Lord of the Jungle Meets Bloody Mary

A fairly representative cross-section of seasonal tourists lounged peacefully around the seaside pool of Ft. Lauderdale’s Galt Ocean Mile Hotel resort, when suddenly the idyllic, tropical scenario was shattered completely by a hauntingly recognizable, yet bizarrely out of place bellowing and son-of-abitch if that don’t sound like Tarzan.

Yea. Tarzan. .

While the bewildered bystanders instinctively scan the palm tree tops and the .hotel employees (who are used to it by notv) carry on with business as usual, Johnny Weissmuller — the first talkie Tarzan — thoroughly enjoys a hearty laugh in the cool, breezy shade of the Galt’s poolside patio bar, his glassy, bloodshot eyes shielded from the noonday glare by dark sunglasses. Rumors are constantly circulating lhat Johnny Weissmuller is some sort of alcoholic. Just generally cruising there at the bar, Weissmuller was always working on a fresh Bloody Mary, but somehow, Johnny’s drinking seemed to transcend mere alcoholism. He just stays high.

Like millions of other senior citizens, Johnny Weissmuller has retired to sunny South Florida. He leases a home with intent to buy up in Titusville, near Cape Canaveral. “I open my front door,” says Johnny, ‘‘and there goes the mbonshot. WWWHHHHOOOOSSSSHHH!!! ” Anyway, just about once a Week, Johnny aims his infamous Eldorado with the simulated leopard-skin roof and upholstery to match towards Lauderdale, five hours away, so he can check in at the Swimming Hall Of Fame. Johnny’s the Honorary Chairman of the Board.

Basically, the Johnny Weissmuller of today is merely a seventy-one year old jock. There was never a need to grow out of that‘mentality. He was climbing out of a swimming pool one day backin 1931 when a screenwriter named Cyril Hume happened to notice his powerful physique. Now, it just so happened that. Hume was working with William S. Van Dyke, a director, who just happened to be looking for a guy to play Tarzan in a movie for Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Van Dyke took one look at Johnny’s build and hired him without a screen test. Of course, they decided that Weissmuller was a lousy screen name, and were actually about to change it when they discovered that somebody named Johnny Weissmuller had practically rewritten the Olympic swimming record books in 1924 and ’28. Well, they thought, maybe Weissmuller wasn’t such a lousy screen name after all...

As it turned out, Van Dyke could not have made a better choice. There was so" much of Johnny’s kind of kick-ass machismo infused right into the Ape Man’s personality — and vice versa — that the actor and the character often overlapped. Consequently, v when most; people think of Tarzan, they think of Johnny Weissmuller. .

It wasn’t always meant to be that way, however. “When they first signed me up,” Weissmuller related belatedly,

“they said they were gonna make me into another Clark Gable. The first Tarzan movie went around the world and made twenty million dollars. They said ‘Piss on Clark Gable! You’re Tarzan!’ ”

Weissmuller wasn’t about to complain, neither. He never really considered himself an actor, but he went on to star in some eighteen Tarzan movies in the next twenty years. After that, he was given 25% of the Jtmgle Jim series,_ and eventually, his name had become so synonymous with jungle movies that he Was even" able to portray himself. Johnny’s movies were never mentioned in' Academy Awards circles, ,but the Tarzan series has been one of Hollywood’s greatest all-time moneymakers. Even today, many pfithose classic jungle flicks can still be seen on TV in just about any region of the country, on almost any given Saturday afternoon — in spite of the fact that some are "over forty years old, -

Nobody could ever really say for sure why the Tarzan concept appealed to so 'many people, but everyone has their own pet theory. There Was always something really masculine about a guy who Swam out to get crocodiles, shacked up in - a jungle treehouse with Maureen O’Sullivan, and. swung; around on vines -all , day in just a skimpy loincloth, Tarzan was impulsive arid he got away with it. After all, what are you really gonna do to somebody whosePdea of a cordial welcome was to wrap your rifle around the handiest tree? You didn’t screw around in Tarzan’s territory. No siree. He kept the natives, in line, banished the evil hunters, killed the ruthless .mercenaries, thwarted the unscrupulous fortune seekers, and generally ||kept Africa safe for democracy. He was the King of the Jungle in the truest sense of the term, and as 'Tarzan’s New York Adventure proyed once and for all,-it really didn’t matter .which jungle. Any jungle Tarzan Was in, he was-the King of, and if you argued the point you got stampeded by a herd of wild elephants,

