Crew
Director – Michael Schultz, Screenplay – William Gough & Anna Sandor, Producer – Charles Hairston, Photography – Laszlo George, Music – Charles Fox, Special Effects – Image Engineering, Inc., Production Design – Vincent J. Cresciman. Production Company – American First Run Studios.
Cast
Joe Lara (Tarzan), Kim Crosby (Jane Porter), Tony Curtis (Archimedes Porter), Jan-Michael Vincent (Brightmore), Jimmy Medina Taggert (Juan Lipschnitz), Joe Seneca (Joseph)
Plot
Tarzan has lived in the jungle raised by the apes ever since the death of his parents in a plane crash. Tarzan is now shocked and upset by the shooting of his adopted gorilla mother Kala and the abduction of his chimpanzee companion Cheeta by hunters. He finds a matchbook from the Bête-Noire Club in Manhattan that has been dropped by the hunters. Tarzan decides to travel to New York City to find the killers. Upon arriving, he is placed in immigration custody but makes a breakout. On the streets, he gets a ride with taxi driver Jane Porter who becomes intrigued by Tarzan’s unworldliness and takes him home. With the aid of Jane’s father Archimedes, a retired police officer who runs a private detective agency, they track Cheeta down to where he being held to be used for animal experimentation by wealthy game hunter Brightmore.
The jungle lord Tarzan was the creation of Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) and is one of the great pulp and screen characters. Tarzan first appeared in the novel Tarzan of the Apes (1912). This was a huge success that led to Burroughs writing a further 23 novels featuring Tarzan. The Tarzan film has been with us since the silent era with Tarzan of the Apes (1918), gaining its greatest popularity in the 1930s and 40s with the long-running series starring Johnny Weissmuller that began with Tarzan the Ape Man (1932). The Tarzan film has diminished in popularity since the 1990s with only occasional efforts such as the live-action Tarzan and the Lost City (1998) and The Legend of Tarzan (2016) and the animated likes of Disney’s Tarzan (1999) and Tarzan (2013).
Director Michael Schultz was one of Hollywood’s first African-American directors. Schultz had previously made 1970s pop culture films like Car Wash (1976), Greased Lightning (1977), the madcap Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) and the surreally bizarre martial arts/disco film The Last Dragon (1985). Schultz’s only other genre entries have been tv movies, including the time travel film Timestalkers (1987) and the adaptation of the classic comic-book character The Spirit (1987).
Tarzan in Manhattan could be construed as a loose remake of Tarzan’s New York Adventure (1942), which had Johnny Weissmuller visiting New York City to retrieve an abducted Boy. Both films play the idea of Tarzan uprooted and thrown into modern civilisation for comedy. Tarzan in Manhattan could be Tarzan’s New York Adventure with much more overt a comedy playing. That said, I don’t think Michael Schultz does a particularly good job directing comedy. To its credit, the film incorporates Tarzan’s origin story as the heir to the Greystoke lineage but modernises it to have his parents killed in a plane crash. (Subsequent to this, there was also a third work that brings Tarzan to New York with the short-lived tv series Tarzan (2003) starring Travis Fimmel, where Jane was cast as an NYPD detective, but this was cancelled after eight episodes and disowned by creator Eric Kripke).
The initially amusing premise of Tarzan as an Outsider in civilisation – you suspect the filmmakers were seeking to emulate something of the then recent international hit of Crocodile Dundee (1986) – stumbles in Michael Schultz’s hands. We get assorted scenes with Joe Lara trying to hail cabs, riding on top of buses like they were elephants, and a slapstick sequence where he bumbles about Jane’s apartment and causes the tv remote, the stereo and blender to all come on at once. Furthermore, what is being made is a TV Movie. Thus the entire show plods it way to the commercial breaks with canned pieces of actions and assorted capers running around, each of which comes with a dull predictability. Schultz does nothing to enliven them with any energy, comic or otherwise – he is no more than a conveyor belt tv director.
The role of Tarzan is cast with Joe Lara, who makes his acting debut here, and went on to appear in a number of B-budget action films, including playing Tarzan in the subsequent tv series Tarzan: The Epic Adventures (1996-7). Lara later married a pastor and became actively involved in the Remnant Fellowship cult, before being killed in a plane crash in 2021 where he was the pilot.
Joe Lara has a decent physique but as Tarzan he looks more like a male model. He is not someone who suggests he has lived all his life in the wild or has much going on between his ears. He lacks the natural humour of a Johnny Weissmuller or even the heroic certainty of some of the other actors in the role like Gordon Scott and Ron Ely. Similarly, Kim Crosby is a fairly anonymous Jane. The one who owns the show is Tony Curtis, doing a broad and engaging airing of the good old Tony Curtis shtick and playing to the gallery in a well-polished routine. It is he at least who holds up the comedy side of the film.
Trailer here