Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981) on Netflix
Jane Parker visits her estranged father in Africa, a hunter seeking a place where elephants go to die. She joins his expedition, and his party fears a white ape called Tarzan.
- Netflix2.6/5
- IMDb3.5/106,609 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes11%
Trailer
Plot summary
James Parker hunts big game in Africa and is looking for a place elephants are said to go to die, so that he can collect the ivory. He left his wife and daughter behind when Jane was a child, and after her mother dies Jane travels to Africa and joins his expedition. During their travels she hears legends about Tarzan, a giant white ape her father's party fears, and one night the group hears loud yells in the distance. Tarzan was raised by apes and now lives in the jungle as an uncivilized white man. After a brief encounter with Jane, people in the party begin to vanish, taken by a local tribe, and James turns his hunt toward Tarzan, fearing he is after Jane.
Cast
- Steve Strongas Ivory King
- Harold Ayeras Club Member (voice)
- Akushula Selayahas Africa
- Maxime Philoeas Riano
- Leonard Baileyas Feathers
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The original Tarzan was Lee Canalito, who injured his knee in 1980, making him more reliant on his stuntman, who then had to undergo an emergency appendectomy when filming started; Canalito was replaced by Miles O'Keeffe. Bo Derek gave another explanation in 1981: "Lee was too fat. There was too much jiggling on him when we saw the first rushes".
- Warner Bros. complained, as that studio was also developing a Tarzan film with Robert Towne called Greystoke and had the rights to the character from the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate. MGM argued its film would be the second remake of its own 1932 film Tarzan the Ape Man. The Burroughs estate sued MGM and lost.
SPOILER
The heirs to Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs sued John Derek's Svengali Productions and distributor MGM over the final scene, in which Jane and an orangutan are involved in what The Hollywood Reporter called "almost pornographic" foreplay, and a judge ordered the four-minute-long scene cut to less than one minute.- Co-writer Gary Goddard revealed that he had originally been commissioned to write a screenplay for Bo Derek based upon the Marvel Comics superheroine Dazzler; a 30-page treatment was completed before that project was canceled and work proceeded instead on Tarzan, The Ape Man, which initially carried the working title Me, Jane.
- In chapter 265 of the manga JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Jotaro Kujo tests his grandfather Joseph Joestar with trivia questions, including "Who's the female lead in the 1981 film, Tarzan, the Ape Man?", which Joseph correctly answers with "Bo Derek". The scene is also in the 2012 anime adaptation.