Belive it or not, Johnny has more or jess maintained a reasonable facsimile.iof his powerful physique. Still a hulking six foot four or-thereabouts, his belt how, checks the progress of the ballooning beer belly which ultimately forced him to hang up the old loincloth and prompted producers to' suit him up in full Safari regalia and call him “Jungle Jim.” The familiar facial features #re there, too, just a little worn and loosened by age, however, instead of the expected shock of straight, black hair he used to/slick back in the flicks, Johnny now sports a dry, wavy ra?or cut with a flip in froftt that’s so brassily redish blonde it’s gotta be bleached. Possibly by the sun, but probably, by chemicals.

Talking to Weissmuller is a trip in itself. He’s certainly no great linguist, not by a long shot, but at least there*? none of that “Me Tarzan, You Jane. Boy go home” monosyllabic bullshit that always made Tarzan come off like M backward two-year old. Johnny’s just as friepdly as any other drunk, and he communicates pretty well on a personto-person basis, utilizing a wide range^of voice and tonal inflections,.and puncuating his. speech by contorting his features into some really graphic facial expressions..

Johnny, will usually let looSe with his trademarked Tarzan call upon request.Austrian by birth, Weissmuller contends that his famous multi-purpose jungle cry was just a simple variation on an old fashioned yodel. He illustrated his point with, a brief demonstration. Intentionally, he let the Tarzan call gradually disintegrate into a full-fledged Bavarian yodel, which might have gotten his point across all right,' but really did a number on the. people’s heads around the pool.

Johnny casually tossed another handful of salted peanuts to the attending gallery of pigeons and sparrows. Somebody at the bar mentioned Maureen O’Sullivan, who co-habitated Tarzan’s jungle penthouse in the trees. “You know,” Johnny sighed wistfully, his eyes focusing on an unknown point in the distance, “I never did get in her pants.”. It was no big secret that the pair really didn’t get along too well off camera, and. Johnny went On to explain how he had started the entire relationship off on the wrong foot. “The first day she walked on the set,” Weissmuller confessed, “I told her she had halitosis. She .said ‘What?’ and T said ‘You’ve got halitosis worse than Cheta.’ After that,” Johnny concluded, “she never liked me. too much.

“Of course,” Johnny continued, “I was married to Lupe Valez at the time — you know, the Mexican Spitfire, so I was getting all I needed at home. Now,” Weissmuller laughed, returning to the subject at hand, Maureen O’Sullivan, “now, she ..wants it. She calls me up from New York and says we’ve gotta get together for dinner sometime,”

Johnny also said that Maureen O’Sullivan still cost him two divorces, even though he didn’t nail her, but he failed to delve into detail on this particular aspect^of the situation. Johnny’s been married five times so far, maybe six. TIis current wife is named Maria. Maria has one of those “continental!’ accents that sounds like it could be either French or German, so she’s probably Spanish. She was there at the Galt, too, and looking just about as spaced out as Johnny. It must be 'one of those marriages made in heaven. Maria didn’t hang around at' the bar with the menfolk, however. She disappeared into one of the hotel’s fashion shops, emerging a short while later wearing an entirely different outfit. She sat at the bar showing off until Johnny suggested she do some more shopping. Maria jumped at the chance and quickly put the bite on Johnny. He pulled a roll of cash out of his pocket, peeled off a few bills, and Maria pulled a hasty Mandrake.

TURN TO PAGE 75.

