Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Good concept, poorly executed.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Tarzan must deal with a group of illegal trappers, an expedition to a lost city in search of treasure & a hunter attempting to hunt him down as the ultimate prey.Tarzan and the Trappers was a 1958 attempt at making a new stab at a Tarzan franchise. This feature was cobbled together from three episodes of an unsold TV series & edited together to resemble a proper film. However it didn't entirely work. The episodic nature of the film's plot can be blamed for the lack of conviction or even adding anything new to the franchise. But the actors do a fair bit of work to sell their otherwise one-dimensional characters to the viewer. Gordon Scott makes a passable Tarzan & even gets the iconic yell right but the remainder of the cast are hovering between mediocre & downright stilted. The action scenes are hampered by the low budget & the motivations for the villains are sketchy at best.

Gordon Scott's second outing as the eponymous Edgar Rice Burroughs hero shares a lot in common with a traditional Johnny Weissmuller "Tarzan" movie. First, the Lord of the Jungle speaks in choppy sentences. Second, Tarzan has no back story relating to how he came to Africa. Third, co-directors Charles Haas and Sandy Howard rely on the chimp Cheta for comic relief. Cheta discovers the consequences of messing around with bees. Fourth, Tarzan has an educated Jane at his side and provides life lessons for a teenage Boy who runs around in a loincloth, too. Unlike Tarzan, Boy does communicate in complete sentences and knows how to read. Meantime, "Tarzan and the Trappers" bears a slight resemblance to "Tarzan's New York Adventure," except these trappers do not succeed in kidnapping Boy, though they take him hostage for a while. Scott makes a terrific Tarzan, and he is clearly the most muscular Ape man to grace the silver screen. Eva Brent looks like she walked out of a designer fashion saloon in her Jane outfit with her coiffed hair and lipstick. Were it not for Tarzan and Cheta, she wouldn't survive long in the jungle. When we first see Jane, she is curled up and sleeping without a thought about her safety when a poisonous snake slithers over her legs. Cheta awakens Jane; Jane shrieks and kicks the snake off. Cheta attacks the snake with a stick and beats it to death. This man, woman, and child, none of whom appear to be related, live in the tree houses in the jungle.Numerous sources, far too many to document, indicate that "Tarzan and the Trappers" was a pilot for a proposed television series that did not make the cut. The production values look solid enough and this cobbled together feature is unified by Tarzan's quest to thwart illegal trappers. He ruins one trapper and has the fellow sentenced to prison and that trapper's brother decides to hunt Tarzan like something out of "The Most Dangerous Game." Of course, the flaws are really obvious. Most of the time that Tarzan appears in a scene with other actors, it is clear that they are in an elaborate studio set. Tarzan spends his time belting out his signature call, probably more than any Tarzan. He swims in crocodile-infested rivers, swings on apparently real vines, and even rides a giraffe. In most of the scenes with Tarzan charging and swinging through the jungle, it does appear to be Scott performing his own stunts. Indeed, Scott would be a difficult man to double with his physique and hair. The scene where he questions two gun bears as to their native heritage by demanding that they dance is good. It is fun to see them try to make Tarzan when they get the drop on him with a high-powered, bolt-action rifle. Tarzan refuses to dance, even as they blast the earth near his toes. Eventually, the one with the gun jams it and Tarzan teaches them a lesson. Mind you, the biggest flaw in this good versus evil epic is that nobody is in trouble for long. A dastardly big game hunter shoots one animal—an elephant, but it is pretty clear that the falling elephant was probably lensed getting up. The filmmakers printed the footage backwards to make it appear as if the beast was just struck by a bullet and knocked down.Altogether, "Tarzan and the Trappers" qualifies as a serviceable Tarzan, but it cannot compare with later Tarzan sagas like "Tarzan's Greatest Adventure" and "Tarzan the Magnificent." Clocking in at a mere 70 minutes, "Tarzan and the Trappers" is a modest adventure that never looks too cheesy.

Of the countless actors who have portrayed Tarzan since Elmo Lincoln first appeared in 1918's `Tarzan of the Apes,' Gordon Scott remains the best to ever don a loincloth. So it's no surprise that `Tarzan and the Trappers' is one of the better Tarzan films of the past 80 years. The 1958 film was actually intended to comprise the first three episodes of a television series, but instead was made into a better-than-average Sol Lesser production that runs 74 minutes. The film's story remains contemporary, with Tarzan forced to fight for his own life while stopping greedy traders from illegally trapping and removing wildlife from the jungle.With the future of much of the world's wildlife in question, the story is as compelling now as it was 45 years ago...

The Tarzan you grow up is likely to always be "your" Tarzan, so for the generation which came of age in the 1950s, that means Gordon Scott. He might not have been the best Tarzan, (that's always a matter of debate), but he was certainly a good one. His "Tarzan and the Trappers" is a minor work, apparently stitched together from some TV episodes, but it demonstrates how the Tarzan character reflects the changing moods of the times. In this case, the times are the Eisenhower Years and so Tarzan, Jane, and Boy come across here as a typical suburban family not that far removed from, say, "Ozzie and Harriet." Of course, the father in this particular family seems to speak with a third-grade education and he must spend an awful lot of time in the gym, but these are minor points."Tarzan and the Trappers" also reflects the prudish morality of the 1950s. Tarzan and Jane, for example, seem to have two side-by-side but separate treehouses which allows for "proper" sleeping arrangements. Care has also been taken to downplay Tarzan's sexuality, moving him away from his powerful masculinity toward a tamer, almost neutered status. Gordon Scott's loincloth, for instance, rides high enough on his torso to completely hide his navel, which must have caused some problems during filming. ("Sorry, Gordon, you'll have to do it again. We saw your belly button.") And in that inevitable scene in which Tarzan is captured and put into bondage, his arms stretched up and tied high above his head, we see that Gordon Scott's armpits have been carefully shaved. Apparently male body hair, either on the chest or in the armpits, was a "no no" because it emphasized the actor's sexual nature. Despite these efforts to "housebreak" and "domesticate" Tarzan, however, Gordon Scott still manages to exude an undeniable appeal and for us Eisenhower kids, he'll always be "our" Tarzan.