Tarzan The Ape Man (1943) [VHS]
"Me beefcake. You bossy." That kind of sums up the dynamics of 1932'sTarzan, the Ape Man, which stars an incredibly hulking Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan and Maureen O'Sullivan as the gorgeous accidental feminist who finds true love with you-know-who in the jungle. Some of the footage in the first Tarzan talkie is comically dated--scenes of the British adventurers seem superimposed over stock footage of tribesmen and African vistas. But the action is swift and often unexpectedly hiply humorous. When Jane spots Tarzan watching her undress to bathe in the river, she says, "I wish you'd knock before you'd enter my boudoir." And it's hysterical how she wraps every man in the film around her finger. A romantic's trip through 20th-century popular culture would be incomplete without first-hand viewing of Tarzan capturing Jane, then swinging from tree to tree. The smoldering looks the man raised by apes exchanges with the cultured Brit? Animal attraction defined.--Valerie J. Nelson