Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes

Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984) — watch online this ambitious adventure drama directed by Hugh Hudson on iFILM. The British-American production runs 143 minutes and stands as one of the most earnest film adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel.

A nineteenth-century shipwreck leaves a couple stranded on the African coast. They build a tree house, she gives birth to a son, and both parents die within months. A grieving female ape adopts the infant and raises him as her own. Two decades pass. A French captain named D'Arnot stumbles upon a man who leaps through the canopy like a primate but carries the bloodline of the Scottish Earls of Greystoke. Christopher Lambert plays Tarzan with almost no spoken language — posture, silence, and raw physicality carry the performance. Ralph Richardson, Ian Holm, James Fox, and a debuting Andie MacDowell fill out a cast that treats the material as drama, not spectacle.

Hudson was not interested in vine-swinging action. The film's real question is what civilization costs a person who never asked to join it. Stream Greystoke (1984) full movie online on iFILM.