Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932). 99 minutes. Directed by W. S. Van Dyke. Starring Maureen O’Sullivan (as Jane Parker), Johnny Weissmuller (as Tarzan), Neil Hamilton (as Harry Holt), and C. Aubrey Smith (as James Parker). Dialogue by Ivor Novello.

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan novels spawned a phenomenally successful franchise that extended into cinema, radio, television, and comic strips. Although the specifics of Tarzan’s character and his basic plot trajectory vary depending on the retelling, Burroughs’s fundamental story involves the wild man living amongst jungle apes and falling for a British female explorer. One of the best expressions of the full-on, kinky possibilities latent in this framework is the 1932 pre-Code Tarzan, the Ape Man. The movie is in some ways monolithic and crude in its colonialist rhetoric; there is a great deal of shouting, animal grunting, humans falling prey to jungle beasts, and condescending depictions of native types. But while the movie is blunt in terms of overall sentiment, … Read the rest