The recent death of Cheetah from the Tarzan movies (outliving his co-star Johnny Weissmuller by almost 20 years) got me thinking about one of the many weird things about these movies that always got shown on TV on school holiday mornings in my youth.

Usually Tarzan ends up somehow falling out with the natives for some reason, though why, given they're in the jungle together, and surely should be allies against the outsiders, is not explained. Anyway, forgetting that Tarzan essentially sides with the outsiders in the destruction of his own habitat, there is the strange way he goes about trying to even the odds in his battle of one person (him) versus a whole village of natives who are inevitably portrayed as battle-ready and spoiling for a fight.

Usually he accomplishes this by going up to a whole bunch of jungle animals, who, despite being erstwhile predators and predatees, are conveniently collected together in a single group that Tarzan can approach when needed in a feud against the neighbours.

Usually he approaches the elephants: proper African elephants- you can tell because they're Indian elephants, with plastic African elephant ears stuck on- and he mumbles "Wooloowoolooowooloowoo!". And they go "PARP!", and off they go, leading an animal alliance trampling all over the native village, causing mayhem. No guns, no weapons needed, just "Wooloowoolooowooloowoo!" and "PARP!"- job done.

Even as a callow youth, I was thinking "That's quite a specific plan contained within the instruction 'Wooloowoolooowooloowoo!'" And indeed, how come the natives are somehow bereft of this simple instruction, especially given that they've lived in the same jungle for hundreds of years? But, no, it's Tarzan- the immigrant- that can talk to the animals!

Or can he? It's not like we see subtitles for what Tarzan's saying. I suspect from the elephant's point of view it's "Last time time a white man approached us, we got an arse full of buckshot". And then here comes this white man, and he's almost naked!" What are they going to think? I suspect it'll be "Uh-oh, let's piss off the nearby village, then lead them back here so they can waste this dude".