he became and plays television under the guise of “Thor and the Amazon Women, “ Robinson and director Antonio Leonviola both repeated on it,
The word in the Italian capital was out; the Jungle Man's name was now taboo, In 1964, Tarzan prowled around in the person of Ralph Hudson in the film “Tarzak and the Leopard Men." The cover-up continued:"Zambo, King of the Jungle," "Zartan" and “Karzan, the Most Fabulous Man of the Jungle” (1971). Karzan in particular had more than its title to suggest reference to the Burroughs character. The film starred Johnny Kissmuller Jr. The actor in the title role may really be Hunt Powers, an ex-star of the afternoon soaper "General Hospital." Powers, who was once listed as the film's star before release, has done a half dozen other films for the same director, Miles Deem.
In the late sixties Spanish director Manuel Cano started a revival of the Tarzan name, with Steve Hawkes in the lead. Unlike the Italian
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