4/10
Weissmuller Does A High Dive
25 June 2011
Watching Tarzan And The Mermaids I was thinking this looks a whole lot like Acapulco rather than Africa. Even the 'natives' look Latino. And sure enough I found that RKO had shot a good deal of this in Acapulco. It was good for Johnny Weissmuller because in this film more than most of the Tarzan films he got to do what he did best, swim and dive.

Wherever Tarzan was from exactly in Africa in the Forties he kept running into more Africans who weren't black than those who were. In this film he's found himself a culture who worships the God, Baloo. Baloo in fact is a pearl trader Fernando Wagner who puts on a Baloo suit and with high priest George Zucco keeps the natives in line. Wagner wants pearls, but Zucco's got an eye for Linda Christian and Baloo says to her to marry with Zucco. But she likes Gustavo Rojo and in the end Tarzan has to straighten everyone out in his usual manner.

Brenda Joyce was Jane again, but Johnny Sheffield as Boy had departed the series going off to England for a neglected education. God only knows what that was like for the kid in an English public school. But Sheffield at least managed to miss some of the nonsense rampant in Tarzan And The Mermaids.

Don't get me wrong, it's great fun if you don't take it seriously.
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