Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981)

I am really worried about this one... not least of which because the only place I've been able to find a stream of it is on some slightly dodgy pornotube. Not one of the err... more well known hubs of porn if you know where I'm coming from. Pardon the expression. So err... why has Tarzan, the Ape Man, found itself suitable enough to be considered content for a porn video host? I honestly have no idea. And I guess in the next 1 hour and 55 minutes I'm going to find out, but there is a big fat clue right there in the initial tag line for this movie: "Jane Parker goes on expedition in search of her father in the dense jungles of Africa. She meets Tarzan who shows her around and a romantic bond is established between them." I... yeah... I have a feeling that I know where this movie is going to go already before I even get into it to be honest... but with this movie ranking apparently quite high in the list of movies considered the worst and was apparently described by Matt Brunson of Creative Loafing as a "cinematic atrocity"(!) I can't deny that I am genuinely curious as to what the hell I am about to put myself through. So whilst I'm bombarded with pop ups of boobs and genitalia, I'm going to try and innocently enjoy this movie on the side... 

Arriving in Africa, seemingly much to the dis-satisfaction of her father, Jane Parker (Bo Derek) takes up camp at her father James's (Richard Harris) expedition and wastes no time in telling him his estranged wife, and her mother is now dead and that she essentially hates him for abandoning her and mother when she was just an infant. This seems to hit James like a lead weight but the following morning the pair are at least civil enough to each other that James doesn't resist too much when Jane announces she is joining his expedition. Becoming friendly with photographer Harry Holt (John Philip Law) - a man who looks a bit like Cliff Richard but with a moustache... Jane and Harry begin to bond as they travel, presumably, deeper into the African jungle, until they get to a really big, really high mountain. where they set up camp for the evening. During the evening, the camp hear the sounds of Tarzan; the great white ape; "supposedly 10 feet tall" who resides at the top of the mountain, and something of a myth amongst the natives who are all naturally afraid of... it. James announces, in a long, rambling diatribe kind of way that he intends to scale the mountain in the morning and Jane announces her intention to follow, but her father seems less keen on the idea. Undeterred, Jane joins the expedition party anyway in scaling the mountain and after traversing the climb, the team reach the much fabled Inland Sea, literally an ocean and a beach, and the reason for the expedition in the first place; to prove it's existence. Separating from the others, Jane takes the opportunity to get some naked skinny dipping in but she is interrupted when she attracts the attention of a lion, forcing her to shelter back in the ocean as it parades the beach. This in turn attracts the attention of Tarzan (Miles O'Keeffe) and there is this really drawn out scene with Tarzan dragging Jane out of the ocean a couple of times before he is eventually scared off by James and Harry returning to the beach. That evening, despite Jane's protestations, James announces he intends to hunt and kill Tarzan to claim him as a trophy, and as the expedition continues on through the jungle, they come under attack from what I think are other natives in the region, although James initially lays the blame at Tarzan's feet. After they stop by a river to take a break and Jane takes a moment to wash her hair, she is taken captive by Tarzan when Harry's back is turned. Despite initially scaring Tarzan away, during a really dodgy slow motion scene Tarzan returns and wrestles a massive anaconda away from Jane. The err... sexual irony of that not being lost on me... before carrying her deep into the jungle and then collapsing in exhaustion where Jane can only watch on as his chimpanzee friends rescue him by using their elephant pal to carry him away. Jane keeps a safe distance behind and after they reach a lake a try to revive Tarzan, Jane earns their trust by dabbing down Tarzan with a wet piece of cloth ripped from her skirt. She remarks "You're just a man..." and after nibbling on her fingertips a bit, "I've never touched a man before..." before running her fingers down his chest and passed his crotch which the orangutan finds very interesting. After Tarzan comes to, and Jane learns that he can't understand a word she says... the pair are initially wary of each other, but as night begins to set in they become a little bit more comfortable with each other and the following morning after being awkward some more around each other they begin to get a bit more familiar and Jane opines as to whether or not Tarzan is a virgin... no really. Meanwhile James, Harry and the expedition split up into groups of three as they begin the search for Jane but unbeknownst to them, they are being followed by the natives who spring an attack on one of the groups forcing James and Harry to rendezvous and regroup... meanwhile back to Tarzan and Jane, and Tarzan discovers boobs for the first time, much to Jane's satisfaction, but when she hears a gunshot she realises her father is looking for her and after breaking into clearing and spotting him, she and Tarzan come running towards them but Tarzan is scared off by gunfire from Harry. However before Jane can reach James and Harry the expedition is attacked by the natives with most of them left for dead and Jane, James and Harry taken captive. They are taken back to the natives village, all watched on by one of Tarzan's chimpanzee friends, where Jane is stripped naked and given a wash before being presented to the Native leader as basically as a sexual object. James tries to stop him but finds himself on the wrong end of a sharpened elephant tusk for his efforts. But before the leader can have his way with Jane, Tarzan, informed by his chimp pal of where the gang are, bursts into the village with a gang of elephants and pounces on the leader and after a painfully slow slow motion scrap, gets the better of him and snaps his neck. In a.. slightly odd scene... a mostly naked yet fully painted Jane leans over the body of her dying father as he says his goodbyes before vaguely suggesting to Harry that he will need to tell her fathers story before she wanders away with Tarzan into the water. In the closing credits, Jane rolls around topless with an orangutan whilst Tarzan watches on...

