Take My Wife...Please!

JOHN DEREK HAS nude pictures of his wife for sale. He doesn't keep them pinned to the inside of a greasy raincoat or anything, and you don't have to go down to the Combat Zone to see them. Just ask him--he's got a million, and he'll be glad to show them to you.

That's what Derek does for a career these days. He runs around prostituting his wife, Bo. Granted it's a nice, clean, look-but-don't-touch prostitution: usually in the pages of Playboy, or in the movie theatres. He announces to the public: Look what I get to sleep with every night! And he's quick to point out that nobody photographs her but him. One can hardly blame John for being infatuated with Bo, for she is very beautiful indeed and as long as he wants to show her off and she is willing to go along with it, there will no doubt exist a loyal contingent ready and willing to let their tongues hang out while they ogle.

But just because she looks nice in front of a camera doesn't mean she can act. She can't. Tarzan, the Ape Man. John Derek's latest Let's-Look-at-My-Wife offering, makes this painfully clear. To call her a bad actress is to make a gross understatement. Unlike "10," which asked only that Bo slink around a beach and look pretty--of which she is eminently capable--Tarzan demands that she exhibit a wide range of emotions, and that's where she fails miserably. When she is supposed to be frightened, she squeals: when she should laugh, she giggles; and when she should weep, she whines. She is played up in this movie as the uncontested main attraction, and she stays on the screen virtually from start to finish. Ultimately, you get tired of looking at her.

There is something ludicrous about seeing Bo Derek in the deep, dark jungles of 19th century Western Africa, for she is such a product of late 20th century America. Her giggly California high-school pom-pom girl accent does not mesh with the romantic, metaphorical lines she is called upon to recite. When her line reads: "Yes, father, many things in life are like that," her voice says "gimme a large order of onion rings and a vanilla shake." She belongs in an Orange Crush television commercial. She belongs on a beach in Venice. California, or in a dune buggy. Anywhere but Africa.

It's a shame that this movie is so bad, because, as remakes of old serials go, this one certainly has potential--certainly as much as Superman did. But because of director-cinematographer John Derek's egomaniacal insistance that his wife always remain on screen, the story of Tarzan is lost. We never see the legendary plane crash which brought the baby Tarzan to the jungle; we don't see him learning how to survive in the wilds or forging his bonds of friendship with the animals. In the old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies, jungle adventure was the main feature. Jane was simply a pretty face, a catalyst for Tarzan's heroics.

In the new version, Jane is the overriding presence, and Tarzan serves merely as window dressing. The result is that the movie can never approach the level of excitement or adventure reached in earlier versions. And this is inexcusable. Considering the potential laid open by modern cinematic tenchnology. Tarzan should only improve. Not that Jane should be reduced to the traditional helpless female role--obviously there is room for the '80s mentality--but the new movie lacks even a healthy interaction between Tarzan and Jane. Miles O'Keefe's Tarzan never says a word, he just grunts a lot, and, of course, periodically lets out that famous yell. They make him into a big dummy and Bo speaks to him the way she might speak to a two-year-old. O'Keefe looks the part of the muscular Tarzan--maybe a bit too well. This man has not grown up on roots and berries: more likely he popped protein pills and grunted under a Nautilus. And it still remains unclear how be got that Trac II-close shave way out in the jungle.

Richard Harris overacts as James Parker, Jane's adventure-monger father. But he really can't be blamed for that: Most of his interactions are with Jane, so Harris must cope with the unenviable task of bouncing his lines off Bo, which is like bouncing a casaba melon off cement. Nevertheless, he is successful at times, and provides the film's few entertaining moments. It is hard to say if Tarzan would have been a good movie even with a better actress playing Jane, somebody with style and grace. Julie Christie for instance, or (a few years ago) Katherine Hepburn. That it would be a better film is certain. The role of stoic-woman-against-all-odds-in-the-wilderness requuces more than a pretty face, more than Bo Derek.

AS IT STANDS, Tarzan, the Ape Man is a misleading title for the movie. Tarzan has very little to do with anything. Something like Bo Derek Takes Off Her Shirt in Exotic Places would be much more appropriate. She takes off her shirt to swim in the Great Inland Sea, she takes off her shirt to swim with Tarzan, she takes off her shirt to get painted chalk-white by restless natives. And rumor has it that she even took off her shirt to wrestle with an alligator, but, alas, that scene was left on the cutting room floor by censors. She even takes off her shirt during the final credits to wrestle around in the sand with Tarzan and an orangutan, in a menagerie a trois that amounts to little more than kinky sex. It'll probably be the first time you stick around until the credits end and the projector shuts off--"but Mom, I want to see who the gaffer is!" But it's not worth the price of admission just to see John Derek play out his sexual fantasies about his wife. If you really need a Bo Derek fix, pick up a copy of Playboy--at least you won't have to hear her talk.