Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984) on Netflix
A shipwreck strands John Clayton and his pregnant wife Alice on the Congolese coast, where their son is born. The ape Kala raises the orphaned boy, and Phillippe D'Arnot discovers him.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb6.4/1021,462 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes79%
Trailer
Plot summary
John Clayton, who stands to inherit the title of Earl of Greystoke, is lost with Alice, his wife, on the Congolese coast when their ship goes down. He builds a house in the trees, and she bears a son there. Malaria takes Alice, and while John mourns, a troop of Mangani apes comes to the house and Silverbeard kills him. Kala, an ape whose own baby has died, hears the infant crying and adopts him, and he grows up inside the clan. At twelve he comes upon the tree house again and finds his father's knife and a wooden block painted with a boy and a chimpanzee. Years on, the Belgian explorer Phillippe D'Arnot finds him in the jungle, teaches him rudimentary English, and traces him to the Greystoke line.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Robert Towne intended his directorial debut, Personal Best, as a “trial run” for Greystoke, and it grew out of the research he had done for it. Filming proved extremely difficult, with an actors strike and a budget blow out, and his conflict with producer David Geffen and Warners led to him selling his interest in Greystoke.
- Andie MacDowell, who played Jane, was dubbed in post-production by Glenn Close. According to Hugh Hudson this was because of MacDowell's southern US accent, which he did not want for the film, and because she was not at the time a trained actor.
- Hugh Hudson tested four people as Tarzan: a Danish ballet dancer, Julian Sands, Viggo Mortensen and Christopher Lambert. Hudson said it came down to Lambert and Mortensen.
- Ralph Richardson, who played the 6th Earl of Greystoke, died shortly after filming ended. He received a posthumous Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and the film was dedicated to his memory.
- Greystoke became the first Tarzan feature film to be nominated for an Academy Award. It took until the animated Tarzan of 1999 for a film about the character to actually win an Oscar.
