Ron Ely’s TARZAN-37-Maguma Curse

 

Ron Ely’s TARZAN-37-Maguma Curse (note: no THE)

 

I have to admit that this episode started out magnificently, seemingly about to turn out the best of the “horror” episodes of this series that it occasionally does. I also have to admit that I can recall EVERY villain from STAR TREK, the original series, every SPACE: 1999 alien, and every guest star character from LOST IN SPACE and the other Irwin Allen shows from each other. I can’t with TARZAN.

 

It’s not a criticism just an observation as the nature of the show and the premise doesn’t really mix to give us particularly memorable or different villains. Sure I can remember the Colonel and his sister and the William Marshall Colonel but that’s about it.

 

I love Simon Oakland but more as Tony Vincenzo in KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER. I’m not sure I like him as much a villain for TARZAN. For one, he is not a particularly imposing adversary for the ape man. AND as Judson Burnett, he is okay but he appeared once before in TARZAN and I thought maybe that character was this character. He isn’t. Tarzan did lock horns with Burnett in the past but as so often happens in this show, they are referring to events we did not see.

 

I also happen to love Barbara Luna in her appearances in STAR TREK, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, FIVE WEEKS IN A BALLOON, BUCK ROGERS, and so many others, however here as Francois “Frankie” McVeigh, the daughter of a dreamer, she’s…a bit too shrinking violet in distress.

 

After some of the more recent female guest star characters being somewhat more independent, to go back to the screaming, losing her mind, doing the wrong thing in a crisis and signing her “diamond mine” over to the villain, innocently, she’s a bit…well, not annoying but shocking, even for the 1960s as a helpless and frankly !() dopey female character. She plays the daughter of a man that Tarzan seemed to know, Peter McVeigh, who is blamed by the Ebu tribe for cutting down their precious Maguma tree, so the witch doctor puts a curse on him. When the other tree (?) loses its leaves (as it glows blue!), he will die. Somehow he does die and I’m not sure we ever find out what really kills him, though Tarzan tells Frankie that he died of cholera. Tarzan doesn’t seem to believe that he died of cholera.

 

One of the many things that bothers me about this episode is that we never really, truly find out what Tarzan believes. He seems to mock the entire thing when confronting the witch doctor, the creepy old man, N’Gota. He is sarcastic and catches him in a lie from his god Un-Gai and yet he also seems to think the M’Boto character might have killed Peter who was blamed by the real villain, Burnett. HOW did Peter die? We never really find out? Did they infect him? Did they use a dart?

 

THEN, Tarzan goes and threatens the witch doctor with taking his soul out of him and locking it in a room without air. Tarzan also speaks Swahili to Burnett, calling him a hyena later on.

 

Other than NEVER finding out if Tarzan believes in the supernatural, this episode, for the first time in the series, shows us that the supernatural DOES happen and exists. While as a kid, I always wanted this show to feature such things (such as live dinosaurs, monsters, aliens, lost cities and their lizard occupants, witches, demons, etc), I’m not sure that this episode doing this is a good thing. For one, in hindsight, with respect to the wonderful Tarzan Joe Lara was, that series in the 1990s didn’t really work for me as it featured far too many of those things and it just…well, a re-watch is needed but it just seemed silly and inconsequential, something even the worst of the Ron Ely series episodes didn’t.

 

Here, it is an uneven universe created just by this episode.

 

The other thing is that the episode starts out unsettling and atmospheric with some great editing and sound effects and music. For the first 20 minutes or so we do not hear the TARZAN theme referenced in the soundtrack and I thought, for once, we would not but we later do when Tarzan goes the village. Aside from that, there’s again a strong 1970s feel to this 1967 episodes, when…the night scenes feature just drums beating uneasily and then they…stop and we see animals in stock footage we’ve seen before…but no music and little sound effects. It’s unsettling and even scary. Even Tarzan takes notice of the silence. In MORE stock footage.

 

As an aside, there’s an embarrassing amount of stock footage but more on that later.

 

These early scenes take in the narrative as NIGHT in the jungle in these episodes seems sinister, filled with glowing death trees, black mamba snakes meant to kill Frankie, DARK AS NIGHT black panthers, witch doctors sitting in the middle of the road with a strange contraption he built, an elephant throwing dirt on itself (TWICE! In more stock), natives in the trees (stock) with weapons, natives with spears in the jungle waiting outside your window to kill you, and more things to kill you than you know.

 

As Danial, the nice official (?), who also seems to be once a native himself, says, “There are many things in the jungle that can kill you, if you taste them, touch them, or even breathe in the air around them. The witch doctors know of these things.”  This implies a scientific reason for the death of Peter and the possible near death of Frankie but we’re never given more on that.  Danial, against all odds, survives the episode, though he is knocked out by Mike Purdy (no, not the Joanna Lumley Purdy from THE NEW AVENGERS), who in the end tries to get away but is chased by M’Bolo.

 

Tarzan’s pride in scaring the witch doctor goes with punishment: he’s hit in the head by a rock thrown by M’Bolo, who later, afraid of the test of truth tells the witch doctor he lied and helps Tarzan…but only because Tarzan lived to escape a trap that M’Bolo put him in for Burnett, who was paying them (and in a curious line of dialog, Tarzan asks what Burnett is paying the natives, “A whipping?” WHAT?). M’Bolo and the witch doctor and this entire foolish tribe (are they foolish since their death curse seemed to work or are they just immoral?) go unpunished.

 

On the other hand, when the tree was cut down (it turns out by Burnett, what a shock!), the tribe experienced repercussions: the ground would not grow and what did grow seemed to kill children who ate the food! I don’t think this is discussed but it is possible the MERCURY that Tarzan reveals is actually in the mine (and not diamonds) poisoned the ground and killed the children (thankfully off screen)?

