The Tiger Woman is by far her best serial. The plot itself involves the nefarious members of an oil company who stumble upon the Tiger Woman. They soon believe she is the long-lost daughter of a multi-millionaire sportsman killed in an airplane wreck over a decade before. Therefore, the evil oil company men want to prove that the Tiger Woman is Rita Arnold, the millionaire's daughter (by finding the wreck, papers, jewelry, etc.), dispose of her, and hire a clever actress to pose as her and claim the entire estate. But because of problems with native tribes led by the Tiger Woman ("the gods sent her to us from the sky," the natives intone), the Inter Ocean Oil Company executives dispatch Allen Saunders (Allan "Rocky" Lane) to the scene. "Saunders is dynamite," says the evil leader Daggett. He is a chief engineer, a troubleshooter: "wherever there is trouble they send Allen Saunders and at once the trouble is all gone." Saunders immediately finds out that the Tiger Woman is to be trusted and attempts to discover who is causing the havoc and bloodshed.

The Tiger Woman contains a plethora of classic serial situations, such as the lost city in the jungle where the Tiger Woman rules as goddess, with hundreds of Indians as subjects. The setting seems to be South America; however, the continent or country is never mentioned by name. Some critics (including the usually insightful serials historian Raymond William Stedman) have taken jabs at this serial for giving us a "Tiger" Woman who is clearly wearing a "leopard" skin outfit. But a better answer lies in a South American location for the story, which means the "tiger" is actually a jaguar. "Tigre" is the word used in Latin America for the jaguar. And her outfit looks as much like jaguar as it does leopard. So quite simply what some critics label as part of the hokey atmosphere of this movie can easily be explained. But, yes, that doesn't explain all the hokiness that you'll find in The Tiger Woman.

This movie is brimming with kitschy additions that Stedman quite rightly points out you won't find in the serials of William Witney and John English. For example, during the execution ceremonies conducted by the Tiger Woman's cult, we get a hoochy-coochy dancer (or belly dancer, take your pick) writhing about the Tiger Woman's secret lair while the other Indians wait for her to stop, signaling the high priest to cut the rope that suspends the poor soul (who wandered into their territory) and drops him into a pit of bubbling lava. Yeah, it's silly stuff but it's also loads of fun! Unlike so many of the other serials which remain chaste to the point of idiocy, The Tiger Woman gives us an exotic dancer with see-through garments. And we get the beautiful naked limbs of Linda Sterling. Never in the course of the serial do we find out that the Tiger Woman and Allen Saunders are romantically involved, but at the very end of the serial, Allen's friend, Jose, suggests that Tiger Woman will leave the jungle to follow Allen to the United States. And the Tiger Woman also casts an enticing smile toward Allen before the final fadeout.

By the time The Tiger Woman appeared, serials were already in decline. The deadly repetitive formulas were well ingrained by 1944 when Linda Sterling donned the goofy jaguar-eared outfit. Within just another three years, Universal would give up serials altogether. Columbia and Republic would struggle forward into the mid-'50s. The Tiger Woman was a hint of what was to come. Under Spencer Gordon Bennett's direction, fist fights were elevated in importance. Stunt men would demolish the sets, bouncing off the walls, crushing tables and chairs, pulling over bookshelves, hurling bottles, and in general leveling entire rooms (except for a virtually indestructible desk that the actors/stunt men volleyed over and rolled across). Fist fight scenes break out every few minutes in this serial, while the camera usually remains stationary as the actors/stunt men bounce off the walls.

In several of the episode cliffhangers, the solutions are relatively mundane, such as the end of Chapter 2, where the Tiger Woman and Allen Saunders are clearly trapped inside of a cliff shack while it explodes. But next week, noooooo! They weren't trapped at all. They run out of the shack and then it explodes. Routine and predictable endings like this one would get recycled endlessly by serials. But occasionally The Tiger Woman pulls some real stunners, such as the ending of Chapter 1: after Allen arrives in the jungle, the natives promptly capture him and string him up over the lava pit. We watch as the Tiger Woman runs and swings through the jungle to get back to the temple and wave off the execution. She breaks in on the ceremony just as the strand of rope is cut and Allen falls. But he's already falling toward the lava, what can she do? Well, I won't reveal how Allen is saved, but needless to say it's a good thing he was unconscious or he would've filled his pants.

And that's probably the biggest key: she isn't earthy in any sense. She's a sophisticated and elegant jungle goddess. That's as improbable as any plot development ever dealt out by the serials, but it's so hokey that it's endearing--if you can forgive the arguably sexist tone of the entire endeavor. She's like a Playboy model dressed up as an Indian princess or a little Dutch girl: we're not really supposed to believe in the cultural characteristics suggested by her wardrobe. We're supposed to get a bit of a thrill out of seeing Sterling take on the pose of jungle goddess. All that's missing are pouty lips and a few shots of naked breasts. Unlike Xena, Warrior Princess, for example, who manages to be an earthy, sexy, and elegant warrior, the Tiger Woman is only sexy and elegant. But this is still a fun serial, even though it's a notch below the best.