Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)
Directed by Hugh Hudson
A shipping disaster in the 19th Century has stranded a man and woman in the wilds of Africa. The lady is pregnant, and gives birth to a son in their tree house. Soon after, a family of apes stumble across the house and in the ensuing panic, both parents are killed. A female ape takes the tiny boy as a replacement for her own dead infant, and raises him as her son. Twenty years later, Captain Phillippe D'Arnot discovers the man who thinks he is an ape. Evidence in the tree house leads him to believe that he is the direct descendant of the Earl of Greystoke, and thus takes it upon himself to return the man to civilization.
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What critics compared Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes to
Some 20 movies, starting with the 1918 silent (with Elmo Lincoln in the title role) and going on to the Johnny Weissmuller/Maureen O'Sullivan classics (the first of which, Tarzan the Ape Man, came out in '32), the 1981 Miles O'Keeffe/Bo Derek remake, Hugh Hudson's 1984 Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (with Christopher Lambert and Andie MacDowell), and last year's Tarzan and the Lost City (with Casper Van Dien and Jane March).
The actress earlier performed voice-over work for 1984's live-action Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, kindly agreeing to re-dub all of Andie MacDowell's lines; MacDowell, forever a cartoon in her own lame way, was so typically mush-mouthed in her turn as Jane that the sound engineers could not understand her.
Kala (Glenn Close, who dubbed Andie MacDowell in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes), a mother gorilla whose new child was similarly devoured, discovers Tarzan squirming in his cradle and adopts him instantly, though husband Kerchak (Lance Henriksen) refuses to regard the boy as a son based solely on his human countenance.
Over the coming weeks, we'll be covering seven of Warner's Tarzan titles, the first six of which (Tarzan the Ape Man, Tarzan and His Mate, Tarzan Escapes, Tarzan Finds a Son!, Tarzan's Secret Treasure, Tarzan's New York Adventure) are available only as a package deal known as "The Tarzan Collection," whose supplementary material we'll cover in conjunction with Tarzan's New York Adventure.…
The most financially successful modern take on the tale remains Disney's animated 1999 Tarzan, the most serious has been Hugh Hudson's stately Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes in 1984, and the most ridiculous was unquestionably John Derek's 1981 Tarzan, the Ape Man, in which the director was far more interested in photographing his wife, Bo, in multiple stages of undress than in training his lenses on the title character.
My habit extended to the filmic versions, including all 12 Johnny Weissmuller yarns, most of the Gordon Scotts and Lex Barkers, the TV series starring Ron Ely, and 1984's intelligent and handsomely mounted Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes.
Edgar Rice Burroughs' jungle swinger has been brought to the screen on nearly 100 separate occasions, including Elmo Lincoln's big-screen christening of the role in the silent era, Johnny Weismuller's popular portrayal in 12 movies during the 1930s and '40s, Ron Ely's run on the '60s TV show and Miles O'Keeffe's attempt in the unspeakably awful Tarzan, the Ape Man, starring Bo Derek as the virginal, banana-nibbling Jane.