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You
know this isn't your father's Tarzan movie when the MGM logo appears
on screen and the lion's roar is replaced with a Johnny Weissmuller
Tarzan yell. The adventure begins with a narrator (Wilfrid Hyde-White)
relating the legend of Tarzan to his fellow club members, one of
whom is presumably Edgar Rice Burroughs. This storytelling device
might explain why Tarzan the Ape Man (1981) focuses on Jane's
point of view. After all, a bunch of dirty old men would much rather
hear tales about a nubile blonde than the Lord of the Apes.
As
Jane, Bo Derek is covered from head to toe in turn of the century
finery. She hires a boat to take her to the camp of James Parker,
an Allan Quartermain-type explorer who is also her long lost father.
Before the credits are even over, Bo strips off her virginal white
dress and goes for a swim in the river. Apparently she isn't worried
about crocodiles or piranha.
Upon
arrival at camp, Jane is greeted by the expedition's photographer
played by the handsome, but wooden, John Phillip Law. Any under-emoting
by Derek and Law is more than made up for by the hammy acting of
Richard Harris. As Parker, Harris seems to think shouting at the
top of his lungs equals a performance.
The
family reunion at dinner doesn't go very well. Bo resents Harris's
absenteeism. "Like a trophy, you posed with mother and child
and then you were gone. Now doesn't that make you a first-class
bastard?" she asks.
Because
she so closely resembles his dead wife, Parker takes more than a
fatherly interest in Jane. "How much do you hate me?"
"I
think so very, very much."
Parker's
ultimate goal is to find the legendary elephant's graveyard. "Any
expedition on this continent is no place for a woman." Harris
chauvinistically explains. Moments later, Bo and the rest of the
crew are all packed up and set off on their journey.
After
several days, they make camp at the base of a huge plateau. While
sitting cozily in their tents they hear a familiar yodeling war
cry. Harris explains that the creature that made the noise was Tarzan,
the great white ape. He then proceeds, at the top of his lungs,
to give a dissertation on the excitement of the unknown. "Fear
is intoxicating." When another Tarzan yell scares off most
of his native bearers, Harris screams, "Oh shut up you boring
son of a bitch!"
In
the morning, each expedition member scales the face of the plateau.
Their climbing rope slowly rubs and frays against a jagged piece
of rock until a native extra plunges to his death. "Why did
you do that?! Why?!" Harris shouts at the heavens. What's even
funnier than his vociferous questioning of God is that the skies
answer back with a rumble of thunder.
After
traveling a little further, the expedition finds the great inland
sea. Bo comes up with the bright idea of staying behind and taking
a bath, assuring her father that she'll catch up later. After being
left alone in the wilds of Africa, Bo strips down and frolics in
the crystal blue waters. While rinsing off, she is stalked by a
lion. She lingers in the surf while the jungle cat lays in wait
on the shore.
Suddenly,
with a rousing orchestral fanfare, our hero finally arrives. Lip
syncing the classic Weissmuller Tarzan call, Miles O'Keeffe makes
his grand entrance in a skimpy loin cloth. If Derek is a perfect
10, then O'Keeffe, with his long hair, perfect cheekbones, and ripped
physique, is the male equivalent. An embodiment of the perfect male
specimen.
Tarzan
attempts to pull a resistant Jane from the surf, but the King of
the Jungle and his feline friend are scared off by Parker and Holt
who come to Jane's rescue with guns blazing. With his daughter's
virtue in peril, Parker does what any father would do, "I'm
going to have that ape son of a bitch's head as my trophy."
As
they continue their trek through the jungle, they are watched by
a bunch of surly ooga-booga tribal warriors. While filling her canteen
by the river, Jane is taken away by Tarzan. She briefly escapes
his brawny clutches but is soon engulfed in the suffocating squeeze
of a python. Tarzan swings to the rescue, dives into the muddy river
and wrestles with the snake. The scene is only two minutes long
but feels a whole lot longer. The sequence is shown in slow motion,
which might have been an effort to make the fight seem more dangerous
and dramatic. All it really achieves is a kind of hilarious redundancy
as we're shown what looks like the same shots over and over.
Tarzan
finally wins and collapses after the titanic struggle. Jane is conflicted.
