Let’s be honest: this was made on a budget that might have bought a used car. The animation is stiff, with lots of panning over still images, repeated frames, and characters who move like wooden puppets. The jungle backgrounds are surprisingly lush—almost rotoscoped from stock footage—but the character designs are pure 90s adult comic: exaggerated proportions, pouty lips, and vines that conveniently wrap around everything at cinematic moments.
If you grew up in the 90s, you probably remember the golden age of direct-to-video animation. Studios like Disney were dominating the box office, and everyone else was desperately trying to catch the coattail—often with bizarre, low-budget results. tarzan shame of jane 1995
Is Tarzan: Shame of Jane good? No. Not by any traditional metric. Let’s be honest: this was made on a
Released in 1995 by a now-defunct studio (often misattributed to low-budget houses like Cal Vista or Video X Pix), Tarzan: Shame of Jane is exactly what the title implies: a tongue-in-cheek, adults-only retelling of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic. If you grew up in the 90s, you
Is it entertaining? In a so-bad-it’s-hilarious way, absolutely. The dialogue is pure cheese (“Jane shame. Tarzan no shame. Tarzan… free.”). The musical interludes are bizarre Casio-keyboard ballads. And the voice acting ranges from “overly dramatic” to “sounds like they recorded this in a closet between sandwiches.”
For collectors of weird animation history, this is a must-see (once). For fans of actual Tarzan lore, it’s an affront. For everyone else? It’s a 70-minute time capsule of a moment when the jungle got very, very weird.