Wiesmuller

Whenever I wake Johnny Weissmuller pops into my mind.

In my bleary sleepy state I envisage Johnny out there in the jungle wrestling foam crocodiles and fending off tame man eating lions. The cultural reference will only mean anything to anybody over the age of 45 I fear. But suffice to say his Saturday matinee movies were terrible contrivances. Watchable and absorbingly terrifying for a child of the time but, now, only sham and dated drivel. They were terrible films but they were filled with adventure and dangerous creatures for a gaping youth. Of course he was the Tarzan I grew up with. I sometimes hear him in the distance yodelling that unmistakeable call to arms, or teeth. What makes me think of a 50’s muscle man with a toupee and a glorious inability to even pretend to be an actor? It must be the sounds of the jungle I hear as I stir from my slumbers. 

The birdcalls are stereotypical of those jungle scenes. Monkeys howl, toucans jabber, and god knows what the bird is making a racket behind me but it was overdubbed in every scene of every one of his movies. It’s still calling behind me as I write, like the sound of a coin landing on a slab of marble but with a slightly more tropical timbre.

 They were awful! The movies that is. But they stirred the imagination of this young boy. And maybe that’s why I have always had a subconscious desire to wander in jungles, with care, and a healthy fear of quicksand and crocodiles that couldn’t possibly be anywhere near here. They tend to stay near water and we are far from the river. But I look out for them all the same. The only difference between my view and his is that mine is in colour. Magnificent technicolor. All his films were black and white. All TV was black and white at that time. We had to kind of imagine colour, or even, assume there was no colour at all. Jungles were fifty shades of grey, but not quite so erotic. And even then I wanted to be with him in that mono landscape fighting tigers and throwing snakes off my back. 

Funny isn’t it, how as children we just adapt to what is provided. Everything changes and colour streams into our televisual eyes but the transition is immediate and easy. Now we can watch these old movies revitalised with colour and better sound, perhaps not worth the effort on Weissmuller movies. But what we had was good enough back then. Immersive and watchable. We had unquestionable loyalty to the worlds we were offered, black and white, far fetched and badly made they were the movies I loved. 

Saturday morning we used to have Tarzan, Laurel and Hardy, Hector’s House and The Clangers and creepy kids programs that could only have been concocted during drug induced states by children of that 60’s era. Freaky and fantastical shows with talking dogs and spaced out hippy characters obviously doped up on whatever was going. Even now, watching The Night Garden seems to be a trip down loss of memory lane. Odd characters in overly colourful landscapes. Just like me now I guess. I am still that child seeking out adventures but now I get my fix from the crazy world around me. Bizarre rainbow  coloured creatures with unfathomable appendages crawl and fly in intoxicated flightpaths everywhere here. It’s a beautiful, brightly coloured, surreal trip of a place and akin to being in my own Saturday matinee but with more colour and more variety than I could have ever imagined.