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Harryhausen: The Lost Movies by John Walsh.

Ray Harryhausen's lifelong passion for the books of Edgar Rice Burroughs was matched by a career-long frustration trying to secure the rights to his novels. Ray came across this particular adventure when he was browsing in a bookstore.

In this adventure, Tarzan enters a country called Minuni, populated by Minunians, who are four times smaller than Tarzan. Tarzan is eventually shrunken to the size of an ant, so the animation possibilities here are numerous -- clearly, this has parallels with the Lilliputians in The 3 Worlds of Gulliver. Ray asked his partner, producer Charles Sneer, to investigate an option on the book, but again the rights were prohibitively expensive so the project was left on the shelf.

My 2 cents. Author John Walsh is correct when he writes that this project was rife with stop-motion animation potential by Ray. But this concept for a Tarzan film---and I am a Tarzan fan---just doesn't excite me.

Tarzan and the Ant Men was the tenth Tarzan novel published in the series in 1924.

I would have been far more enthused if Tarzan at the Earth's Core, the thirteenth book in the Tarzan series that was published in 1929~1930 could have been secured by Ray & Charles for a feature film.

In it, you have an expedition on a rescue mission in a marvelous airship. They are going inside the earth to a place known as Pellucidar. Tarzan has been recruited to help them search the wild land & jungles. Here they encounter savage tribes, prehistoric creatures. Perfect for a Harryhausen movie. No question that such an undertaking would require a lavish budget in order to truly capture the epic scope and excitement of the ERB's novel.

Had such a production come to fruition, I'd have loved to see one of the best Tarzan's to swing on the screen, Mike Henry play the role. Mike portrayed the jungle man in 3 Tarzan films. Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966), Tarzan and the Great River (1967), Tarzan and the Jungle Boy (1968). As one author noted about Mike, "He looked the part of Tarzan as no other had before."