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.
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.