Tarzan the Ape Man

1981 "The most beautiful woman of our time in the most erotic adventure of all time."
3.4| 1h47m| R| en| More Info
Released: 07 August 1981 Released
Producted By: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
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The Tarzan story from Jane's point of view. Jane Parker visits her father in Africa where she joins him on an expedition. A couple of brief encounters with Tarzan establish a (sexual) bond between her and Tarzan. When the expedition is captured by savages, Tarzan comes to the rescue

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Director

John Derek

Production Companies

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

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Tarzan the Ape Man Audience Reviews

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.
SunnyHello Nice effects though.
Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.
Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
Python Hyena Tarzan the Ape Man (1981): Dir: John Derek / Cast: Bo Derek, Miles O'Keefe, Richard Harris, John Phillip Law, Steve Strong: Shameless dreck right down to its dim photography. Title indicates that the film is about a man with limited social understanding. He may require extreme psychotherapy after this film. Plot doesn't matter because it would make better toilet paper than a script. A escapade through the jungle by explorers who hear various wailings and realize that it isn't a parakeet. The first problem with this stupid film is its advertizing aimed at a younger audience yet it seems more interested in Bo Derek's nude scenes. Director John Derek takes a half hour to showcase Tarzan wrestling a python. The snake drapes down upon Derek who can clearly escape had she used common sense but she is required to coil up in it and scream endlessly. She cleans up Tarzan with hints of sexual activity, which leads to his fondling her. Derek's overacting is backed by horrid work by Richard Harris, John Phillip Law, and Miles O'Keefe as perhaps the worst Tarzan ever. The hidden purpose is to showcase Derek in various sexual positions and exploit the hormones of anyone who likely shouldn't see it due to its marketing appeal to younger viewers. It is not something that she will likely wish to have showcased at any career gala. Frankly, the best place for this film is underneath an elephant's foot. Score: 1 / 10
jlpicard1701E There have been so-so Tarzans, then there have been dull Tarzans, and again, there were some very good ones, but this beats them all in being the worst transposition ever.No wonder that the Rice Burroughs Foundations sued the Production.Mind you, I always found that Tarzan was somewhat of a cartoon character out of a mediocre literature piece to start with, just like Superman and Batman of yesteryear.There has only been one good movie about the subject and it was not a Hollywood production, but rather a French one by Francois Truffaut in "The Wild Child" (1970), which connects to Rudyard Kipling's "The Jungle Book" and as here, with the Tarzan saga (in some aspects).The rest is the fruit of their times and the mentalities of people living in those days. As such, they are all dated and show their age.The only interesting factor in such movies are the locations (although in many cases just stock footage), which document a world gone by, if not animals that are almost extinct by now.In John Derek's attempt at making an erotic art movie, all you get to see is bad acting (even by seasoned actors such as Richard Harris who really seems bored with the entire subject), if not truly amateurish romancing by Bo Derek which seems more lost than present throughout the movie.The beau, the mighty Tarzan himself, in the person of Miles O'Keeffe, is just a bad excuse of the male sex symbol and thus reduced to the animal he seems to be.It is a simplistic and very primitive view of the world he lives in. It is escapism in the purest form. But this does not excuse the stupidity that pervades the entire movie.If Caligula has been turned in a soft porn movie by Bob Guccione, disappointing all the cast members that were hired in it, this Tarzan is not even that. It is just a feeble attempt to show off John Derek's wife attributes.Pure exhibitionism, nothing else.If a lesson can be learned, it is how not to make movies like these, ever.It seems that John Derek never learned anything from masters like John Ford, Cecil B. DeMille or Orson Welles. Nor did he even consider going to school with John Gullermin or other directors of the Tarzan Series. He would probably have benefited of their experiences and decided to actually do a good movie.Vanity was all he was interested in. How empty, how sad and how desperate a man must be to come to such a conclusion.In my opinion, this in one of the most forgettable movies ever made and even if its traces were lost, it wouldn't be a terrible loss for humanity. Actually, it would be nice if it would disappear completely...We already have enough good movies to care about, and this is certainly not one of them.
skinnyjoeymerlino In 1992 Miles O'Keefe told Joe Bob Briggs on TMC's "Joe Bob Briggs' Drive-In Theatre" that the audition process for the title role in John Derek's "Tarzan the Ape Man" consisted of being dressed up in a wig and a loincloth with other Tarzan wannabes and taken to a park in LA where they were told to swing around in the trees and make noise. "...and people were throwing things at us and it was--a mess! And on the basis of that that I got the part." Originally Lee Canalito got the title role, and footage was shot of him as Tarzan, but ultimately Miles O'Keefe was brought in. The orangutan who played Cheetah got taken on the publicity tour and Miles was not taken, presumably so he would not upstage Bo Derek.After a memorable turn in Blake Edward's "10" Bo Derek settled into a brief career of movies directed by her husband John Derek as a chance to showcase his wife's boobs. "Tarzan the Ape Man" was the first of these, with Bo getting top billing as Jane, Richard Harris as Jane's father getting second, Cheetah the orangutan getting third and Miles as the title character getting fourth. Not much happens in the movie, there's mostly a lot of walking through the jungle until Bo announces "I THINK I'LL TAKE A BATH NOW". She continuously holds her index finger up to her lips for reasons not really comprehendable. Her husband's direction, according to Miles, was "Honey, get your breasts up." Richard Harris yells every line he has, Miles O'Keefe says it was because he was bored. Tarzan finally shows up halfway through, but he has no dialogue. All action scenes are done in slow motion so it ruins the effect and makes them way too long.Despite 38 full breast exposures "Tarzan the Ape Man" is truly one of those movies that is so bad it's bad. Even people who love bad movies don't like this movie. There is no rating in this review because there is no way on IMDb to give a movie zero stars.
winner55 there are three kinds of bad films - the cheap, the boring, and the tasteless. the only really bad movies are boring and tasteless. boring films are just, well, boring - if you don't leave quickly enough, you fall asleep.tasteless films actually have their defenders; but the fact remains that they are masturbatory aids for very sick people.only the cheap bad films are really funny, because the filmmakers wanted to make their films so desperately, they way-over-reached beyond their abilities and available resources.Bo Derek is just naturally boring and tasteless; fortunately, fate and a lack of funds and skill redeem her by making her seem cheap as well. this film is hilarious and it may well be the last really funny-bad film ever made.i first saw this in a theater, may god forgive me; i was laughing so hard i was rolling off my seat, and so too with most of the rest of the audience.it's clear that Derek and her husband-promoter, conceived of this film as, partly, a satire; unfortunately, the dereks clearly lacked any of the necessary resources to pull that off; consequently, the 'satirical' element comes off as some school-girl's impression of some gay young man's impression of frank gorshin's impression of the riddler in batman trying to pretend he's robin - it doesn't fly over our heads, it has no clue where any human head might be.on the other hand, there are some supposedly serious moments in this film - it is supposed to be an action film, remember - that are so astoundingly cheesy, one wonders if someone squirted spoiled milk in one's eye.as for Derek's infamous tendency to reveal her breasts - i can't imagine a less erotic nudity photographic display, she is so weird looking with those broad shoulders, i can't imagine what any one ever saw in her.as for the plot - such as it is - well, it isn't; Derek chases around Africa, and god alone knows why. then her father - Harris - pretends to act in some maniacal puppet-show, and then of course there's the hunk'o'Tarzan that seems to have wondered in from advertisement without knowing that the subject's changed - probably because he hasn't seen a script - apparently no one has.negligible camera work, shoddy editing - if it weren't for the 3-way with the chimp, the film would be unbearable -as it is, it's a real hoot.