Tarzan and the Lost City

In 1998, the adventure film *Tarzan and the Lost City* hit theaters, directed by Carl Schenkel. The screenplay, written by Bayard Johnson and J. Anderson Black, drew loosely from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ original Tarzan tales. Casper Van Dien played John Clayton, also known as Tarzan, with Jane March as Jane Porter and Steven Waddington as the antagonist, Nigel Ravens. The movie was panned by critics and failed at the box office.

Stanley S. Canter, one of the film’s producers, had previously worked on another Tarzan film for Warner Bros., *Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes* (1984).

The plot begins in 1913, the night before Jane Porter’s wedding to Tarzan, who is now a public figure. Tarzan has a disturbing vision of his childhood home in Africa under threat. Meanwhile, the educated explorer Nigel Ravens seeks the lost city of Opar to steal its treasures and unlock dangerous powers. Tarzan leaves for Africa, upsetting Jane, and meets the shaman Mugambe, whose village was raided by Ravens’ men for a key to Opar. Tarzan tries to persuade Ravens to stop, but Jane follows her fiancé. Tarzan must now protect her while stopping Ravens’ expedition.

The cast also included Winston Ntshona as Mugambe, Rapulana Seiphemo as Kaya, Ian Roberts as Captain Dooley, Sean Taylor as Wilkes, and Gys De Villiers as Schiller.

Filming took place in Bethlehem, Free State, and Port Edward, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. German composer Christopher Franke wrote the original score.

Reviews were mostly negative, with criticism aimed at the low-budget production values, effects, and writing. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 6% approval rating from 18 critics. A rare positive review came from *The New York Times*, where Lawrence Van Gelder called it “a throwback to the days of Saturday afternoon adventures in exotic locales that were usually Hollywood back lots,” adding that it “zips along, past the ritual lions, elephants and cobras to the city of Opar and its temple of illusions, tunnels and traps, and right to the inevitable satisfying showdown.”

At the box office, the film opened the same weekend as *The Big Hit*, earning $1 million and placing 12th. Its total gross was only $2 million, marking a commercial failure.