Le gorille et l'enfant

Well-mounted jungle tale is basically the "Tarzan" story, but that name is never mentioned, thus avoiding lawsuits. What makes this one unusual is the fact that the first half of the film shows the titular character as an infant adopted by the apes (not gorillas) and as a boy growing up as a member of the ape tribe and meeting his first human, a cannibal boy out on a solo lion hunt to avenge the death of his father. As he grows up he becomes a local legend, the White Ape. And when Europeans get wind of it, an expedition is mounted to find this "missing link." This is not the "Tarzan" you are used to...Hugo Stiglitz plays him in a very convincing manner as a feral human, complete with beard and mustache, long ratty hair and utterly no social skills other than those of his ape tribe. An interesting version of the story and in some ways truer to the character than that depicted in "Greystoke, the Legend of Tarzan." Give this one a look, and maybe turn off the very poor English subtitles on the otherwise nice Mexican DVD issue. It's one of the better film adaptations and certainly the best made outside the U.S.

I was seventeen when this film came to theatres. It just thrilled us all, because it was exactly the idea we had of Tarzan and what most of my mates had already seen at the "Africam Safari". The place we all knew (it's an open zoo close to Mexico City, near Puebla) had no African elephants (as there are none in the film), but plenty of wild African legends (including the amazing rhinos in the film). It's an extremely fun film to watch. If you know a bit of Spanish you'll find it twenty times better, as the narrator tells the story with many very, very "slangish" Mexican Spanish.

Subtitles are crap, to say the least. But this film is an amazing homage to the place and the beautiful people who worked pretty hard to give it life.