 

Speaking of children: alas, no Jai. At one point near the dock Frankie comes on in a beautiful ship and beautifully shot scene, Tarzan tells Cheetah to go play and we do not see Cheetah again. I don’t’ think Cheetah is even in the jeep when Tarzan goes with Danial (a spelling that seems more tribal than the more usual Daniel) and Frankie instead of going upriver. Why was Tarzan going to go up river? He changes that when he sees Burnett is involved with Frankie on the ship, pretending to be a friend. He and Tarzan have a contentious past.

 

If NIGHT is trouble, then day is not and the day scenes following the night scenes show happy times, happy animals and yield a happy soundtrack.

 

All of this in first half makes for an unsettling set up, which may give us some strong horror. We are let down therefore by the second half. First, Frankie, told to stay inside, doesn’t. She screams at the face at the window, which any of us might but then continues her hysterics. That plus she and Danial are sitting in the room right in front of a window with the shades up. And she refused at first to believe any of the dangers confronting herself, Tarzan and Danial.

 

So Tarzan is thrown where exactly? In the mine? We get MORE stock footage when we see a long clip from THE FIRE PEOPLE of Tarzan in the volcano from last season. Now, in 1966, viewers who missed that episode and those that wanted to see the joys of it (and I’m not being sarcastic, it was terrific), could see some of this again in this “repeated” clip from that. Trouble is we now do have DVDs, videos, streaming services, and blu rays and we can see it any time we want. It also smacks of saving money, which, for series like TARZAN and THE TIME TUNNEL (the show’s foe which if you look at the non-renewal failed at the hands of TARZAN on the same night), it is forgivable. Nothing like either show was on TV at the time. In any case, this along with the other stock is sort of…tedious these days. It also …well, doesn’t fit in. There’s no active volcano around in the rest of the episode AND Tarzan swims through water he finds (which gives us MORE stock footage!) which if it were near a volcano that active, he probably should NOT be able to.

 

Tarzan also takes an incredibly LONG time to get back to Danial and Frankie, who are stranded alone at the house/base. Even considering his capture. I almost forgot he was in the show for a bit! And when Burnett gets her signature on papers, enabling him to have her killed by the tribe at the double tree sling (which would tear her apart, horribly), Frankie seems more interested in protecting herself than in helping Danial, who was already knocked out and might have been dead! She later runs out in the rain yelling for the natives to stop the drumming and is captured. The captors must have really liked her though as someone, after the rainstorm, seems to have stylized her hair!

 

By the time Tarzan does show up, the episode is bogged down in sleepiness and tedium. I don’t even feel the “test of truth” that we saw enlivened anything. First, the two men had to stick their hands into a basket with another poisonous snake to retrieve a rock each. If killed the man who was killed was the liar. Sigh. Both get the rock out. Burnett seems to know the trick of keeping a steady hand.

 

Then, they have to have a deadly tarantula crawl on their arm (for Tarzan’s doesn’t really move all that much but stays on his hand). I love Oakland but didn’t need to see him shirtless!

 

Next, the anti-climax (Tarzan never had to beat the tar out of him) as Burnett falls over the pit of fire and dies (and the British Purdy flees). We never find out if M’Bolo catches Purdy (if so will he be put on the double tree? He didn’t kill the first tree).

 

 

Tarzan seems to have a lot of love for Frankie, who was abandoned by her father into foster homes until the age of 14. Her father supposedly loved her very much. Going back to the day is fine thing: a huge snake overhead that scares Frankie is laughed off by Tarzan and he pats the girl into being calm: it’s day so this snake is all right. Frankie mentions singing for her supper.

 

In the end, we find out only that Frankie is now rich thanks to the rare mercury in the mine. We don’t know if there were explanations for the death of her father, the children, or the poison in the ground. Then again maybe I wasn’t paying attention because I was bored by this episode.

 

Oh and having clips from a better episode and an episode with Jai in it, only serves to make us remember Tarzan’s drive to save the boy which this episode doesn’t have, though he does want to save Frankie.

 

This is not, from my review, a terrible episode but it’s boring about mid-way through to be honest and does not move like the other episodes…ALL other episodes!

 

And again, the tribe go unpunished. Oops, we made a mistake by killing the wrong person for the man who was paying us and told us that wrong person who destroyed our stupid tree. Sigh. If that isn’t enough, now the supernatural in this show exists, despite everything we’ve seen before this! And we still have no idea what Tarzan believes: does he believe all the mumbo jumbo (as perhaps Johnny’s Tarzan did) or not (as perhaps Henry’s and Jock’s TARZAN didn’t?).

 

There’s also one part as Burnett tries to get Frankie to first sign his papers where the DVD looks like it failed to restore a damaged part of the film and it looks dark for a few seconds of time, like a very old film. It resumes to normal quickly, though.

 

Danial wasn’t sure Frankie would remember him as they haven’t seen each other in a long time.

 

The fire wielder dancer is impressive as is the stunt over the flaming pit (which is NOT stock footage though close ups of Ely on the rope might be?).

 

The start of the dancing looks like an entirely different tribe at the very opening of the episode.

 

Tarzan in the past ran Burnett out of the Kimberly (?).

 

During the journey in the jeep, Frankie, smart girl, falls asleep with her head on Tarzan’s chest.

 

The music during Tarzan’s swim underwater is particularly good and reflects the theme song.

 

One shot of Tarzan running across terrain glowing by a darkening sunset is amazingly gorgeous.