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Based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Lad and the Lion, which had been filmed previously in 1917, this ersatz-Tarzan melodrama shifts the scene from Darkest Africa to the Arabian Desert. The treacherous Sheik Youssef Ab-Dur (Ted Adams) kills an entire expedition and among the slain is Sir Ronald Chatham (Eric Snowden). Unbeknownst to the sheik, Sir Ronald's young son (Bobby Fairy) is saved from the attack by Sherrifa (Finis Barton) and given to a kindhearted desert mystic, Hassan El Dinh (Richard Carlyle). A young adult and now known far and wide as El L'ion, young Chatham (Jon Hall) goes in search of the villain who killed his father, falling in love along the way with the beautiful Eulilah (Kathleen Burke). The Lion Man was produced by Arthur Alexander for Normandy Pictures, a Poverty Row company otherwise engaged in producing cheap Westerns.