Tarzan the Ape Man (1981)

Some classic stories get told time and time again.  Stories that resonate with people will continuously get audiences.  That’s why the film business commissions remakes, reboots, and knock-offs all the time.  There will always be an audience.  They want to exploit those audiences.  It’s all about money.  Using a known property is usually a sure-fire way to make money.

In some cases, multiple movies telling a similar story come out at the same time.  The most popular instance is the closely released Armageddon and Deep Impact.  It wasn’t just in the 1990s, though.  More recently, Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman came out in the same year, with The Asylum cashing in on that with Grimm’s Snow White.  This week’s movie didn’t fall into that same area.  It wasn’t released in a close time to another movie telling the same story.  The next interpretation of the material would be three years later.  Still relatively soon, but not soon enough to be one of those weird coincidences.

The topic of discussion is the story of Tarzan.  He was a man who grew up in the jungles of Africa.  He was raised by apes.  Edgar Rice Burroughs introduced the character to the world in his 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes.  Since then, there have been many film adaptations.  The most popular were the series of films starring Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller.  They were the source of the definitive Tarzan scream.  There was also a Disney animated adaptation in the 1990s that was popular through my generation because we were the right age for it at the time.

Yet, none of those are this week’s movie.  For the Sunday “Bad” Movies, I watched the 1981 adaptation Tarzan the Ape Man.  It was more about Jane (Bo Derek) than Tarzan (Miles O’Keeffe).  Jane Parker took a trip to Africa to meet up with her father, James (Richard Harris), who left her family when she was young.  He was trying to find a mythical white beast.  Through the journey, Jane became familiar with Tarzan, and tried to keep her father from killing him.  There were some natives that caused trouble, but it was nothing that Tarzan couldn’t handle.

This was a different way to tell the tale of Tarzan.  There have been other movies and stories that took a similar path to differentiate themselves from their source.  Maleficent was about the witch in Sleeping Beauty.  Wicked was about the witch in The Wizard of Oz.  Tarzan the Ape Man took the typical Tarzan movie and told it from Jane’s point of view as she journeyed into the jungles of Africa.  It was this take that made the movie stand out among its peers, even if the quality of the screenplay brought it down.  The unique take was the part of the writing that was interesting.  The execution of that take didn’t follow through on the promise.

Much of that could be attributed to the fact that Tarzan the Ape Man felt like director John Derek wanting to simply show off his wife’s body.  There was nudity spread throughout the entire movie.  When Jane was first arriving at her father’s camp, she swam naked through the African waters behind the boat.  While the group was hiking, she took a moment to have a naked swim in the water for a bath before being approached by a lion.  Later on, when kidnapped by the natives, they stripped her naked and painted her white.  Then there were the end credits.  As the movie came to its conclusion, the credits rolled over a topless Bo Derek wrestling with both Miles O’Keeffe and an orangutan.  That’s a lot of Bo Derek nudity in a movie that didn’t need it.

The other major issue in the writing was the fact that Jane Parker was not an active protagonist.  For most of Tarzan the Ape Man, she was reactive to everything that was happening.  James Parker took her on the trip.  Tarzan took her away from the main group.  The natives kidnapped her, and Tarzan saved her.  She was the damsel.  At only one point in the story can I say that she made her own choice.  That was when she told her father not to shoot Tarzan.  Everything else that she did was because someone else did it for her.

As for the good, the work with animals in Tarzan the Ape Man felt very realistic.  The animals were real, obviously, but they didn’t feel like animal actors.  They felt like real animals.  The lion that was mentioned earlier actually attacked the actors during the scene.  That was an edge-of-the-seat moment.  A chimpanzee later sucked on Bo Derek’s nipple.  I’m not saying that to be like “Oh, she was naked again.”  It was a realistic thing for an animal to do out of curiosity.  Then there was that final end credits scene with the orangutan.  It wrestled with Miles O’Keeffe to try and get Bo Derek from him.  That territorial property nature of the animal was wilder than most movies would go with their animals.  That side of the movie was the most interesting part.

The 1981 version of Tarzan the Ape Man was not a good movie.  It made money, but many of the critics didn’t like it.  I’m on their side.  The movie fell apart in the writing and direction, two of the most important aspects of bringing the story to life.  The main character wasn’t enthralling enough to create an entertaining movie.  The direction felt more leering than anything.  Only the animal work kept the movie from being a complete failure.  It wasn’t a success.  There’s no way that it could be considered a creative success.  It was just a bad movie.

Edit: I’m cutting in here with something I forgot to mention during my original writing of the post.  I can’t figure out a way to properly put it into the post where it would flow, so this awkward edit paragraph is what is happening.  Jane Parker was portrayed as a virgin throughout Tarzan the Ape Man.  I’m not sure if it was that way in the source material, as I haven’t read Burroughs’s novel.  Whatever the case, it led to one completely ridiculous scene.  Jane was talking face to face with Tarzan.  She was discussing her virginity to him, though he couldn’t understand English.  The man had been raised by apes.  The whole time she was talking to him about her virginity, she was playing with a banana.  That symbolism immediately struck me as goofy.  Just had to share that with everyone before the post wrapped up.  Thanks.

It’s time to get to the notes:

• Tarzan the Ape Man was suggested by @T_Lawson, who has also suggested Sextette (week 141) and Octaman (week 204).
• Bo Derek was the star of Tarzan the Ape Man.  She was also in Orca (week 144) and Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (week 190).
• Richard Harris was another actor from Orca (week 144) who appeared in Tarzan the Ape Man.
• Laurie Main popped up in Tarzan the Ape Man, after showing up in Momand Dad Save the World (week 186).
• Finally, Wilfrid Hyde-White made a second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Tarzan the Ape Man.  He had previously been in Xanadu (week 216).
• Have you seen 1981’s Tarzan the Ape Man?  How does it compare to other interpretations of Tarzan?  Any of this kind of talk could be had in the comments.
• If there’s a movie that you think would be a good fit for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know in the comments.  I’m always looking for movies that I should check out but haven’t yet.  If the comments aren’t your thing, try Twitter.
• Bad movies can lead to moments that I want to share with other people.  I tend to do so on Snapchat.  Add me (jurassicgriffin) if that’s what you want.
• This week was fun and all, but we have another week coming up pretty quickly.  In seven days, as a matter of fact.  The movie I will be covering next week is a return to a franchise I’ve covered before.  Marlon Wayans will be returning to the Sunday “Bad” Movies in A Haunted House 2!  As a refresher, here’s what I wrote about A Haunted House (week 34).  I’ll have a post next week, so come on back and check it out when it’s up.