Tarzan X 1995 Exclusive -

The Tarzan X 1995 Exclusive has outlived its shameful origins. In an era of sanitized, CGI-heavy reboots (The Legend of Tarzan, 2016), the raw, flawed ambition of this cheap Italian knockoff feels refreshingly human.

It represents the last gasp of the video store era—a time when "exclusive" meant something truly rare, not just an algorithm-generated label. It is a time capsule of 1990s exploitation culture, Italian genre filmmaking, and the bizarre legal loopholes that allowed a pornographic Tarzan to exist without Burroughs’ estate suing everyone into oblivion (they did sue, by the way, hence the film’s altered title in subsequent releases).

For the serious collector, owning the Tarzan X 1995 Exclusive is not about owning a good movie. It is about owning a story—a messy, sweaty, hilarious story about the undying power of a man in a loincloth. tarzan x 1995 exclusive

To understand the value of the Tarzan X 1995 Exclusive, you have to understand the video rental landscape of the mid-1990s.

The distributor, a now-defunct British company called VIPCO (Video Instant Picture Company), specialized in acquiring bizarre Italian and Filipino genre films. In 1995, they struck a deal with the film's producers (Fulvio Lucisano) to release a "collector's edition" before the standard rental version hit shelves. The Tarzan X 1995 Exclusive has outlived its

The "Exclusive" status came from a single, aggressive marketing stunt: Only 2,000 copies were manufactured. They were sold exclusively via mail-order from the back pages of niche magazines like Samurai Cinema and The Dark Side. Each copy came with a "Certificate of Authenticity" signed by the film’s director, Joe D’Amato (a pseudonym for Aristide Massaccesi).

The price? £39.99 in 1995—roughly $85 today. It was an insane amount for a VHS tape. Consequently, most copies sat unsold in a warehouse in Slough, England, until the distributor went bankrupt in 1997. Those remaining copies were allegedly destroyed or given away as packing material. This rarity is what turned a mediocre erotic film into a holy grail for collectors. It is a time capsule of 1990s exploitation

The film’s subtitle, The Shame of Jane, hinted at the melodramatic tone that D’Amato was aiming for. The plot adhered loosely to the classic Tarzan mythos: Jane, a young English woman, travels to Africa and becomes separated from her expedition. She encounters the ape-man (played by Rocco Siffredi), and the film chronicles their primal attraction and eventual romance.

While the narrative was thin, it served its purpose: to create a context for the interaction between the leads that felt more "romance novel" than "gratuitous loop." This was an intentional choice to market the film to couples and international television networks. In many countries, a heavily edited "R-rated" version was aired on late-night television, stripping away the explicit content to leave behind a kitschy, soft-core adventure film.