Tarzan X 1995 ((exclusive)) -

Enter the villains: a group of sleazy treasure hunters led by a man named Mr. X (no relation to the title, or maybe all the relation?), who are searching for a legendary golden idol. Their plan involves capturing Tarzan’s female companion, a scantily clad native woman named Sharmaine (Cindy Leadbetter). What follows is a series of captures, escapes, jungle chases, and – most importantly – frequent, extended softcore interludes.

The film opens with a young woman, Karen (Angela D’Angelo), searching for her missing anthropologist father in the African jungle. She stumbles upon a wild man known as Tarzan (Rocco Siffredi, legendary adult film star, here billed as "Rocco"), who lives in a treetop paradise with his chimpanzee companion, Cheeta (a real chimp, looking perpetually unimpressed). Tarzan has amnesia – a convenient plot device that allows for endless exposition dumps. He doesn’t know if he’s a lord or a lost city guardian.

Let’s address the elephant – or rather, the erect gorilla – in the room. Tarzan X is essentially a 95-minute vehicle for softcore sex scenes padded with jungle footage. The erotic sequences, which are plentiful, are shot with the same flat lighting and static camera work as the dialogue scenes. There is little passion; instead, there is a clinical, almost mechanical quality to them. Siffredi, known for his intense performances in adult cinema, seems oddly subdued here, going through the motions as if waiting for a paycheck. The female leads, while conventionally attractive, are given nothing to work with besides breathy sighs and strategically placed foliage. tarzan x 1995

Tarzan X was released directly to video in most markets, finding a second life on late-night cable channels like Cinemax, where it was rebranded as "Tarzan: The Wild Adventure." It has since gained a cult following among fans of erotic schlock and bad movie enthusiasts. It’s the kind of film you watch with friends, plenty of alcohol, and a remote control ready to skip the boring parts (which, ironically, are the sex scenes).

In the mid-1990s, the erotic thriller boom was in full swing, spurred on by the mainstream success of Basic Instinct and the explosion of late-night cable programming. It was a time when producers would grab any public domain character and thrust them (often literally) into a softcore scenario. Enter Tarzan X , a film that attempts to answer the question no one asked: What if Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Lord of the Apes was reimagined as a hunky, leather-clad, amnesiac action hero with a penchant for steamy jungle trysts? Enter the villains: a group of sleazy treasure

The pacing is glacial. Long stretches of the film involve characters walking through the jungle, Tarzan grunting monosyllabically, or the villains arguing in a poorly decorated cave set. The action scenes are laughably staged: a "fierce" fight with a crocodile involves a man in a rubber suit flopping on the ground, and Tarzan’s famous vine-swinging is reduced to a single, unconvincing shot on a soundstage.

However, as a spectacle of failure ? It’s a masterpiece. Tarzan X is the cinematic equivalent of finding a moldy, half-eaten sandwich in a rented VHS case – it’s gross, confusing, and you can’t look away. Rocco Siffredi’s Tarzan may not conquer the jungle or your heart, but he will forever swing awkwardly through the low-rent canopy of bad movie history. What follows is a series of captures, escapes,

Is it worth your time? That depends entirely on your tolerance for 90s softcore aesthetics and your ability to laugh at incompetence. As a piece of erotic cinema, it fails – it’s not sexy, it’s awkward. As an action film, it fails – the stunts are pathetic. As a Tarzan adaptation, it’s an insult to the source material.