Tarzan: The Lord of the Jungle (2025)

Overview

Tarzan: The Lord of the Jungle (or just Lord of the Jungle according to its website) is a 1999 mockbuster by German company Dingo pictures. It is a direct rip off of Disney´s Tarzan and The Jungle Book. It was released on the Playstation under Midas games and Phoenix Entertainment.

Plot

The film starts off with a woman and a baby on a plane. The plane, for no apparent reason, fails and crashes into a jungle. The baby survives and is adopted and brought home by a gorilla named Shina. She brings him to her troop, where he is ridiculed for being different from the rest of them. The yet to be named baby is allowed to stay on the condition that he is to go if he causes any trouble. Shina names him Lord and he quickly adjusts to life as a gorilla.

Lord is called "retarded" by the head gorilla during his time amongst the gorillas. He is taught to climb and jump but fails. He is ridiculed by the other animals and is rewarded with a banana.

Lord eventually adjusts to the gorilla's ways and becomes close with them.

Fast forward to Lord´s childhood. He shoots an arrow into a lion cub (courtesy of animation recycled from Lion and the King) and sends it running to its dad. Lord takes off when the older lion comes for him and is told by the elephant to be careful around him. Lord blows this off saying "I'm much smarter then him" and goes off with his monkey friend Raja.

He then goes with his friend to a lake with Dundee the crocodile. Lord climbs up a tree and closes Dundee's jaw with a rope. He cries and is let go. Lord goes home and is again told off by the head gorilla, who asks hims for the rope. Lord gives it to him and the head gorilla (who we now know is named Draga) puts it over his head and makes an idiot of himself. While the rest of the gorillas laugh, Lord scolded by Shina.

A while later, Lord is pathetically stalked by Dundee in the water. Here, Lord sees his reflection and freaks out over how different he looks from everyone else. In an effort to be like everyone else, he covers himself in mud. He gives up when Raja tells him the mud will dry and decides to run away. Shina finds him and tells him that he looks like his father, a white monkey.

Sometime later, the gorillas travel south to find more food. Lord finds the plane crash he came from. Shina tells him it was a bird that crashed and burned everything, while Dragan says ´this is where everything started´. He doesn't follow this up. Then Lord finds a tree house and decides to explore it. Meanwhile Dragan finds a gun and shoots it. Lord gets down from the tree house and goes back up into it, despite Raja´s protests. Here he finds a book containing pictures of ´white monkeys´. Raja meanwhile finds a knife and cuts himself. Lord tries the knife out and cuts some bamboo down. Lord and Raja abandon the tree house and go back to the plane crash. Here, Lord finds a medallion.

The white bird informs us that Lord opened the medallion later and found a picture of some people.

Draga comes across Lord with the medallion and demands it. But Lord refuses to give it to him. When Draga tries to take it by force, Lord cuts him with the knife from earlier. Lord runs, per Shina´s request and ends up by a pond. An elephant goes to plead with Draga and tells him that Lord is protected by ghosts, and that's how he could hurt him. Shina approves of this lie and Draga calms down. Lord believes this.

The rumor about how Lord had cut Draga spreads throughout the jungle and Lord becomes very respected. Lord also begins to make frequent trips to the hut to read the books.

Lord, now an adult, learns that Draga has died and that the jungle needs a new king. Just as everyone elects Lord as the new king, a group of humans come to the jungle. One of them finds Lord´s treehouse and explores it. Dundee comes and is shot at. The rip off Jane and another explorer find Lord´s journal. They spot Lord outside right as he runs off.

The scientist of the group wanders around looking for rare plants. He comes across a monkey who almost immediately runs away. It is then revealed that the scientist us being stalked by a hungry lion. Lord saves the scientist and takes him to a river side. After Lord leaves, the scientist is met by rip off Jane and the explorer (who is now introduced as Sir Stewart). They reveal to him that they found a hut that they say belonged to a Lord Greystoke.

Lord tells the elephant and Raja about the ´white monkeys´ he saw. He describes how beautiful rip off Jane was. Raja teases him about her as the three wonder what the white monkeys want.

The next day, the scientist discovers that the hut was indeed occupied by a Lord Greystoke. They read the last entry in his journal which details how excited he was to see his family. Stewart comes and tells them about a plane crash he had just found. After the scientist and rip off Jane blow him off, he starts plotting to hunt elephants with a bunch of african natives.

