No major critic reviewed "Tarzan: Shame of Jane" upon its 1995 release. It bypassed theaters entirely, premiering on a now-defunct pay-per-view channel called “HotVisions” before hitting VHS in Germany, Brazil, and the Philippines. The few contemporaneous reviews from genre magazines like VideoMania and The Psychotronic Video Guide were brutal.
One surviving quote from Cult Movies magazine (Issue 34, 1996) reads:
“Tarzan: Shame of Jane is not so much a film as a felony. The acting is flatter than the jungle floor. The eroticism is about as arousing as a tax audit. And yet… you cannot look away. It is the cinematic equivalent of discovering a forgotten sock drawer in a condemned house.” tarzan shame of jane 1995
Modern viewers on Letterboxd and Reddit’s r/badMovies have ironically celebrated the film. User JungleJudy99 writes: “The ‘shame’ theme is so heavy-handed that Jane literally weeps for twenty minutes. But Manson’s Tarzan keeps signing ‘you’re welcome’ with his armpit. It’s surrealist gold.”
Because "Tarzan: Shame of Jane" never received an official DVD release in most regions, its plot has been pieced together from VHS screeners, convention showings, and internet forums. As of this writing, no clean 1080p transfer exists. The most commonly cited "canon" comes from a grainy 1996 Norwegian video release titled Tarzan – Janes Skam. No major critic reviewed "Tarzan: Shame of Jane"
The story, such as it is, goes like this:
We open not in the jungle, but in 1995 London. Jane Porter (played by B-movie regular Misty Dawn, using the pseudonym “Eve Darling”) is a burned-out anthropologist. She inherits her late father’s journal, which contains coordinates to an uncharted African valley. Skeptical but intrigued, she joins a shady expedition led by a villainous poacher named Victor Ravencroft (a scenery-chewing character actor named Hugh G. Rektion). “Tarzan: Shame of Jane is not so much a film as a felony
When their plane crashes, Jane is separated from the group. She wanders the jungle, hallucinating due to toxic berries. Enter Tarzan—played by bodybuilder Rick “The Ape” Manson. This Tarzan speaks in broken monosyllables, but unlike the Johnny Weissmuller version, this Tarzan is aggressively sensual. He doesn’t just rescue Jane; he inspects her. He sniffs her hair. He tears her torn safari blouse further (accidentally, the film implies, then deliberately).
The “shame” plot device appears in act two. Jane, after a fever dream set to synth pan-flute music, gives in to her attraction. But immediately afterward, she experiences violent shame-fueled flashbacks: Victorian mother scolding her, a failed engagement, a church sermon on “the beast within.” She builds a makeshift cross and attempts to pray. Tarzan, confused, brings her a dead monkey as a gift.
Meanwhile, Ravencroft captures Cheeta (here a surly chimpanzee named Clyde) and threatens to burn the jungle. The climax involves a mud fight (marketed as “The Mud Bath of Shame” in the trailer) where Tarzan and Jane must literally wash away societal pretension. Tarzan kills the villain by dropping a beehive on him. Jane, now wearing only mud and vines, finally accepts her place in nature. The final shot: Jane and Tarzan swinging on a vine, superimposed over a sunset. The end.
The film is a loose adaptation of the classic Tarzan mythology created by Edgar Rice Burroughs.