THIS WAS FABULOUSLY BORING. As aforementioned I'm watching this on a slightly wiffy porno tube site and it's labelled under "softcore" which is really flogging the word "softcore" to within an inch of life. It's a porn movie with 100% exposition and 0% action and that's being generous because despite clocking in at just shy of 1 hour 55 minutes nothing happens. Well, I mean, yeah stuff happens, see above, but it feels like nothing happens. There is very little in terms of development and it felt like the whole thing was just crawling along and at a glacial pace. The cinematic equivalent of watching paint dry.

I am not intimately familiar with Bo Derek's previous work, just a little bit outside my age group I'm afraid, but my god she was terrible in this. So painfully wooden and vanilla, if I didn't know better I'd swear she was performing in this against her will, but she wasn't! She actually chose to do this over other projects because her husband was directing it! She even produced it! But she was absolutely terrible. Completely unconvincing in almost every fashion. Sure, she looked outstanding, looks and figure-wise but every line of dialogue felt like a read and the portrayal of "lust" she was supposed to have for Tarzan was just second hand embarrassing. Absolutely terrible.

And this movies second biggest problem was Richard Harris. A man who felt painfully miscast in this thing. He dominated every scene he was in, for better or for worse. Often for worse. And by about an hour in I was full on fed up to fuck of his constant shouting and grandstanding. It got irritating very quickly, and sure that was probably what the character demanded in the script so to, that effect, I guess he was doing a good job? But he felt massively out of place here and at best was a distraction. At worst he ruined whatever scene he was blabbering on in.

The faults don't end there either! I don't know if it was my version of the movie? Maybe it was? But the sound mixing was terrible. There were genuine moments I couldn't understand what two characters were saying to each other because the dialogue was that low in the mix you couldn't hear them! And that happened time after time after time! It potentially had something to do with the way it was being filmed; in the middle of a jungle trekking though bodies of open water e.t.c. and maybe the technology just wasn't quite there yet, but it made it really difficult to get invested in the movie when you couldn't understand what anybody was actually saying in it. 

And to hark back to a earlier raised point, a good portion of the scenes in this movie just felt like they ran on for an un-necessarily long amount of time. The Tarzan snake wrestling scene ran on, in slow motion, with dramatic music, for 3 whole minutes. And it felt like an eternity. And there was about 3 or 4 other scenes shot in a similar fashion. It was uncomfortable and exhausting to watch and it just massively killed the pace of the movie. And aside from any of those points it was just boring. I'm not even sure what it was supposed to accomplish? If it was supposed to make the scenes look more impressive, more dramatic? It failed.

I do have some positives to flag though! It's not all bad! A nod of respect to the movie for making the decision to shoot on location. For better or for worse. It at least felt like you were in the middle of the African jungle. Similarly, although I'm not 100% sure how comfortable I feel about it, the extras that were drafted in to play the African natives looked like genuine natives. Right down to most of them being mostly naked throughout this entire thing and they at least didn't take the cheap and easy way out on that perspective. Similarly there was decent camera work and save for a couple of moments that I thought felt like the wrong option, the majority of the cinematography was good. But entirely swallowed up by the fact that most of the movie was just following the expedition through the jungle.

This was just incredibly boring. That is the most generous thing I can say about it really and not even the sight of Bo Derek canoodling around naked is going to save this one. Just an incredibly bland and boring movie with some really unconvincing acting coming from your leading lady. Tarzan looked like he was chiselled out of granite but the illusion quickly died when he had to do some "action" scenes. I don't even really know who they were trying to cater to with this one. It was a mostly faithful remake / faithful to the source material sprinkled with Bo Derek getting her boobies out to maybe give it a bit of an edge, but not edgy enough that it would ever really win anybody over for taking that design choice. And otherwise as an straight laced action movie production it fell flat on it's arse. Generous 1 out of 5 mostly because I've seen things worse than this. But I was thoroughly thoroughly bored.