WOLF LARSON’S TARZAN-31-LION GIRL

 

WOLF LARSON’S TARZAN-31-LION GIRL

 

Jack’s journal: Sunday the 23^rd: 1992 has Feb and August; 1993 has May; 1997 has Feb, Nov, and March.

 

Roger tempts Cheetah with a banana because he thinks Cheetah has taken his book THE LOST CITY OF JABAH and put it high up in a tree. He wants Cheetah to bring it down. “You know chimp stakes are a delicacy in some countries.”  Roger climbs the tree and finds more of his stuff in the nest: a knife, his ray ban sunglasses, a baseball glove and hat, deodorant, and sneakers to mention just some. He drops the knife on

himself and falls out of the tree, lands safely somehow and chases Cheetah. This is how he finds a jungle girl in a net and when he does, despite being upset with Cheetah warns him to stay back or stay “there.” When he frees her, she knocks him down and seems to try to bite him. She does scratch his face. She seems to go into a trance but is broken from it when Tarzan’s yell pierces the jungle. Tarzan, headband on, swings to Roger.

 

 

Jane is sarcastic about Roger’s story and asks him if he is making this up but Tarzan says, “Roger does not lie.”

 

Roger, from Tarzan’s reaction, knows Tarzan knows her and asks him to get him a date with her. Tarzan tells a questioning Jane (he dives into the water to avoid this conversation but they have it anyway) that seven summers have passed and he thought Rimi was dead. The lions called her Rimi.

 

Oliver Mills plays the teenager Tarzan in flashback. He’s more than passable as a teenage version of the Wolf Larson Tarzan.

 

He saves her from a croc (pulling his knife and diving in and in a what is happily not an extended croc fight but leads into a montage of the friendship that develops between Rimi and teen Tarz). When a lion comes at them, he is ready to fight it but she is friends with it. Tarzan seems to mention this lion by name and calls it Bantu and tells Jane two moons had come since he came to them.

 

Jane thinks the girl might have been having some kind of seizures. When Tarzan met her, she was standing in the river, apparently frozen in a stance, just like when Roger saw her. In this scene, Tarzan seems to be holding a wooden “man” or figure and he also had his knife out and so the implication is he just carved it?

 

In Roger’s tent, where Jane once more does not believe him that the lion girl took his book, Jane finds her locket which proves she was there. Jane sends Cheetah for Tarzan. A note about the chimps: they have started, a bit before this episode, to look different as if more than one of them played Cheetah, sometimes in the same episodes. I’m not sure from season to season or even ep to ep that the chimps are the same and maybe more than one is used in even one ep. They all function really well though and look really good.

 

Tarzan captures Rimi when she sneaks into Roger’s tent again. Roger is woken, he is shirtless in his bed.

 

Later, Jane and Roger question her and she tries to grab the locket back from Roger. There might be a picture of both parents in it, certainly of her mom.

 

Tarzan and Jane are adamant about their specific intentions. Jane wants to get her back to her parents and family and to get her medical help. Tarzan does not want Jane to force her and wants Rimi only to go if she wants. Jane believes Rimi can’t make up her own mind and make a good choice and believes she may be sick.

 

Rimi grabs the locket back from Jane and flees. Tarzan believes this is wrong and will not bring her back.

 

Jane seems to say, “She could have a seizure in front of a snake or fire.” WHAT?

 

Right after their heated fight about this, Tarzan swings in the trees…

 

While the stunt work is always good, here it is superior, both the close ups and medium shots of Wolf in the tree swing and the long shots of the stunt man.

 

We also see what look like bats in the daytime.

 

In some of these shots, Tarzan DOES NOT have the head band on but as he runs to stop Rimi from walking off a cliff, he does have the head band on. The back of the book she stole from Roger has a man’s name : Samuel Kaiser. Oddly, it is face up when Tarzan picks it up in close up but he has to turn it around in the medium shot?

 

The man is a famous archeologist but the publishing house that published that book, Jack finds out, went under six years ago and the man just seems to have disappeared.

 

Jack returns after Tarzan and Rimi talk on Tantor and has found out the Rimi’s father is en route to Bandali. Jack tracked him down to a dig in Tanzania. He will be there on Thursday (does that mean the date will then be the 27^th?

 

Kaiser had been working some dig in Nakupu when the daughter, Rimi, really named Alice, was on a plane that just disappeared. Jack says maybe it was the first of those seizures. So…WHAT? Was Alice flying a plane? It sounds like Jack says HIS plane just disappeared. The subtitles on AMAZON say HIS plane. The police gave up the search after two weeks.

 

WHAT?

 

Jane tells Rimi they found her father. Roger appoints himself the adjustment teacher to Rimi and tells her about teenagers and shows her his tape player. Jane dunks her while giving her a bath, “Clean is good.”  Roger asks if she needs any help. Jack shows her how to eat with a knife and fork. She scarfs the food anyway. Jane puts her in a skirt dress. She rips it as it feels tight. The dialog for Rimi sounds dubbed by someone else. She talks but it is stilted, too.

 

Honestly though, it is Roger who has the most outfit changes in this episode. I lost count but I’d say he was in maybe three to five different outfits or shirts.

 

Good lord: Roger seems to be reading ENTERTAINMENT MAGAZINE and teaching Rimi about Hollywood stars, saying Michelle Pfeiffer is cool but Rachel Welch is not because she is in her 70s, “You know but you really have to respect her for her body.” Gosh, that would never be allowed said today!

 

He gives her cola but she spits it out…some of it on him by accident.

 

At night, Jane finds Rimi sleeping with a lion (Bantu? Numa? Some other lion? A cub? The ones from last ep?).

 

Jane’s hut looks like a new version (certainly from season one, it is).

 

Rimi tells Tarzan she is not happy to leave so he takes her home: to the jungle where she can hunt and live without homes that do not have sun. She rolls around in the dirt. She does not like the dress.

 

Bantu rushes Tarzan and seemingly, the lion wants to eat something from his hand! Rimi stops Tarzan from stabbing Bantu (I don’t get it; in other episodes lions and he cooperate, especially Numa or Numar).

 

And frankly, this lion looks VERY old and sad. It’s sort of disturbing to see.

 

It’s also difficult to tell but in freeze frame it is NOT Wolf in a close up wrestling the lion, which can be forgiven.

 

When Tarzan explains about daughter and fathers and how Bantu will die to protect her, she realizes that Kaiser’s heart must be full of Rimi, too, and that fathers love with their heart not their eyes. She decides to leave.

 

Hmmm. Tarzan does not seem to have met Kaiser so how does he know how Samuel will treat Rimi?

 

It he assuming?

 

Before she leaves, she gives Roger back his book, “to remember.” She also has to be told by Jack to seat in the seat and not on the floor of the jeep. She thinks the jeep smells. As she pulls away, Roger tells her to send them a post card, come back and visit and not to date guys with sports cars.

 

Not bad but like most episodes, not much forward action either. It’s sort of just there. It does give us a heated debate between Jane and Tarzan, maybe their most heated but not much else. Tarzan vs the lion is sort of rare for this series and it sort of blows it with what appears to be a very old lion eating something from a  tamer’s hand and quick close ups of the lion and one brief shot of the NOT WOLF LARSON tamer or whatever he is.