cult film freak: GORDON SCOTT VS SEAN CONNERY 'TARZAN'S GREAT ADVENTURE'

Sean Connery in TARZAN'S GREAT ADVENTURE Year: 1959 Rating: ****

John Guillerman's TARZAN'S GREATEST ADVENTURE has a grainy aesthetic so that, unlike so many of producer Sy Weintraub's 1950's/1960's Tarzan flicks, it seamlessly matches the inserted shots of wildlife stock footage...

From Gordon Scott's Tarzan nodding at crocodiles to pointing out a random predator/prey chase to beautiful (crash landed) pilot Sara Shane... then lecturing on how nature only kills for itself while humans kill for other reasons...

Sean Connery, Anthony Quayle and Niall MacGinnis in TARZAN'S GREAT ADVENTURE

Like the antagonist gang... holed-up on a dingy riverboat after killing locals to acquire explosives to rob a diamond mine... led by LAWRENCE OF ARABIA actor Anthony Quale, who (we learn) had had a run-in with Tarzan years earlier... but his rifle-shooting sidekick/thug is of more importance, not only since Sean Connery would soon become James Bond, but because his character's the most energetic and deadly...

Even when surrounded by Spaghetti Western regular Al Mulock as a surly outlaw, and NIGHT OF THE DEMON British veteran-actor Niall MacGinnis as an offbeat former-Nazi... all more intriguing than any Tarzan-movie villains while their constant in-fighting's edgier than the eventual body-count showdowns with either the Lord of the Jungle or the jungle's lethal elements, from quicksand to a deadfall...

Gordon Scott in TARZAN'S GREAT ADVENTURE

Meanwhile, Scilla Gabel, as the gang's vulnerable fatale, flirts with jokey-scoundrel Connery, is surreptitiously lusted upon by the creepy MacGinnis and vainly loves Quayle's determined and selfish, anything-goes leader in what's the best Tarzan picture since Johnny Weissmuller...

And yet, Gordon Scott is not only sharper, he's brooding, moody and vengeful: making this GREAT ADVENTURE play out like an edgy British/Italian crime-flick within the Tarzan/jungle template.