TARZAN: THE EPIC ADVENTURES 4: TARZAN AND THE LOST LEGION

 

TARZAN: THE EPIC ADVENTURES 4: TARZAN AND THE LOST LEGION

 

“Look, there’s just no end to all this killing. Our cause is lost.”

 

“Your sword is not the only weapon that strikes at the heart.”

 

“Arm yourself, outlander!”

“I need no weapons.”

 

The subtitles here now call Themba instead of Timba. Tarzan and Themba follow a bird for honey. Tarzan tells his friend that if you don’t feed it a little honey, next time it will lead you into a trap. Legend? Themba reminds him last time they didn’t feed it honey. Themba finds a sword in the ground, removes it and then tumbles down the hillside to land in a tree. Tarzan dives off a cliffside near a water fall in a spectacular dive that equals the dive done by Wolf in his series. He finds Roman-type warriors holding a girl in a net, her name being Athena. He fights them and throws a sword that was thrown at him into the chest of one of them. Athena’s knee will not permit her to run so Tarzan carries her off when more soldiers arrive.

 

When they stop and Tarzan puts a root that the girl thought was a weed on her knee to stop the pain, she tells him that Claudius is a self proclaimed emperor. The soldiers called Tarzan an uplander.

 

Casca, a man of color, reports to Claudius about what happened. Claudius is given a massage by a girl, there are two others around. Their talk tells us that someone named Cassius is a leader of the rebels that Athena spoke to Tarzan about (50 of them?). Claudius orders Casca to get Tarzan and bring him to him.

 

Another black man (Terrence or Terran?) meets Themba after Themba falls from the tree and is captured immediately by the warriors. The black man is part of a huge amount of slaves being herded toward Claudius’ domain: Caste Mare. This man tells Themba about a fellow captive just ahead of them, a man called Augustus who considers himself the rightful ruler.

 

In a shocking scene that separates this show from the Wolf show forever, Tarzan finds a large group of dead people and a skeleton on a cross. He moves to free one groaning young man from another cross but the man on the cross dies before he does so.

 

Athena has returned to her rebel friends and discusses the plan with Cassius: she feels that her father Augustus has had himself purposefully captured as part of this plan but she thinks it is too soon to enact this plan.

 

Claudius, in an angry mood, welcomes the new prisoners and we find out that Augustus is his brother. Terren distracts the guards while Augustus, with a hidden knife, tries to kill Claudius. Themba stops Augustus and ruins this. But he also stops Claudius from killing Augustus for the attempt. Casca doesn’t want this either as it would make Augustus a martyr. He calls Claudius by the title Caesar.

 

Tarzan joins the rebels and despite some push back from Cassius, he agrees to help Athena rescue her father when no one else seemingly wanted to.

 

Claudius learns from Themba that Themba has been to Rome and learned Latin, the mother language. He orders a woman to bathe Themba.

 

Cassius used to be chief centurion before Claudius’ coup. He tells Athena and Tarzan to attack from the east, the guards there are slack. Caste Mare was built to protect the child of Marc Anthony and Cleopatra, whose love affair infuriated Julius Caesar. To protect the child, he was sent into deepest Africa to protect him. Tarzan knows that these events were 1900 years ago. Augustus, Claudius and Athena are of his bloodline.

 

 

Themba in only a flimsy white loin covering exits his outdoor bath. Claudius calls him “my young chief.”

 

As Tarzan, Athena, and Cassius sneak into the place, dead bodies with wounds on them are carried past them. Athena explains to Tarzan that the circus used to be a place of sport but Cassius returned it to an arena of death.

 

NOTE: while all of this is better written and executed than last episode, the dialog here implies that the lost legion had an arena so many years ago while protecting the child. I am not sure this is how the legend went. Btw there are other movies and TV shows that use this lost legion legend. A movie almost no one seems to like except me, THE LAST LEGION was one. DOCTOR WHO did a story about this in one of the Peter Capaldi seasons. THE LOST LEGION is from 2014, one of the newest ones.

 

Themba calls Italy Italia and explains the senate was ineffectual and that there is no longer an emperor there. Claudius, whose lines now look as if they have been dubbed or recorded later, proclaims Themba imperial historian.

 

When a gladiator refuses to kill Augustus in the arena, Claudius orders Casca to kill them both and he does, shockingly and while Tarzan and the other two watch from a hill. You would expect Tarzan to have saved Augustus but he does not and cannot, it would seem. He does stop Athena from going down to kill Claudius, Tarzan calling it suicide.

 

More later…but I must say this is much better than the last episode and the pilot movie.

 

Back. Cassius blames Tarzan for being a traitor when he sees Themba by Claudius’ side. Tarzan stops him from killing him and frees himself from his cape and hood. Athena finds her rebels fleeing. Themba is told by Claudius he can leave.

 

NOTE: the location work here is brilliant and the sets and locations look better than anything in any Tarzan TV series before and after it and even rival most of the Tarzan movies and indeed, a lot of movies to be honest. It looks spectacular here.