THE EXORCIST (Warner Brothers)

Take your mother to the gas chamber, take your mother to th£ Brooklyn Bridge, but on all the stars in heaven (whoops... or is it all the embers in hell), don’t take her to see The Exorcist, It terrifies, stultifies, and plays Mary Had A Little Lamb with your brain. It’s a visual freakshow of an obscene, vomitspewing Satanic scapegoat of .a child. Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair), the twelve year old victim, is transformed from a sweet, saucer-eyed cutie into a rude parody -of a broken, mirror; a split, parched, and gashed geek possessed by the Devil. Yet the masses are ^shelling $3.50 a show to insure The Exorcist a place amongst the box office buck busters like My Fair Lady. The Godfather, and Gone With The wind. All for a thrill.

Man is the only animal who willfully tries to frighten himself. That’s for fun, son. Roller coasters, Evel Knievel, and now The Exorcist. But this movie may be too much for your masochist scaremeter, setting your terror quota askew. It exploits the base, unconscious collective fear that we all have of the unknown. Exploits it and viciously regurgitates it on the screen to assault us. The little bit of Regan in all of us loses and the child becomes totally possessed — Regan and her bedroom become the most expensive chamber of horrors (the pic was originally budgeted at 4 mil but ran over 10) ever thought up. Since it’s such a big-budgeted bonanza, cheap gimmicks were passed over, like the one in Last House On The, Left: “Just keep repeating, it’s only a movie, it’s only a movie.” But at least that gimmick preserved our .cinematic sanity. Here there’s no softspeaking guide through madness; | the fun begins with Regan’s trick of twisting her head so it faces backwards. Then levitation, bedbucking, and the wild climax, masturbationwith a crucifix. And yoti ask why your intellectual sensibilities strangely disintegrate. Why you have become a clutching, cowering kid? Why you are barely managing to squint at the screen through spread fingers? Terrifying, like an earthquake is terrifying, but that doesn’t stop you from wanting to see one... fascination and repulsion in the same gasp.

And emotionally disturbing movie. You can be next! Hollywood creates a new trauma. Psychiatrists warn that seeing the picture might leave you vulnerable to emotional difficulties. Try this one your shrink: “I’m not skitzo, I’ve got the devil in my heart.”

The movie’s a real; hit in clerical circles, too. Besides portraying their priests sympathetically, it oughta pack the pews and bone up a delinquent parish bn its Hail Mary’s. Theological Upheaval. After all, Psycho midwived the birth of Holiday Inns — who wanted to stay in a cozy out-of-the-way cottage like the Bates Motel after seeing thafl So The Exorcist might as well prescribe religion as the soothing balm for the fear of things that go thump in the night. The church hasn’t gotten this much press since the pope allowed rhythm as a birth control method. Priests are being summoned all over again. Jesuit priest Karl Patzelt (57),: who had successfully stopped the onslaughts of the Evil One in a family of three, in Daly California, 1972* was called upon again to perform the rare rites for yet another victim of the Devil. Yes folks, even you can be Lucifer for a day.

Jaan Uhelszki

BAMBOO GODS AND IRON MEN (American International)

Don’t let the title fool you. This is the first won ton western7 we’ve seen where "the humor is intentional rather than an accident of trite melodrama. James Inglehart plays Calvin Jefferson, a black American prizefighter on a honeymoon in Hong Kong with Shirley Washington, , and both put in reasonable performances in spite of the fact that their lines sometimes seem to have been written by a crazed Afro-Sheen ad copywriter. ‘

The real star of the movie is Chiquito as Charley, a mute little martial arts expert whom Calvin (Iglehart) saves from drowning. Because Calvin savfed his life, Charley’s life now belongs to him. The honeymooners can’t shake him, but it’s a good thing — he comes in handy later in Mahila when the credible plot thickens with a dime store Buddha statue and a plot to control the world with its contents, which the Jeffersons know nothing about. Chiquito proves to be a sometimes brilliant mime, mugging with rubbery facial expressions and exclamations underlined by extreme arm and leg motions.

But like I say, the game here is humor. Charley’s first fight owes more to the Three Stooges than Bruce Lee, and the Manila cop who bumbles thrbugh the case of the smuggled , Buddha makes Edgar Kennedy look like Jack Webb. There’s more chuckles than groans in Bamboo Gods and Chiquito’s performance makes it worthwhile comic entertainment.