The scientist gets to work with rip off Jane (now revealed to be named Linda). Suddenly, Lord appears. The scientist (now revealed to be called Professor Bloomsdale) introduces them. Lord kidnaps her while the professor shakes this off as a ´local custom´.

Lord shows Linda his medallion. Linda confirms the pictures to be of Lord Greystoke and Lady Greystoke. She shows it to the professor and he declares that Lord is the son of Lord Greystoke.

Raja appears and whines about Lord spending so much time with the humans. Lord´s ability to communicate with Raja fascinates the professor. Stewart starts to believe that Lord is a threat.

Linda and the professor became fascinated with Lord to the point where they taught him their language. This prompted Lord to tell them about how he was raised by gorillas and how he became their leader. Eventually Linda falls in love with Lord.

After spending a whole day with the humans, Lord comes home late one night to Shina. She tells him about how he belongs with the other gorillas and not the humans. Lord tells her that he loves Linda, which Raja complains about. Shina forbids Lord to leave her.

The professor and Linda read more into Lord Greystoke's journal. They read a passage detailing about how his son touched a candle which left a permanent burn. After deciding to see if Lord has this burn, Linda declares that she wants to take Lord back to England. Stewart insists that Lord is dangerous and goes off elephant hunting. Lord comes and shows them the burn on his thumb, proving that he is indeed the son of Lord Greystoke.

Stewart shoots some elephants while Linda begs Lord to come with her back to England. Raja arrives and tells Lord that the elephant (who´s only now revealed to be named Tabor) has been shot by Stewart. All the animals mourn the loss of Tabor and the loss of his tusks. Lord sets out to kill Steward.

The professor and Linda don´t seem very bothered by the fact that Stewart has killed a bunch of elephants. Just then, Lord arrives and kicks Stewart. It's only now that the professor is bothered by what Stewart did. They start to leave when Linda decides to stay with Lord.

In later years, Lord and Linda have a kid together. The professor pops by to visit every year and everyone is happy.

Characters

• Lord - Lord is the protagonist. He is the knock off version of Disney´s Tarzan. He´s self centered, free of any intelligence (a common theme in Dingo movies), and egocentric. He is commonly found bragging about how smart he is compared to most other adults.
• Shina - Shina is Lord´s adopted gorilla mom. She is the rip off version of Kala from Disney´s adaptation of Tarzan. In the beginning of the movie she adopts and raises Lord as her own. Throughout his life, she lies, scolds, and covers up for Lord whenever he gets in trouble with Draga.
• Draga - Draga is one of the movie´s antagonists. He is a rip off of Kerchak from the Disney version. Besides being king of the jungle, he also acts as a begrudging father figure. He clearly despises Lord and everything he does, especially when Lord cuts him with a human knife. He dies of unknown reasons halfway through.
• Raja - Raja is Lord´s best friend and a rip off of Terk from Disney´s take on Tarzan. Here he is portrayed as a monkey who will go along with Lord and anything he does, no matter how terrible. That is the only distinguishable personality he has.
• The Elephant - The Elephant (actual name unknown or indistinguishable) is Dingo Pictures´ version of Tantor from Disney´s movie. He has no real personality except for either sucking up to or scolding Lord.
• Professor Bloomsdale - Professor Bloomsdale is the Dingo version of Professor Porter from Disney´s adaptation of Tarzan. He looks almost identical to his original version and is clearly voiced by a woman pretending to be a sixty year old man. His only personality is that everything around him is either science that must be experimented on or local culture. He is useless.
• Linda Bloomsdale - Linda is the rip off version of Jane Porter from Disney´s version of Tarzan. She is nothing but a love interest for Lord.
• Sir Stewart - Sir Stewart is the antagonist as well as Dingo Picture´s version of Clayton from the Disney adaptation. He hates Lord for no real reason and likes to shoot animals. That´s the only personality he has.

Points of reused material

This movie reuses most of its animation and designs from Lion and the King. Whole shots and sequences can be traced back there. Examples include the scene where Lord harasses a lion cub. The cub design is otherwise known as Robin in Lion. He even comes complete with the same voice. Another example is the establishing shot during the start of the sequence where the gorillas are traveling south. More shots of animals from Lion and the King are spread out throughout the movie.

References

IMDb page

Dingo Pictures page

Videos