Ron Ely’s TARZAN-17-TRACK OF THE DINOSAUR

 

Ron Ely’s TARZAN-17-TRACK OF THE DINOSAUR

 

We’re out of 1966 and this is the first episode aired in 1967. TARZAN vs a dinosaur! Amazing, right? Well….it’s more in line with SCOOBY DO, someone’s faking a  monster. It’s sort of shocking that they have Jai and Tarzan’s lion friend Guapa (?) killed by the …thing at all, let alone this early in. Jai loses his voice. Lloyd Bochner plays Berstrom so he HAS to be the bad guy, doesn’t he? Also: a curious scene has Pippa Scott as Diana Grayson talking to a traumatized Jai as if he’s awake but other than his eyes blinking it appears he’s asleep and what? There’s no reaction shot on Jai and no response, even hand gestures. THEN, she and Tarzan start talking about a Kurt and confusing the heck of out me, start delivering plot points. It DOES strongly appear that Tarzan and she had a romance, even IF she was married at the time but nothing is overtly stated. Then, there’st the scene where Kurt pulls a gun on Tarzan.

 

The following fight (after the gun pull) is curiously edited. Someone thought it was a good idea to show the animals in the area react to the two men fighting so we get the fight start, a cut away to stock footage of birds flying away, more of the fight in the water and more animals running or flying away. I sort of see what they were trying to do with this kind of editing and it’s different but here, it really doesn’t work, other than to maybe extend the fight a bit but even that doesn’t seem to be the point. Maybe someone thought it was a new and innovative way to edit a fight on TV and on this show as there have been so many of them before. The fight’s not bad but it’s over fast and the interjection of animal stock footage…seems to slow it down rather than make it more exciting. MAYBE if the animals fleeing weren’t just obvious stock footage (with what looks like the usual dated visual quality) or any stock footage at all but actual animals, this manner of filming or editing a fight would have worked and been something different and innovative.

 

As it is, it’s odd.

 

Kurt also calls this the “Dark Continent” which is an outdated reference to Africa.

 

Though it should not be surprising after THE ULTIMATE DUEL, the idea of a female betraying Tarzan totally is shocking and here, Diana is presented as so warm and cuddly to Jai and Cheetah (who plays with glasses, reads a newspaper, plays nurse to Jai, and steals a banana all in one scene), that it’s almost unthinkable that she’s the evil master mind behind the fake dinosaur (and it does look fake…it wouldn’t fool anyone, not even uneducated people!). Jai overhears Diana and Bergstrom plotting. Anyone who, the first time around, claims that they saw Diana being the villain of the whole piece, is lying.

 

Bergstrom’s aide Charlie is played by one of the actors who played the guy who died in quicksand in THE DEADLY SILENCE part 2 (another bad guy).

 

Oh and in the rock fall that the dino started…it appears that a huge rock (fake, of course) actually falls and hits Diana in the back.

 

Some of the stock footage of Ely swinging through the trees is from earlier as his hair is shorter and much darker.

 

Oh and this must be at least the third time (or more!) Tarzan’s been shot down from a vine!

 

It’s also quite intriguing to have two sets of villains working at opposing purposes, only to have Bergstrom talk Kurt into helping him and Diana….if he is doing that. He seems to be a crude savage type. Diana has not just been misguided but she fully embarrasses the evil…HER evil.

 

Even so when Jai tells Tarzan about Diana, both of them still help her escape the dinosaur when all of them are in the caves. For the swim scene, Jai loses his sandals but has them on again when they are running in the dirt. For the third time, I’ve spotted Ely with footwear, too.

 

The contrast between the greed over the rich minerals that the villains want to steal from the tribe and Tarzan and Jai’s world is wonderful.

 

Diana’s story takes another unexpected turn as she reveals to Tarzan and Jai that she only has a few months to live and that is why she’s doing what she is doing.

 

Sven Bergstrom gets a spear in the back and OUT his chest in a grisly scene. Kurt also dies horribly as he falls back into the fire filled dino bulldozer. Nicely wrapped up.

 

Tarzan’s sum up to Jai about Diana is nice, “A sapling reed bends with the wind but snaps back straight but when there’s rog inside, it bend and cracks and stays twisted forever. Then something lovely and good is no longer a part of our lives.”

 

While Tarzan is acting like Caine from KUNG FU, watch what’s going on in the background. Some ladies drag off some turkeys or chickens. It’s disturbing.

 

I really like this episode but usually when it was on and I knew the outcome I hardly ever rewatched it. You have to understand as a kid/teen, there was a parade of monsters on TV from the repeated old 1950s movies that I never saw when they were in the theaters, new Godzilla, Gamera and King Kong movies, and so much more. There were also dinosaurs on TV weekly in LAND OF THE LOST and in repeats of VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA and occasionally in LOST IN SPACE and other TV shows and other shows like STAR TREK had other kinds of monsters. To me, this was just a huge cheat and there was no dinosaur at all.

 

Manuel turns in another good performance. He was, IMO, an asset to the show and for kids a POV.

 

The ep is also a bit sad as both Jai and Tarzan learn they were wrong about a “good lady.”

 

The end theme is once more the rearrangement.

 

Cheetah only has a few short scenes and the last one has Tarzan send him off, “Cheetah, you go find somewhere to play,” in a curious send off.

 

Also odd is Bergstrom’s tender care to Kurt’s wounds. What was that about? Kurt violently shoots and kills Charlie, too, and in front of Jai.

 

It’s also almost a cliché that Jai thinks Tarzan is dead or is told he is dead, but he later finds out Tarzan is alive. And it works every time.

 

BTW does Jai have a slightly psychic connection to Tarzan? Or did the bullet shot sound wake him up? If not, no one else heard it or was shown reacting to it but maybe they did and we just did not see that? In any case, it appears that Tarzan is shot from the trees and when he lands, Jai wakes up or seems to know what happened?