In the pantheon of comic book deities of my childhood, Tarzan was to me a second-rung hero, a minor god. His setting seemed a more limited version of the Phantom's jungle world, his adventures less fantastic. He was of course still good enough to follow on a regular basis, the gritty illustrations immersive and pleasing, and some of the stories, especially those that incorporated voodoo elements and jungle superstition, were absorbing in their own right. But let's say I wasn't too traumatized by how utterly dull the 1981 film version Tarzan The Apeman was (and misleadingly titled, given that Tarzan is nowhere in sight till half the film is over, and has little to show for even after), and thrilled by the charming camp values of Babbar Subhash's Indian Tarzan film. It was in some of the comics that I came across the Greystoke connection. This was intriguing, the aspect of Tarzan having an alternate identity, as lord John Clayton, scion of the English aristocratic family of Greystoke, and made me curious to see 1985's Greystoke when I heard of it (in connection with the Oscar nominations it received, for adapted screenplay and supporting actor). But those being the days of no internet and little access to any video other than what the local rental offered you, it didn't happen then. Greystoke went under my radar soon after and it was only recently that my interest was rekindled and I did the necessary to get a viewing of it.

Eschewing the silly B-budget nature of most previous film/TV adaptations of Tarzan, Greystoke tries to do for the jungle hero what Richard Donner tried to do with his Superman film for the Man of Steel: With a script by Robert 'Chinatown' Towne (although differences with the producers led him to put in the pseudonym of PH Vazak, his dog's name) and direction by Hugh Hudson, who previously helmed Chariots of Fire, the film strongly announces its intention to give the Tarzan saga a touch of seriousness and verisimilitude.

And it works in good measure; going from stately English homestead to primeval African forest, the film unfolds in a measured beat, Tarzan's origins. We see him as a child interacting with his decidedly non-Disneyesque ape family. Later on, in a nice touch, he stumbles upon the tree-house where his (unknown to him) parents died, and his attention is drawn more by his father's knife than by their skeletal remains. We see his more violent side after his ape-mother is killed by tribals. It is almost 45 min into the film before the adult Tarzan makes his appearance but, like with the Superman film, very little in the interim is wasted time.