 

Themba consults with Terran who is upsidedown of his own exercise regime while Terran is in a cell. Is Terran really his name? IMDB has NONE of the names associated with this episode. Terr mentions Mephistopheles. Okay, I’m confused, Claudius told Themba he was free to go so what does Themba do? Visit Terran in the cell and then return to Claudius who is petting one of his two huge black dogs to ask if he’s free to go!? Claudius instead of repeating his “You are free to go,” says he is free to go…when Claudius says so. Huh?

 

In the meantime, Tarzan has talked a crying Athena (the actress doing a great job here) into not giving up hope. He has his bow and arrows.

 

There are five women with Claudius when he leaves his main throne area.

 

A woman is sent in to Themba as he takes off ALL his clothes except the flimsy white loin cloth or thong or whatever that is called. She is here to “squeeze the worry from his face.” He is not badly built. Tarzan sneaks in. He knocks a guard down while Themba knocks another and Tarzan beats him with armor. On the way out, Tarzan throws a knife into an archer’s arm and the man falls off the building…probably to his death. Climbing down, the two are captured by four (?) spearmen pointing spears at their faces.

 

In a cell, Tarzan is chained up (again). He faces a contradictory Claudius (“I pride myself on being a merciful ruler” and “I look forward to your death in the arena. Should be fun.”). He also puts a smile off Terran’s face by quick intellect and several comments that tell Terran not to accept his fate and not to play the fool. This makes him think twice about his persona. This is one of the most, if quick, interesting verbal spars in the Tarzan history.

 

 

Again, Lara is excellent in the action sequences but here, the show seems to find its legs and find itself as Lara also handles the philosophical comments toward others instead of just spouting them. He’s excellent in the chat and dialog, too. This might, so far, be the best and my favorite episode.

 

Claudius visits Themba, who is hanging by his wrists, shirtless and off his feet in a “royal” cell. Claudius touches Themba’s bare stomach to get him rocking. He orders soldiers to give Themba some water, “We don’t want him to die too quickly.”

 

As three men come to take Tarzan to the arena, he fights them (and loses), Terran, in the struggle, manages to get the keys through the bars of his cell, TO his cell. He frees himself. He rushes to Athena.

 

He explains the truth about Tarzan and Themba, explaining that Themba is guilty of no more than ignorance. Which got Athena’s father killed, it might be mentioned but isn’t. The rebels have not yet fled the area. Athena talks her “fellow Romans” into helping Tarzan and Themba. It must be noted that some of them seem dressed in the clothes of Isrealites and/or Egyptians?

 

The arena stands seem filled with about 30 to 50 or so extras?

 

Tarzan faces Casca in the arena and tells him he needs no weapons. Casca cheats and lies when he says he will not fight an unarmed man and hits Tarzan from behind with studded knuckled glove or gloves. Tarzan fights but Casca gets him in a bear hug. Tarzan head butts him and gets loose and starts to win.

 

Athena’s people infiltrate the arena stands. Some of the guards at Claudius’s side are shirtless. Wait, is that the young man that died on the cross earlier as one of the rebels helping Athena? There’s also an old man we saw before.

 

Tarzan beats Casca so Claudius tells him to finish him but Tarzan says, “He’s already beaten.”

 

Nevertheless, Claudius instructs the leader of his warriors to spear Casca in the upper stomach and this kills Casca.

 

Next, a warriors shoves a sword into Tarzan’s hands when Themba is brought out to fight Tarzan. When Tarzan refuses to harm Themba, Claudius himself picks up a crossbow to shoot Tarzan and claims both of them will die. Tarzan dives and grabs the fired arrow and uses it to stab a guard (probably dead). The rebels attack just then. Athena gets a knife to the throat of Claudius but Tarzan tells her she will be no better than her uncle if she kills him. She relents and tells the guards to take him away. He orders them to kill all of them, claiming to be emperor. The guards seem to turn against Claudius a bit too easily but there you go.

 

Cassius and Athena seem to be…very close, a couple now.

 

Tarzan spots the humming bird. “I hope all this hasn’t ruined your sense of adventure?”

 

“No, but this was a little too strange.”

 

“Next time, I’ll feed the humming bird.”

 

Despite a few flaws listed above, this was a good episode, great even in a way. It certainly rises above the others before it and presents a straight forward action adventure, which is what Tarzan really should be with twinges of pop philosophy and meaning. It also cements itself as different to both Ely’s TV show and Wolf Larson’s TV show by being almost total fantasy, having large sets of extras in fantasy type or historical type costumes, and having death by Tarzan (though Ely’s Tarzan DID kill people more than once). This feels dangerous and deadly in a way and threatening. There is tension and action on a grander scale than the earlier episodes and frankly more than almost every Wolf episode.

 

A few other things: Themba comes off as incredibly stupid sometimes and Tarzan needed to be taken by more than just three warriors, probably ten to twenty would be more like it!

 

Nevertheless I really enjoyed this episode a lot more than the previous three.