After lost civilisations and commie agents, Tarzan turns his attention to something a bit more traditional: ivory hunters, who include Raymond Burr and Tom Conway. Part of their plan involves a slave raid on a local a native tribe played by predominantly white actors – a shame, as they were using black ones for a while. (Not only were decent roles for black actors in 1950s Hollywood few and far between, they often missed out on crappy roles in Tarzan films.) On the other hand, this film depicts the horridness of the slave trade for the first time in a Tarzan film (mainly because a white man, Tarzan, becomes a slave – but at least it’s something, and they are powerful sequences.)
The she-devil of the title is a femme fetale ivory dealer, another female lead in a Tarzan film competing against Jane… but for a change Jane isn’t outshone. This is partly due to the fact that a new actor is playing the part (Barker had a different one for each one of his outings as Tarzan), and she’s not bad. She’s helped by the fact that she gets to go the biff with a couple of baddies and she’s actually given a love scene with Tarzan, something that rarely happened in Barker movies. This is crucial to the story, which has the baddies kidnap Jane in order to force Tarzan to do their dirty work. (When Tarzan thinks Jane is dead he goes totally limp, which is interesting.) It also gives Barker a chance to do some acting and he handles it well.
Structurally the film has a slight problem in that Tarzan is passive for most of the second half. But to compensate for that we have a “Jane trying to find Tarzan” plot and a strong collection of villains to keep us interested. An above-average entry.
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