Penultimate Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan film and the last to feature Johnny Sheffield, who played Boy in eight Tarzan films before getting his own series as Bomba, the Jungle Boy. Patricia Morison heads an expedition to Tarzan's neck of the woods to nab some animals for zoos back in the States. Helping her is vicious big game hunter Barton MacLane. By now, if you've seen even a few Tarzan movies, you should know where this is going. The bad guys take the animals but Tarzan steals them back and, with help from Boy and his animal friends, runs the villains out of Africa. There's also a subplot about political intrigue with local royalty.Johnny Weissmuller is good but he's basically going through the motions at this point. There's nothing in this he hasn't done before. Johnny Sheffield, who's almost as big as Weissmuller at this point, does well in his final outing as Boy. There's a thread running throughout the movie about Boy learning responsibility ("Boy man now. Do man's work."). Brenda Joyce has little to do as Jane but her few scenes are nice. Lovely Patricia Morison is interesting as the title character (who is not really a huntress). She's written sympathetically most of the way through but it ultimately amounts to nothing as she never switches sides like you are expecting. A major misstep is that the film doesn't give us a catfight between Morison and Brenda Joyce. There aren't a lot of action scenes in this one. Tarzan has a brief fight scene with another man but no tussles with crocs or anything. The climactic animal stampede is exciting, though. The drama is solid and the cute family stuff between Tarzan, Jane, Boy, and Cheeta is always fun to watch. A highlight of the movie for me is the scene where Cheeta flies a bamboo airplane Boy made. Not among the best of the Tarzan films but still worthwhile. Fans will like it, I think. A couple of final notes: in one scene, Tarzan is freeing the various animals that were captured by the hunters and he is shown releasing two bear cubs from their cages. Why are there bears in an African jungle? In another scene, Morison's character tells the King that "In our civilization, we believe in keeping an open mind." To which the King replies "In your civilization, open mind means that one must agree with what you yourself say." Brother, tell me that isn't as true now as it was 70 years ago!

Johnny Weissmuller made a name for himself as Tarzan at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio. However, and I am not sure why, Weissmuller and 'Boy' (Johnny Sheffield) jumped from this prestige studio to the less than stellar RKO--where the budgets shrank considerably as did the quality. The scripts got a lot more weird and the films became chock full of poorly integrated stock footage and animals that often weren't even African. Additionally, 'Jane' (Maureen O'Sullivan) remained at MGM and a new leading lady needed to be found. After having the character be 'off on vacation in England' or 'helping with the war effort' in a couple films, RKO decided to re-cast this character with Brenda Joyce--who bore little similarity to O'Sullivan.This installment finds a party of greedy trappers trying to exploit the jungle to the fullest. However, the wise leader of a very white looking group of natives in the middle of Africa will only allow them to take a male/female pair of each species--and they are just too greedy for this. So, their foreman (Barton MacLane) arranges for the King to be 'accidentally' killed and the new King is more than willing to let them take what they want! What can Tarzan do--especially when these evil trappers come into his territory next?! This is a surprisingly lame entry--even for RKO. The most obvious problem is that there are absolutely no black people in the film--yet it's set in Africa!!! Instead, tan-skinned SOMEWHAT Polynesian-looking guys abound!! What?!?! Next, the number of stock clips is larger than normal--and the film looks pretty cheesy as a result. Even more cheesy is the completely unnecessary and dopey scene of the chimp, Cheeta, flying from a home-made glider (complete with obvious wires pulling it across the sound stage). Fortunately, Cheeta is very entertaining in this movie otherwise--and perhaps has the best performance of anyone in the film! This, however, is not enough to elevate this above the score of 5--and this is possibly being a bit over-generous.By the way, when you see the airplane look carefully--it changes type throughout the film and are obviously at least two different planes.

A group of trappers seek to invade Tarzan's jungle and capture all the animals they want for their zoo, but Tarzan and the King object. When the King allows for only two of each type of animal to be taken, he is murdered and his nephew becomes the new leader, so the trappers are free to do as they please. It's then up to Tarzan to stand his ground. In this installment, the rapidly growing Johnny Sheffield plays Boy for the last time. We continue to see other recognizable Universal actors in each film, and this time it's Patricia Morison (CALLING DR. DEATH, DRESSED TO KILL) as the head zoologist. **1/2 out of ****

The "Huntress" is a very standard, but enjoyable low-budget Tarzan adventure via way of R-K-O producer Sol Lessor It is also a "hoot." Sheffield plays "Boy." Except to call him "Boy" in all his teenage masculine glory can be disconcerting or a howl. Weismeuller was easily in his 50s when this was made "Huntress" and in scenes with Sheffield, the now muscular and agile (as only a teenager can be) makes Weismueller look like Gramps.After this, Sheffield began the "Bomba" series, where about the only attraction was John's handsome looks, good natured aura, maturing bod and barely covering his private parts loin cloth. All first obvious in this programmer.See it for some innocent fun, a too-old Weismueller and Sheffield. Can anyone figure out what was worn under those loin-cloths. It has driven women and gay men fans of this never duplicated, incredibly successful, escapist series to wonder for 70-years.