Tarzan of the Apes

After a shipboard mutiny forces Lord and Lady Greystoke into the uncharted African Jungle, Lady Greystoke gives birth to a boy. The parents die soon after, and the boy (Gordon Griffith) is raised by a family of "apes". He learns to live and fight like them, but also learns how to read and right from escaped slave Binns (George B. French), who heads back to Europe. Binns eventually convinces enough people that young Greystoke is still alive, and brings an expedition back to find him years later. The boy has now grown into the man known as Tarzan (Elmo Lincoln), Lord of the Jungle. When he sets eyes on Jane Porter (Enid Markey), it's love at first sight, and he rescues her from a number of perils. Also featuring Thomas Jefferson (!).

Filmed in Louisiana, this proved a hit, despite only adapting the first half of Burroughs' novel. A quick sequel, The Romance of Tarzan, was released later the same year but has since been lost. Lincoln, who had played a scary guard in Griffith's Intolerance, makes for an equally scary looking Tarzan, big and beefy, wearing a headband and an over-the-shoulder fur onesie. His Tarzan "yell" consists of him raising his fists in the air and making an insane face. The "apes" in Tarzan's family are people in weird monkey suits, with a real chimp thrown in occasionally to make things even weirder. There's also a really bad gorilla suit, as well as a real lion which one source I have says was actually killed by Lincoln on screen. There's enough strange stuff here to keep the viewer's interest, along with a brief (under an hour) running time.

Shot amongst the luscious vegetation of... Louisiana... this is actually quite a decent effort at telling the story of "Tarzan"; of his family, youth, rescue and - of course - his falling for "Jane" (Enid Markey). It seems to be intercut with archive of some of the animals you might expect to find in the jungle, though some are also clearly folks in costume - but it's over 100 years old, and frankly the narrative flows far better, with a score that conveys the mood well, than the pretty mediocre version told with special effects a plenty in 2016. Gordon Griffith has something of the wonder about him as the child, and Elmo Lincoln the capable, honourable adult. The pace is consistent and the fight scenes quite realistic looking (plenty of gymnastics) - and if you are at all interested in the development of cinema, as well as of this oft told story, then this is well worth 70 minutes of your time. Helpfully, the inter-titles don't get in the way of the acting; they are there - but sparingly.

...because of his already established reputation as a Hollywood strong man (e.g. his role as the Mighty Man of Valor in the 1916 DW Griffith classic "Intolerance").

Also, the image of Tarzan in 1918 was not that of a lithe gymnast like Christopher Lambert in "Greystoke", but of a man powerful enough to wrestle lions. Strength equalled bulk.

There's an interesting piece of trivia attached to that movie and Uganda (that's in East Africa) where I'm now based. There's a popular myth around here that the 1918 version of "Tarzan of the Apes" was filmed on the northern shores of Lake Victoria. In fact it was shot, I believe, in Louisiana.

Cinema's first adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrough's famous novel sees screen strongman Elmo Lincoln claiming a place in cinematic history in the title role. With his bulging eyes and crazed grin, he's a strangely unhinged version of the ape man, but Lincoln's eccentric portrayal somehow makes him all the more convincing. Although only a 60 minute version of the original 2-hour film survives, the plot remains both coherent and remarkably faithful to Burrough's famous novel, and the swamplands of Louisiana provide a convincing substitute for the African jungle.

This original silent version of the Lord of the Apes is perhaps the truest screen representation of the way Tarzan is envisioned in the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It is seems very crude but really isn't. It follows the first story (in as much as it can in the limited time of the feature) very closely. Elmo Lincoln, while no Adonis, is very adequate in the role. He's not Johnny Weissmuller...but then Johnny didn't really look all too much like Tarzan should have either.