Tarzan and His Mate (1934), the sequel to Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), provides the same jungle action (and resulting unintentional comedy) of the previous film that began Johnny Weissmuller’s reign as King of the Jungle while adding an obscured, nude underwater sequence that, along with other scenes were cut by the Hays office. Those scenes have been restored in the film presented by the Warner Archive Collection.
Buy Tarzan and His Mate from MovieZyngHarry Holt (Neil Hamilton) returns to Africa in another attempt to retrieve ivory from an elephant burial ground. This time he is joined on the expedition by new partner Martin Arlington (Paul Cavanagh). It’s no simple task as they have to get by dangerous tribes and also large, rock-throw apes that send numerous bodies (and dummies) down and off a rocky mountain.
It’s 23 minutes before Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) shows up, followed by Jane (Maureen Sullivan). Although he lost her to Tarzan in the first movie, Harry tries to woo her back with clothes and the finer things from back home. Martin is attracted to her as well, but it’s no good as Tarzan has her heart. Tarzan disagrees with the ivory being taken and and refuses to help them. Martin shoots an elephant in order to follow it to go to the graveyard, angering Tarzan who leads a group of elephants to stop them.
The plot is simple but the film gets sidetracked with nonessential sequences, such as Tarzan and Jane swimming. It’s interesting that Tarzan has Jane swim in the buff while he keeps his loincloth on. Tarzan also fights a lion, a rhino, and a crocodile in sequences where Weissmuller gets subbed out for stuntmen and rubber facsimiles get swapped out for the real animals.
The video has been given a 1080p/MPEG-4 MVC encoded transfer displayed at the film’s original aspect ratio of 1.37:1. Compiled from different sources, the quality of the image varies from how inky the blacks are to how sharp the focus is to how much film grain appear. Some shots of Jane have a deliberate soft focus as was the the style when shooting actresses. The high-definition brings out the flaws as the rear-projection screen looks obvious as do the fake ears to make the Indian elephants look African. The audio is available in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Dialogue is clear. When the sound gets too loud, such as the trumpeting of elephants, the track distorts. There’s a faint hiss
The Special Features are two shorts from 1934:
- What Price Jazz (17 min) – A rather goofy story that tries to be artsy as a preacher, Mr. Blue Laws, teams up with a fellow named Mr. Public Opinion to stop jazz and those who perform and enjoy it.
- The Spectacle Maker (20 min) – An odd fairytale in Technicolor where the titular character first makes a lens that only shows beauty and then one that shows the truth to show how people really are.
Although a product of its time, Tarzan and His Mate is an enjoyable jungle adventure with a plot and characters as simplistic as Weissmuller’s monosyllabic portrayal. Greed almost proves to be the expedition’s downfall, but Tarzan saves them from a tribe trying to stop their thievery, which muddles the thematic message. The Blu-ray presents a pleasing high-definition presentation and two forgettable extras.
