ROBERT DAY

Bil’s rating (out of 5): BB.5

Switzerland/USA, 1967.  Banner Productions, Allfin A.G..  Story by Bob Barbash, Lewis Reed, Screenplay by Bob Barbash, based on characters created by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  Cinematography by Irving Lippman.  Produced by Sy Weintraub.  Music by William Loose. Production Design by Herbert Smith.  Film Editing by Anthony Carras, Edward Mann, James Nelson. 

Mike Henry returns as Tarzan, this time flying down to Brazil at the request of an old Professor friend (Paulo Gracindo), who needs his help to save the country from a dangerous death cult that has risen up in the jungle. These marauders, whose traditions go back to ancient times, are killing people in village after village and our hunky hero needs to hear no more before he summarily strips his kit off and swings from vine to vine in pursuit of the bad guys. Reaching the Amazon River, Tarzan teams up with a boat captain (Jan Murray) who is bringing medicine to a doctor trying to inoculate villagers against a deadly epidemic (a doctor who, thankfully, turns out to also be a hot blonde goddess played by Diana Millay). Manuel Padilla Jr. returns from the previous film as a different character, this time assisting Murray on the boat, while Tarzan brings along his trusty chimpanzee and lion despite the fact that neither of them does much of use. This one gets going a lot faster than the Valley of Gold does, it’s almost admirable how little set-up it needs, but the locations don’t look as dazzling and there isn’t as much variety to the action scenes.