X 1995: Tarzan

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).

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. tarzan x 1995

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? Tarzan X was released directly to video in