Tarzan and the Slave Girl (1950)
** (out of 4)
Incredibly flat entry was Lex Barker's second stint as Tarzan. This time out he must do battle with some weird lion-worshipers who are kidnapping women from local tribes because they are dying of a mysterious disease. Instead of getting proper medication, the tribe instead plans to repopulate their village with new women including Jane (Vanessa Brown). This second entry in the "new" RKO series is a pretty boring and uninteresting affair because the silly story could have worked as camp but sadly the material is just so poorly directed that you can't even laugh at it. I think the film gets off to a rather good start but this all goes down the tubes as soon as you see one of the men dying of some sort of fit. I'm not sure if the director could only film this scene once and they were stuck with whatever they got but the acting by this person is just so bad and his flopping around on the group so laughable that you can't help but wonder why no one ordered a second take. Things don't get much better from this point on as we see Tarzan and his friends (including Cheetah) walking down one trail after another trying to locate this mysterious tribe. This is part of the problem because this little adventure contains no excitement, no energy and certainly doesn't make for a very good time. The entire story involving the lion-worshipers is rather silly but I don't fault the film for this. After all, most of the plot lines in this series were rather silly but what really kills the picture is that the director simply doesn't add any life to what's going on. Baxter is just so-so in his role of Tarzan, which really isn't good considering he's the star. In an introduction I saw to the film it was said that Brown had an I.Q. of 165 but you certainly couldn't tell that by her performance. She comes off incredibly dumb like as Jane and it's easy to see why she wasn't brought back for a second picture. Hurd Hatfield is pretty forgettable as the main worshiper but Denise Darcel does bring some life and fight to the picture as the doctor's assistant who falls for Tarzan. TARZAN AND THE SLAVE GIRL runs a sluggish 74-minutes and sadly there's very little to be found here.