Jones and Dennis / Clayton's Men (also known as Thugs) are the secondary antagonists and supporting antagonists in the movie Tarzan. Working as a crew to the ship's captain, they were secretly hired by Clayton to capture Tarzan's ape family and take them to London England to be sold to a zoo. The crew consists of about fourteen men (excluding the captain and his officers, who they turn on in the film's climax).
Appearances
Tarzan
Under the orders of the ship's captain, the Thugs are first seen packing up the luggage and supplies of Jane, Archimedes, and Clayton (much to the latter's dismay) onto the ship to return home to London. When Clayton manipulates Tarzan's feelings for Jane by telling him that she would stay in the Jungle with him if he showed them the gorillas, Tarzan agrees. Clayton then informs Snipes (one of the Thugs) to gather the other men together for the next phase of his plan.
When Tarzan, Jane, and Archimedes boarded the ship the next day to return to England, Jane and her father are captured by the thugs (who have also turned on the captain and his officers); after seeing this, Tarzan tried to escape them by jumping on the cages and climbing the ship's masts. Even though he almost effortlessly avoided them at first, the thugs quickly started catching up with him, with one of them grabbing him from his ankle. He shakes him off, but as they were closing in on him, he makes a huge leap from the top of the mast and manages to hold on to the funnel's end, only to fall down shortly afterwards. As Tarzan crawled out of the boxes' remnants, two of the thugs were quick enough to grab him and slam him against the superstructure's wall; as Tarzan was still weak and hurting after falling from such a height, he didn't have enough strength to break free from the thugs' grip. When Tarzan sees Clayton, he begs for his help while trying to break free from them, but Clayton reveals to him that he tricked him into leading them to the Gorillas' nests so that he and his men could capture them easily and sell them to a zoo in London.
After locking Tarzan in the ship's brig along with Jane, Archimedes, and the captain, Clayton and his men take a loading boat through a river into the jungle and ambush the Gorillas, netting them, forcing them into cages, and throwing the babies in burlap sacks.Tarzan's ape father, Kerchak intervenes to rescue his group but is overpowered when the Thugs restrain him with whips and a net. Clayton slowly approaches Kerchak and prepares to kill him, preferring him to be stuffed before Tarzan, Jane, and Archimedes (who escaped from the ship's brig with Terk and Tantor's help) intervene and fight off Clayton's men, freeing the Gorillas and putting the Thugs in the cages that they used to confine the Gorillas in. The Thugs are not seen after this, so their fate is unknown, but it is likely that they were put in the ship's brig and taken back to England to await trial for their crime.
Trivia
- One of the thugs who captures Jane but is bitten by her on the ship is a caricature of Disney animator Glen Keane.
- Multiple duplicates of the fat thug with the blue shirt and red bandana appear in the Tarzan stages of "Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure" and are all identified as "Henchman".
- This thug along with the shirtless thug were the only thugs who had action figures made after them in the Tarzan Disney Heroes toys.
- There names are Jonathan, Larry, Snipes, Jones, Max, Kevin, Sylvester, Hamilton, Peter, Cornelius, David, Samuel, Florentino, and Dennis.
- However, Snipes and Jones are the only two thugs to have their names mentioned.