We know this because Bo chews on her fingernail, an unsubtle acting
trick she uses several times throughout the film. Should she run
away, or should she help the jungle man who saved her life? C.J.
the orangutan, some chimps, and an elephant help bring Tarzan back
to his home turf. While tending to the ailing Tarzan, curiosity
gets the better of Jane. "I've never touched a man before."
While
Jane is busy playing doctor, her father and the remaining members
of the expedition search the jungle for her. Tarzan eventually wakes
up and retires to his leafy bachelor pad. Jane joins him when night
falls. Director John Derek chose to shoot this scene "day for
night", which means the scene was shot in daylight and then
darkened in post production. The process is seldom convincing and
in this case looks particularly bad because Derek cuts between our
lovebirds in their tree top getaway and a scene of the Parker expedition
that was actually filmed at night.
When
daylight comes, Bo's virtue is still intact. "I'm still a virgin.
Now I don't know whether that's good or bad. What are you?"
she asks while eating a banana. "You'd have to be, wouldn't
you? It's a strange problem."
Jane
and Tarzan swim around in their idyllic jungle Eden and gaze longingly
at each other. In other Tarzan movies this is where we'd get the
obligatory "Me Tarzan, you Jane" scene and she would teach
him to speak English. This time it seems that Tarzan will remain
completely mute because that's how Bo likes him. Big, dumb and good-looking.
With Bo left to essentially act with just herself, we get some classic
bad movie moments as Jane thinks aloud, "God, if the girls
back home could see me now." She then earnestly tells Tarzan
that he's, "more beautiful than any girl I know."
Proving
that even the most primitive man is unable to resist the siren's
call of Bo Derek's breasts, Tarzan makes it to second base before
he's interrupted by Parker's search party. The reunion is all too
brief. The evil jungle tribesmen take Jane, Parker and Holt captive.
They're brought before the Ivory King, a hulking brute with a mohawk.
Bo
is scrubbed down by slave girls and then covered from head to toe
in white paint. To take her mind off the fact that she's about to
be raped by a Wrestlemania wannabe, Parker takes the opportunity
to tell his daughter a story and begins to shout out the nursery
rhyme Humpty Dumpty. The Ivory King thankfully shuts him up by impaling
him with an ivory tusk.
With
a mighty Tarzan yell, the King of the jungle leaps into action.
Tarzan battles the Ivory King in…yup, you guessed it, slow
motion. Once again director Derek attempts to stretch the tension
(and the running time) in a rather pedestrian fight scene. In real
time the scene would last about thirty seconds. After some regulation
wrestling moves, Tarzan wins and pounds his chest in victory.
Harris
is given a final chance to ham it up in a touching death scene.
With Bo naked and covered in tribal make-up (complete with green
lip gloss) Harris gets in the last word, "Well, they certainly
did a paint job on you." Jane kisses her father good bye before
heading off with her favorite jungle hunk. As the end credits roll
we're shown just what Jane has given up civilization for… frolicking
topless with C.J. the orangutan.
Despite
it's notorious reputation as the erotic Bo Derek version of the
Tarzan fable, there are actually no love scenes in Tarzan the
Ape Man, plenty of nudity…but no sex. As we watch the appealing
stars traipse through the jungle half naked for an hour and fifty
minutes, something curious happens. After a certain point all that
gorgeous flesh has a strange desensitizing effect.
So,
we have a sexy Tarzan movie without any sex. What does that leave
us with you might ask? Well, it leaves us with plenty. There's Richard
Harris chewing the scenery as only a classically trained actor can.
We also have Bo Derek, a classic beauty to be sure, but an actress
who's completely incapable of carrying the dramatic burden of an
entire movie. Then there's Miles O'Keeffe, a gorgeous hunk of man
playing a title character that's practically irrelevant in his own
movie.
Tarzan
the Ape Man was O'Keeffe's debut and has so far been the only
Hollywood studio picture he's done. He did however go on to a career
in low-budget action movies. Bo went on to star in another notable
erotic flop directed by her husband, Bolero (1984).
The
promotional tagline for Tarzan the Ape Man boasted that it
was, "Unlike any other Tarzan you've ever seen!"
Now
that's truth in advertising. Ungawa!
CCT
also recommends:
Bolero
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Two Moon Junction
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Showgirls
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