Wayne Robins

ZARDOZ (20th Century Fox)

Here’s one that’ll drive yqu up a wall. A true cinematic aberration, alternately wearing the masks of science fiction melodrama and pretentious social satire, while looking like some medieval costume drama conceived by Edith Head after a dose of bad acid, Zardoz is ultimately director John Boorman’s personal vision, conveyed by some strong imagry, but sorely lacking in any real substance, and, in the end, a cheat.

Set some 300 years in the future in a commune-like society called the Vortex (protected from the savage Brutals who inhabit the polluted Outlands by ah invisible Gardol shield), where the privileged are granted an eternal life of boredom, apparently consisting of no more than baking bread (outa green dough that’ll even make the Hostess folkS cringe), spinning yarn, and endlessly mulling over the offenses of fellow Eternals (typical no-no: “Transmitting a negative aura in the second level”) who, if found guilty, are aged an appropriate number of years. The men are all impotent wimps, and everybody is held together in a kind of psychic-sync by little crystals implanted in their foreheads. Enter Sean Connery (attired in Bowieoid jockstrap and looking pained from having to suck in his gut once too often), an ‘Exterminator (futurecop) from the outlands who penetrates the Vortex by stowing away inside Zardoz, the giant floating gargoyle that dispenses | guns for the Exterminators (along with lines like:, “Gun is good! Penis is evil! Zardoz has spoken!”) and is worshipped by the Brutals as their God. Sean knows Zardoz is a shuck perpetrated by the Eternals, and is all bent on revenge, only to find that mere mortality is no match against the mindsucking androids inhabiting the Vortex. Sean’s got two things going for him: he’s the only guy around that can get it up, and alsothe only one who can die, thereby giving our hero the upper hand among the Eternals, who finally view him as their liberator, bringing them the gift of death, and relief from the unrelenting boredom.

Sound " ihtriguing? Mebbe, but Boorman reigns over his overblown Jr. High fantasy with such a shaky hand that the audience is constantly feeling betrayed. If .it’s all a joke, it’s not funny enough. If we’re meant to take it as significant allegorical High-drama, why does he allow the heavily stylized performances and settings to detract from whatever dramatic tension the narrative has generated? All Zardoz has in common with such forcefully sustained Boorman works as Point Blank or Deliverance is the disjointed, convulsive narrative structure and an abundance of exquisitely bleak pastel images. But the images here are constructed around what is essentially a vacuum, and the picture falls apart around itself with little more grace than the typical film students’ “What is Life?” epic. We can at times appreciate the skill behind sorrie of Boorman’s manipulations, but when it’s over, all we can appreciate is the audacity it took to bring this project off. Zardoz will make you crave sci-fi pop corn, chompers like Westworld, the Apes flicks, and Forbidden Planet because it is simply a Kafkaesque Queen of Outer Space, a multi-million dollar bad joke without a punch line.

Brian Zabawski

Tarzan

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 57.

Turning back to the bar, Johnny clumsily toppled a brand new Bloody Mary. The bartender quickly set him up again. Meanwhile, Weissmuller was explaining all the clever methods the movie people used to train the animals in the Tarzan flicks. “The elephants were big and dumb,” say Johnny — and he oughta know, ‘.‘but extremely nonviolent, so they had to be specially trained before they’d stampede and trample a native village or something. They’d all get taken out to a great big field by their trainers. Then they’d play my Tarzan call and the trainers would shove a stick up their ass.”

Most of the really dangerous wild animals used in the movies had their teeth and claws removed, and there was always a trainer nearby with a whip and a rifle — just in case, but the crocodile fights were always a lot of fun. “We’d shoot those scenes in water about this deep,” said Johnny, holding his hand about two and a half feet off the bar. “One guy would hold his snout, and another guy would grab his tail. Then, I’d climb on its back and get a real good grip. They’d start the cameras and let the croc’ go. It would thrash around for awhile and all the time I’d be pretending I was fighting it and stabbing it with a fake knife. The blade of the fake knife would get pushed back ipto the handle and it would leak some fake blood.”

