TARZAN THE APE MAN (1981)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

When I finished watching John Derek's TARZAN THE APE MAN in the theater back in 1981, I would have fully agreed with the reigning current opinion that it was one of the worst films ever made. Not only did it fail to deliver on the larger-than-life adventure I expected of a Tarzan film, it was ponderous and pretentious, and seemingly more interested in Jane (Bo Derek) than in the titular Ape Man (Miles O'Keeffe in his breakout role). Back in 1981 I doubt that I knew that the director was the fifty-something husband of his twenty-something star, whom he'd married when she was 19. I'm sure I had heard that TARZAN was the first major role undertaken by Bo since her breakout success in the 1979 comedy "10," and that the filmmakers were clearly trying to capitalize on Bo's newfound prominence as a sex symbol.

I also might not have seen in 1981 the movie on which this film was based: the granddaddy of the Tarzan sound films, the 1932 TARZAN THE APE MAN, which cemented Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O'Sullivan as Tarzan and Jane as far as most moviegoers were concerned. In this 2013 review, though, I downgraded the John Derek film thusly:

Since the 1981 TARZAN film made so much of Oedipal currents in the relationship between Jane and her father, it should be noted that yes, [in the 1932 film] Jane does pull off her dress in her father's presence, and joke about how he shouldn't mind since he used to bathe her.  But I don't believe the writers intended this as part of some sexual complex.  The real context would seem to be that Jane, resenting her separation, is teasing him a little with her maturation in order to fluster him and thus have a little power over him.  Old Parker never seems other than paternal toward Jane, though it must be admitted that his death at the film's end does sever Jane's ties with civilization and make it easier for Tarzan to possess his new mate.

What was a minor aspect of the 1932 movie-- a modern young woman's involved relationship to her absentee father, which parallels nothing in the Burroughs book-- becomes ratcheted up to become the main theme of Derek's TARZAN. To be sure, in both films, the father of Jane perishes at the climax, which could imply the story's need to dispose of him to clear the wild man's access to his beloved. But it seems likely that Derek, who wrote other films with Bo, instructed the scriptwriters to build up the Oedipal currents in the triangle between Tarzan, Jane Parker, and James Parker.

Neither film is all that clear as to why Englishman James Parker has remained in Africa for close to twenty years, allowing his daughter to grow from childhood to womanhood in his absence. However, the 1981 film offers a rough reason in that its version of James, as essayed by Richard Harris, is a narcissist obsessed with finding glory through big game hunting, not looking for ivory and "the elephant's graveyard" as seen in the 1932 movie. Harris' James is also a good deal less monastic, for when Jane makes her unannounced trek to her dad's outpost, James has some Kurtz-like affair with a very young Black native woman, seemingly no older than Jane is. 

Jane has come to Africa because her mother is dead, leaving Jane a substantial fortune, and she wants to become acquainted with the father who neglected her for so long. Her attitude toward James is more contentious. Not only does Jane not approve of James shacking up with a very young woman (who isn't Jane?), she doesn't doff her clothes in James' presence, but claims that she's so rich she could buy and sell him. This of course makes the big game hunter rail in florid Shakespearean fashion, but it also makes him desire to prove his worth to his daughter-- who, as one might expect, favors her mother.

Seemingly out of nowhere, James announces his intention to hunt down a mysterious "White Ape" dwelling on a remote escarpment. He doesn't intend for Jane to go along, but she's as bullheaded as he is, and so she joins the expedition. There's a small irony here, for in a sense James creates his own rival by taking his daughter into the ape man's territory.

The script is silent as to how the inarticulate "white ape" happens to live in the jungle, communing with real apes and elephants. However, when the expedition trespasses on his terrain, he kidnaps Jane, which loosely parallels an event in the 1932 movie. The 1981 James Parker, though, fumes and rages like a jilted lover, swearing to mount and stuff the white ape's body.

Though Jane is initially terrified of the vine-swinging man-ape, she eventually becomes fascinated with his male beauty (probably helped by the fact that he doesn't talk). Jane gets wet several times, making it possible for the viewer to enjoy the wet-shirt effect, and she has a few scenes showing off her bared cleavage as well. It's not entirely certain that Tarzan understands that she's the opposite sex or what he might want to do about it, though, and this gives Jane some time to warm to him. She persuades Tarzan to take her back to her father, but James shoots at the ape man, wounding him. Jane makes her choice and helps Tarzan back to a refuge where she can clean his wound and care for him, bonding them even more.

However, the escarpment is also home to a tribe of weird Africans who like to paint themselves diverse colors, like white and green. The natives capture both James and Jane-- I frankly forget what happens to the other members of the party-- and the natives prepare Jane for her wedding to their chief, a big brute called "The Ivory King." The natives' ritual for the impending bride is to coat her with white paint, a foretaste of her coming degradation. This ritual strongly reinforces the idea that Derek had input in the script, for the scene resembles one in 1978's MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD. The victim of the painting-ritual in that film? Derek's ex-wife Ursula Andress, to whom he was married from 1957 to 1966.

While Jane is being prepared for her nuptials, James keeps shouting assurances about how she can distance herself from her impending rape by imagining herself to be the goddess Aphrodite. Neither this, nor James's self-flattering casting of himself as Zeus, make any difference to the savages, and the Ivory King spears James to shut him up.

Tarzan arrives with a troop of elephants and engages the chief in single combat while the other natives look on, presumably cowed by the elephants. The fight between Tarzan and the chief isn't all that great, but after so many long soft-core romance sequences, at least it was Tarzan doing a Tarzan type of thing. The film ends with Jane choosing to remain with her jungle lover, and, as in the 1932 flick, there's no mention of marriage.

The film's best asset is its gorgeous location photography, executed partly in Sri Lanka. Derek, who was also cinematographer, showed far more skill in shooting nature than he did in pacing the romance of Tarzan and Jane. O'Keeffe looks imposing but he's not given anything interesting to do compared to the business given Weismuller in 1932. Harris is allowed to flamboyantly overact at fever pitch, and that may have some appeal in an ironic sense. Bo Derek would later become a decent though not stellar actress, particularly in television roles, but at this point in her career her talents were pretty raw. Nevertheless, her performance includes some good moments, apart from her photogenic qualities.

Both versions of TARZAN THE APE MAN position the hero in terms of his erotic and protective appeal to the female lead. The 1981 film-- initially given the risible working title "Me, Jane"-- comes close to suggesting that the young woman has conjured up Tarzan as a solution to her Oedipal conflicts. This might be the reason the white ape's life in the jungle is barely elaborated. Thus Derek's film doesn't focus purely on Tarzan, as do all the other books and movies I've encountered. The 1981 movie is structured more like a standard romance-film, in that both lead male and lead female are equally important to the narrative.