Tarzan Goes to India

Tarzan is called to India to save three hundred elephants, that will be drowned if a dam is opened to create a man-made lake to power an electric plant. Tarzan is pitted against Bryce and O'Hara, two engineers who ignore the catastrophic results their work will create. ==Cast==

Gordon Scott had played Tarzan for the previous six movies in the series. Don Bragg was reportedly cast as his replacement but injured his foot and was unable to go to India. Jock Mahoney's casting was announced in December 1961 just as the unit left for India. He was the twelfth actor to play Tarzan, and had just appeared in the previous Tarzan movie, Tarzan the Magnificent, as villain Coy Banton. He had also auditioned for the role a decade previously as a replacement for Johnny Weissmuller in ''Tarzan's Magic Fountain but lost out to Lex Barker. The director was John Guillermin, who had made Tarzan's Greatest Adventure'', the first movie in the series produced by Sy Weintraub. Filming took place in early 1962 in Bombay, Mysore and Madras. Guillermin later said it was difficult dealing with a dam and elephants. "It's especially difficult when you're making a film for two cents in six weeks," he said. "It really was an absurd bit of business. Technically, we did construct a bamboo wall that was used to charge 50 elephants through. You couldn't stop them for two or three miles. But, we did manage to stop them in a river bed. It was all very exciting." Guillermin said "I'm not sure why Gordon [Scott] didn't do Tarzan Goes to India, but Jock did a good job. He was an ex-stuntman. Jock was an extremely tough guy." ==Reception==

Box office In August 1962, Hedda Hopper reported the film was "cleaning up" at the box office. Mahoney said "Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had just released Mutiny on the Bounty, that three-hour remake. And then came Tarzan Goes to India. Well, ol' Tarzan saved Metro's bacon. Mutiny wasn't doing very good at all. They really needed to make the bucks. The picture had all the elements going for it. They even billed me as 'The World's Greatest Stuntman' but in my opinion, Dave Sharpe was the world's greatest." Critical A review of the film in Variety reported that it "has a large-scale production sheen and exotic faraway flavor" and that "Mahoney is the best Tarzan in years," but noted that "the character [Tarzan] is counterfeit. Widespread appeal of the original primitive ape man will never be duplicated by his jet age descendant, an articulate, subdued, businesslike troubleshooter." The New York Times reported that "in addition to being more verbose than his predecessors [Mahoney] is also considerably thinner," but that "coping with leopards, cobras, rampaging wild elephants or evil representatives of civilization, however, he is the same old Tarzan," and "if the background scenery of vultures, monkeys and elephant baths seems suspiciously familiar, it is nonetheless a welcome change from the cardboard African jungle Tarzan usually inhabits." FilmInk said the movie "has two interesting concepts, neither really developed – Tarzan as a stranger in a strange land, and Tarzan is played by someone over 40. However, the action is excellent, the visuals spectacular and Mahoney ideal in the lead." ==Home media==

Warner Bros. released the film on Blu-ray on January 29, 2019 as part of their Archive Collection line. ==References==