Nothing to it. ,

Filming the Tarzan movies Still involved a lot of danger, though, and Johnny took his lumps. “I was following my elephant by vine,” he recalled. “It stopped and I ran into its ass and broke my nose. That happened three times. I’d come whipping around a bend and there was no way to avoid it, so I’d duck my head. That way; I never busted any ,teeth, just my nose.” Other times, Johnny reported, he’d be riding along on one of the pachyderms and the mammoth beast would just give a casual toss of its head that sent Johnny flying. “There was nothing to hold onto;’’ Weissmuller guffawed, relating that the closest he ever came to actually cashing in his chips was during a battle scene when one of the “natives” (usually American blacks, some hired right off the streets of Los Angeles) threw a spear and it just grazed Johnny’s side. “The silly coon.” Weissmuller giggled.

Weissmuller was just starting to tell about how he’d never once even set foot in Africa while shooting a jungle flick, and how the jungle we always saw in the movies was really - Sherwood Forest when this little kid, couldn’t have been more than eight or nine, walked up to the bar and asked Johnny to pose for his picture. *‘Sure,” answers Weissmuller without hesitation, hitting junior with his benevolent little kid smile. As the kid’s father fiddles with an Instamatic, Johnny grabs a seat in the bright sunlight and removes4 his shades. Hope it isn’t Color film. The nine-year old hops up on Johnny’s lap and Weissmuller gives it the old he-man double flex, just for effect. Johnny’s Press Agent reminds him to pull out the gold rriedalion that commemorates the fact that one of his Olympic records is still standing, or some such nonsense. The entire event was eliminated years ago, but that’s irrelevant. The Press Agent’s been hanging around all day trying to be useful. So far, all he’s done has been to remind Johnny to pull out that medallion whenever he posed for photographs. Gosod job.1

Weissmuller wastes no time in getting back to the bar and reuniting himself with his third Bloody Mary in the last 45 mintues. The episode with the little kid reminded him of Johnny Sheffield, alias Boy, the baby that Tarzan and Jane adopted after his parents got wasted in a plane crash. There were always lots of plane crashes in the Tarzan movies. Weissmuller had picked little Johriny Sheffield for the part himself. “The bad thing about child actors,” Johnny clues us in, “is that they grow up too fast and don’t fit the part. But the first day I ever isaw Johnny, he was hiding behind his father and his old man was just a short little guy. I said ‘That kid over there’ because I could see just from looking at his father that that he’d never grow up.” : Weissmuller said that Sheffield made enough | money between the Tarzan movies and the Kimba, The Jungle Boy series to buy a yacht, which he now charters somewhere out of Mexico. They still keep in touch.

People start checking wristwatches. Time is growing short. Johnny’s now rapping about Cheta, the chimpanzee who was originally added to supply a little comic relief. Cheta became a regular, and, all things considered, had one of the best developed characters in the entire series. She was Tarzan’s fifth column all by herself. It was Cheta who smuggled Tarzan the ceremonial claw so he could, bring the roOf down on the Leopard People. It was Cheta who singlehandedly made monkeys out of the evil Nazis when they made the mistake of messing with the Ape Man, and it was Cheta who sprung Tarzan out ^ of a Bengali jail by ripping off a bunch of turbans they tied together and made a rope. “We always had at least three chimps on the set,” said Johnny. “We’d have to shoot a scene with Cheta, so we’d go to grab one and .it; would run away. The second One would bit your or something so we’d go over and grab the third.”

Still, problems persisted. “CUT!” the director found himslef screaming all too often. ‘"Cheta.’s got a hard-on. ”

Some hasty computations by the Tarzan party and a sudden flurry of rising activity signal that it’s time to hit the road. Things really start swirling * around Weissmuller, who’s still the pen; ter of the action. All hell’s breaking loose and nobody’s in any condition to handle it. Johnny makes sure jje’s taken good care of the bartender. People are asking for autographs, there’s a new wave of camera freaks moving in, and . about a half dozen people just drop by to say so long. Others want to hear the : Tarzan call just one more time. Out of the middle of all the excitement* Johnny leans over, cups his hand over his mouth, and hoarsely whispers, “Being a movie star is a fucking hassle!”^ '

Of course,|he was only kidding.