That just raises further questions!

From the moment I first saw the amazing movie poster, I have dreamed of watching Rocket Tarzan (1963). For the longest time, that was easier said than done, but the current copyright holders have finally put a nearly complete version on Youtube, and my dream has been fulfilled. Well, kind of - the print is grainy and occasionally skips, the sound drops out completely from time to time, and most seriously, there are no subtitles. Ive managed to watch the occasional movie without benefit of subtitles in the past, but Rocket Tarzan is particularly tricky since there is so much apparently going on and I still have yet to find a single plot summary online.

Here's what I've been able to figure out. Tarzan lives deep in the jungles of India or possibly Africa; either way, sometimes he fights lions and sometimes he fights tigers. he's not alone in the jungle, though. There's a nearby kingdom, which may be a surviving Roman colony, or may be an ordinary isolated kingdom with a fondness for cosplay. There is also a brilliant professor, his beautiful daughter, and his laurel-and-hardyish lab assistants/comic relief sidekicks. The professor is trying to build a rocket to travel to the moon. The people of the mystery kingdom are helping him, but a guy with a mustache wants the rocket for himself! Fortunately, Tarzan is there to help, and also fortunately the comic sidekicks are surprisingly competent; one of them gains superhuman strength and combat skills when he drinks from the bottle he always carries with him, but I'm not completely sure if it's some sort of potion or he's just a mean drunk.

After many shenanigans and kidnappings and narrow escapes the main characters all climb aboard the rocket (with Mustache Guy stowing away) and fly to the moon, where they discover ancient ruins, cheap sets, giant cardboard stars, and a big-nosed evil alien who sends a robot (or "Robert," as he keeps saying) to attack our heroes. (They are actually menaced by two apparently unrelated robots. The one from the poster is by far the more convincing of the pair.) The Robert is defeated, the big nosed alien is blown up, and then Tarzan faces Mustache Guy in, and I am not making this up, a lightsaber duel.

Rocket Tarzan is obviously very different from the Bollywood movies of today; with all the narrow escapes and sudden twists and turns it's structured more like an old fashioned movie serial, like Commando Cody with occasional musical numbers. I'm not sure if my experience really counts as watching the movie, since I'm still not clear on what just happened, but on the other hand, I don't know if it would make much more sense even with subtitles. Either way, though, I'm still counting this as a dream fulfilled.