The screenplay by Tom Rowe and Gary Goddard[3] is loosely based on the 1912 novel Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but from the point of view of Jane Parker.

[4] The original music score is composed by Perry Botkin Jr. Former Tarzan actor Jock Mahoney (billed as Jack O'Mahoney) was the film's stunt coordinator.

James Parker is a big game hunter in Africa, searching for a place in the jungle where elephants allegedly go to die, wanting to retrieve its ivory.

During their travels, Jane learns of legends about the "white ape" Tarzan, a supposedly giant man whom James's party is afraid of.

After making A Change of Seasons, she was meant to appear in High Road to China but pulled out of the film saying she wanted to be directed only by her husband John.

Warner Bros. complained, as that studio was also developing a Tarzan film with Robert Towne called Greystoke and they had the rights to the character from the Burroughs estate.

[7] In a 2012 interview with the film history magazine Filmfax, co-writer Gary Goddard revealed that he had originally been commissioned to write a screenplay for Bo Derek based upon the Marvel Comics superheroine, Dazzler; a 30-page treatment was completed before the project was canceled and work instead proceeded on Tarzan, The Ape Man which initially carried the working title Me, Jane reflecting its focus on Jane Porter as a showcase for Derek.

[12] Richard Harris enjoyed working with the Dereks; Bo had played a supporting role in his movie Orca, four years prior to Tarzan.

Film critic and historian Leonard Maltin considers Tarzan, the Ape Man one of the worst films ever; in his popular Leonard Maltin's TV Movies and Video Guide, he wrote: "Deranged 'remake' lacks action, humor and charm...Forget about comparisons to Johnny Weissmuller; O'Keefe makes Elmo Lincoln seem like Edwin Booth...Should you feel an earthquake while watching this picture, chances are it's Edgar Rice Burroughs reeling in his grave."

The heirs to Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs sued John Derek's Svengali Productions and distributor MGM, and a judge ordered the four-minute-long final scene to be cut to less than one minute.

[16] Critic Roger Ebert offered a somewhat more positive review of Tarzan, the Ape Man, awarding it two and a half stars out of a possible four.

Ebert thought Harris's talents were completely wasted and the film's dramatic peak was "incomprehensible," yet he praised the forthright depiction of the sexual passion and tension between Tarzan and Jane, which had more typically been downplayed in film adaptations of the characters: "The Tarzan-Jane scenes strike a blow for noble savages, for innocent lust, for animal magnetism, and, indeed, for soft-core porn, which is ever so much sexier than the hard-core variety.

Jotaro Kujo tests his grandfather Joseph Joestar with trivia questions, including "Who's the female lead in the 1981 film, Tarzan, the Ape Man?