Tarzan and the Lost City **(1998, Casper Van Dien, Jane March, Steven Waddington) – Classic Movie Review 8089

Director Carl Schenkel’s 1998 Village Roadshow/ Warner Bros old-fashioned American action adventure Tarzan and the Lost City stars Casper Van Dien, Jane March and Steven Waddington. It is shot in South Africa.

Van Dien is an amiable presence, and looks good at Tarzan but the low budget, the cheap-looking production, cheesy effects and weak writing combine to harm the film and it ends up as a home viewing video, but acceptable as such.

Jane March plays Jane Porter, Steven Waddington plays Nigel Ravens, and also in the cast are Winston Ntshona as Mugambe, Rapulana Seiphemo as Kaya, Ian Roberts as Captain Dooley, Sean Taylor as Wilkes, and Gys De Villiers as Schiller.

The plot is Ape Man business as usual. In 1913, explorer Nigel Ravens is seeking the legendary lost city of Opar to plunder its treasures. Tarzan (aka
John Clayton) leaves for his homeland of Africa to stop Ravens and his men, followed by his fiancee Jane, whom he has to help when she gets into trouble.

The screenplay by Bayard Johnson and J Anderson Black is loosely based on the Tarzan characters and stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The original score is composed by German musician Christopher Franke.

It cost $20 million, which is a low budget for this kind of thing, and lost a lot of money, taking only $2,172,941 at the box office.

Producer Stanley S Canter also produced the Warner Bros Eighties classic Tarzan film, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8089

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