Tarzan and the Lost Tribe

For centuries men have searched for the Green Goddess, an idol worshipped by a hidden tribe in the jungles of Guatemala. It contains the secret formula for a powerful explosive that will change the course of human history. Major Martling and his team are dispatched by the government to find the idol. Assigned to assist them is Lord Greystoke -- better known as Tarzan of the Apes. As soon as the party braves the dangers of the Guatemalan jungle, they are captured by the lost tribe. Their queen, Kia-Kia, wants Tarzan as her mate...and if the jungle lord doesn't comply, she will unleash the wrath of the Green Goddess upon the world...

Tarzan and the Lost Tribe is one of two feature films edited together from the 1935 serial The New Adventures of Tarzan. The serial was initially conceived by creator Edgar Rice Burroughs to compete with MGM's popular Tarzan series starring Johnny Weissmuller. The author had long been unhappy with Weissmuller's monosyllabic interpretation of his famous creation, as well as the flat $75,000 fee he received for the rights. The New Adventures of Tarzan would feature a cultured, well-spoken Lord Greystoke faithful to Burroughs's original novels. Cast as the Lord of the Jungle was Herman Brix, MGM's original choice for the role. The actor had only lost the part to Weissmuller because of an injury suffered during the filming of the football picture Touchdown (1931). Excitingly shot on location in Guatemala, The New Adventures of Tarzan was poised to be a box office smash with a unique strategy. Movie theater owners had the choice of exhibiting either the full 12-chapter serial, or Tarzan and the Lost Tribe, a feature consisting of the 65-minute first chapter, the cliffhanger resolution from the beginning of the second, and a newly shot ending. Unfortunately, MGM, worried about the future of their own Tarzan series, put pressure on theater owners not to show either the serial or the feature. The resulting box office returns were so poor that Brix felt the need to change his name to Bruce Bennett afterwards. Despite this, another feature film, Tarzan and the Green Goddess, was compiled from the remaining 10 chapters in 1938. To make matters more complicated, the soundtrack to the Tarzan and the Lost Tribe feature was lost during preparations for its overseas release years later, thus the dialogue was completely re-dubbed by British actors attempting American accents. A notation was added in the credits attributing the alteration to poor filming conditions in Guatemala. Herman Brix was also now billed as Bruce Bennett, owing to his latter-day success in films like Sahara (1943) with Humphrey Bogart and Mildred Pierce (1945) with Joan Crawford. Since the complete 65-minute version of the first chapter is now considered lost, Tarzan and the Lost Tribe is indispensable viewing for anyone interested in the cinematic history of Lord Greystoke.