People are voting emotionally.

A different way of telling a story

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This movie exists in various versions. It started off as a 15- chapter serial. In the USA, it was cut down to both 85 minutes and 71 minutes. In England, it was cut to 95 minutes. The version I recommend for maximum laughs is the 85 minute cut – and fortunately, this is the version favored by TV stations. Edited with the proverbial meat ax, the story jumps wildly from numbingly senseless situations to ancient stock footage to tattily staged "action" to tedious animal antics to lengthy close-ups of the remarkably wide- eyed heroine (Jacqueline Wells a.k.a. Julie Bishop), to incredibly extended shots of an imbecilely grinning Tarzan. Please note that it's worth persevering right to the climax for some of the most hilarious stuff occurs right at the end. Technically, the film is atrocious. The sets are tatty, the photography so dull and grainy that it looks as if photographers Harry Neuman and Joseph Brotherton used smoked glass instead of film stock. The sound recordist wisely decided not to put his name to his hopelessly primitive attempt in which sound levels vary wildly from scene to scene. I'm amazed that both Buster Crabbe (Tarzan) and Miss Wells/Bishop managed to survive this movie. I guess it was simply their amazingly good luck that hardly anybody ever saw it! That's a pity in a way. This movie is a riot!

Buster Crabbe was the Tarzan I most vividly remember from my childhood television viewing days and after getting a chance to re-view "Tarzan the Fearless" after almost 50 years, I can't understand why he wasn't MGM's first choice. He was given a screen test along with many others including Joel McCrea and Clark Gable but Johnny Weissmuller was Metro's final choice. Crabbe was very handsome and had a far better physique than Weissmuller which he did manage to maintain - apparently in 1970 Crabbe returned to swimming in a Senior Sports Swimming meet and managed to set a world record in the 400 metre freestyle event. Even though he didn't catch Metro's eye, Paramount was interested and he pleased them with "King of the Jungle" and later that year starred in a serial "Tarzan the Fearless" which was also re-edited into an 85 minute feature which opened at the Roxy in 1933. As Time magazine said "From the neck down Crabbe easily equals Weissmuller as an attraction to female audiences, from the neck up he is a vast improvement"!!!This is supposedly (according to the preface) Tarzan's "strangest and most romantic adventure" and being a pre-coder there is lots of double meaning dialogue and many chances for Mary to be scantily clad in the jungle. Tarzan is asked by Dr. Brooks (E. Alyn Warren) to take a letter to his daughter Mary (fetching Jacqueline Welles) who is searching for him in the jungle. It wouldn't be a Tarzan movie without crooked safari guides - in this case they want to ditch the pesky girl and get down to the real business which is claiming a 10,000 pounds reward if they can prove Tarzan is dead - oh, and they also plan to look for a lost Emerald mine!!! Tarzan has already made himself known to viewers with an establishing scene that shows off his glorious physique, swinging through the trees (he made it look very real and dangerous) and also shows he is a defender of the weak as he fights a lion to the death to save a defenceless deer. Camping by a river Mary indulges in a near nude swim that brings Tarzan to her rescue when the river turns out to be crocodile infested. He is able to deliver the letter and also guides them to her father's hut but the father has gone to the temple - but wait!! he leaves a map.Being edited from a 12 episode serial there is plenty of action and villains!! Suddenly Bedouins appear (Mischa Auer turns up as a High Priest and beautiful Carlotta Monti as the High Priestess) to kidnap Mary for a Sultan's harem but Tarzan is on hand to save her from a horse stampede and whisk Mary to the treetops at last!! By the end the bad villain is dead, the half hearted villain, who was forcing Mary into marriage with him in return for Tarzan's life has repented and has sent her after Tarzan for the fadeout. At least with this Tarzan, apart from a scene where he is taught to read, there are no scenes to make him feelinferior because of his jungle upbringing - no scoffing at his tablemanners etc. And this Mary (or Jane) looked at him with longing - dare I say lust, she did not try to show she was superior by laughing at him!!! In different books I've read the story goes that once Jacqueline Welles changed her name to Julie Bishop in the early 1940s her career really took off, but looking at her filmography at IMDb she had a pretty big career in the thirties - she was a 1934 Wampas Baby Star and was the female lead in the horror cult classic "The Black Cat" (1934).

In an attempt to cash-in on MGM's successful "Tarzan the Ape Man" (1932) starring Johnny Weissmuller, producer Sol Lesser went ahead with a serial follow-up. Perhaps not expecting its revival would become so valuable a property, MGM had not fully secured the rights. Cashing in on cashing in, the first four chapters of the "Tarzan" serial were edited into a feature-length "Tarzan the Fearless". The full 12-part serial is presently lost. This is not a good film, but it's worth seeing muscularly handsome Buster Crabbe in the lead role; he has a different, more spirited, take on the jungle man. Watchers should be advised that Mr. Crabbe's loincloth seems to be missing half of its backside, but his front is securely covered.*** Tarzan the Fearless (8/11/33) Robert F. Hill ~ Buster Crabbe, Julie Bishop, E. Alyn Warren, Edward Woods

Landing far towards the bottom in many folks' ranking of the Tarzan films, this one has far more charms than it's usually given credit for. Produced separately (and far more cheaply) than the famed Weissmuller/MGM films of the era, this one stars former Olympic champion Crabbe as the ape man. He has befriended a gentleman explorer and researcher (Warren) whose daughter (Wells), along with her suitor (Woods), is en route to find him in the dense jungle. When the safari guides spot Crabbe, they decide to kill him in order to collect a 10,000 pound reward on his head from his enemies in England. Wells, however, is rescued from an alligator by Crabbe and she falls for him, determined to do whatever it takes to save him from slaughter. Meanwhile, a fanatic religious cult, a riled up band of natives and assorted lions add to all the troubles in the jungle. If it sounds like a crowded plot line, it's because the storyline was part of a 12 episode serial and this film is cobbled together from parts of the larger whole. As a result, the story is choppy, the editing is awkward at times and it lacks the coherence of a work intended to be a self-contained feature film and not a prolonged saga. However, especially for Tarzan enthusiasts, there are some pluses. Crabbe is stunning to look at. His adorable face and thick, curly hair compliment his impressive physique. His rather startling loincloth is brief, to say the least (except, oddly, in the swimming sequences when it is inexplicably replaced by a pair of leopard-print trunks!) He approaches the role with complete physical abandon, thrashing animal-like when excited, barely speaking at all and doing a significant amount of his own stunts. When Wells annoys him, he gives her a thump in the shoulder and when Tarzan says it's bedtime, it's BEDTIME! The rope swinging (and there is PLENTY of it!) is among the most realistic of all the films and there are some striking tussles with lions that certainly beat the one Victor Mature did in "Samson and Delilah". Some of the aspects of the film are laughably bad, such as the Eqyptianesque fanatics and crude editing which features people looking at things in the wrong direction or running the wrong way or not being able to see something that is in full view. Stay tuned for the scene near the end when a man in a gorilla suit enters the fracas when trying to get an elephant to rescue Crabbe from a pit!! There is also a lot of pausing before and after lines of dialogue, a symptom of the early days of sound film-making. Still, it's certainly worth a look and Crabbe will not be easy to forget, not only for his looks, but for his charm. The kooky finale has a chimp and an elephant dancing (!) along to music from a phonograph!!