Tarzoon, la honte de la jungle

The creative writers of SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE wrote the English version of this extreme unfunny cartoon from France. The film was barely released (played in Seattle as TARZOON;SHAME OF THE JUNGLE in only one drive-in with a small ad in 1979) This film only got any kind of release was because of the voice talent of John Belushi who has a thankless voice role in a unfunny material he wrote (!). I don't know what voice Bill Murray did, and the late Adolf Ceasar also has a nothing voice role also. All the joke do not work, and it's a suprise since MR. MIKE'S MONDO VIDEO worked very well. Only highlight is a amusing march segment these soldiers did with a funky catchy french/african tune on. It a watered down 70mins print for the U.S., but I guess the french has more explicit cartoon version. Not recommended, unless you like to check out Belushi's forgotten work.

I'll be honest. This film doesn't live up to Bashki's work. Something went amiss here. The script is surprisingly good, the V'O 's are great and it has many inventive moments too. May'be it tries too hard, by putting so much in. It just doesn't measure up to Bashki's other work. Nonetheless I'll run down the plot. In the adult world, Shame is the Tarzan, but really doesn't have much upstairs. His wife June (his Jane) is very unfulfilled sexually. Shame's quite the impotent one. They have a pet monkey, and use water from an elephant's trunk as their daily mean of showering. Enter the bad bald nasty Queen who desperately needs a head of hair. She has fourteen breasts too, poor dear. After combing through a book of hopeless possibilities, guess who she spots- June. So she sends her johnsons, and their attached nuts, at her order to carry out the abduction of June, and it's Shame to the rescue, where he meets some quite weird characters, on the way. The bouncing balls and penises are great to watch, in an "Are you fu..ing kidding me?" way. No you're not mistaken. We have a separate safari team, one a compulsive swearer, blurting out a chain of non stop f words. He hates flies too. If you're into adult cartoons, or are fans of Bakshi's work, this will still entertain, but some of you might be sold short or on a comedown with this, as it not being in the same vein of other Bashki flicks, but still it's a very inventive, and at times humorous adult pic.

I was first intrigued by this via a still in "The Movie", an early 1980s British film periodical, where it was mentioned in an entry dedicated to animation; I also recall my father renting it on VHS – under its U.K. title of JUNGLE BURGER – in the mid-1980s but, of course, I was too young to be allowed to watch this or even understand it. The edition I acquired had the benefit of the English-dubbed soundtrack (with the hero, spoofing the popular character of Tarzan, voiced by Johnny Weissmuller Jr.[!] – son of the screen's most famous "Ape Man" – and the participation of many a "Saturday Night Live" exponent) but I opted to watch the original French version (accompanied by Italian rather than English subtitles).

Anyway, while the film is moderately amusing, it's in no way a classic (falling far below the standard of even contemporary artist/film-maker Ralph Bakshi); incidentally, it exhibits a similar predilection for explicit violence and sexuality (indeed it's swamped by the latter, particularly during the second half, with the hero depicted as impotent and where both characters and landscape are shaped like male and female genitalia)! The villainess, then, is a bald lady with fourteen breasts (perhaps a nod to the then-latest Bond adventure THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN [1974] – speaking of cinematic references, there's an obscure one involving the maligned but not-too-bad religious epic THE SILVER CHALICE [1954], which I watched for the first time only last month): she's flanked by a mad scientist with two heads who, typically for such evil "Siamese twins" caricatures, are constantly quarrelling among themselves.

Not quite awful but very far from good, this odd little movie wears out its welcome a lot sooner than you might imagine. It's like one of those sub-standard VIZ clones that cluttered up newsagent's shelves from the late eighties onward come to life, with a screenplay apparently written by an unreconstructed nightclub comedian who aims for the lowest common denominator and hits his target every time. It might be funny to see marching genitalia, a monkey poking a woman's naked breasts or the Tarzan character getting his penis stretched to impossible lengths the first couple of times, but that's really all the film has going for it in the humour department. A shame, because the animation is actually pretty good, and whoever came up with the rich soundtrack score deserved to see his work put to better use. The film achieved a minor cult following in the early days of home video in England due to its explicit (for the time) subject matter and the novelty value of seeing cute characters behaving badly.

I am fairly interested in adult animation.I usually enjoy them.South Park is my favorite show(as my username would suggest), I enjoyed "Fritz The Cat" and other bakshi films as well as tons of adult anime's from japan such as "Akira", so I decided to check this film out.This is a french film from the 1970's, directed by Picha who seemed to be France's answer to Ralph Bakshi.The original version originally had to be cut down by 5min in order to obtain an R-rating.The English version also features comedians like John Belushi and Bill Murray dubbing the voices.However there is not much dialogue in this film, it's mostly just a bunch of random, unfunny little skits.The basic plot features a bald woman and a sziemise scientist who wants a special kind of hair from Tarzoon(Tarzan)'s wife June(Jane).She gets kidnapped and now it's up to Tarzoon to save her.The film is fairly short, and the majority of the film is just random skits involving jungle animals.Some of them are a bit funny, but overall the film is just boring and unfunny.It's pretty rare so check it out if you want, but I personally did not like it.