The Ghost and the Darkness
| Year: | 1996 |
| Production Co: | Constellation Entertainment |
| Director: | Stephen Hopkins |
| Producer: | Gale Ann Hurd |
| Cast: | Val Kilmer, Michael Douglas, Tim Wilkinson, Emily Mortimer |
I'll admit it - this movie frightened the living shit out of me. I don't really know why - in hindsight it wasn't particularly scary in a horror movie sense. But the lion attacks were too sudden and too jarring.
Based on a true story, it concerns an engineer (Kilmer) sent to the site of a rail bridge construction in 19th century Africa to deal with two rogue lions.
He teams up with experienced hunter (Douglas) to track down the pair and it becomes something of a classic Jaws motif, the wild African desert the oceans of Amity, the lions the horrifying jaws of death.
The actual case involved a pair of males who hunted together (very anthropologically unusual, apparently) and, after getting a taste for human meat, made off with over a hundred of the native African and Indian workers over a period of months, halting the construction and playing havoc with the schedule.
The nightmarish dream sequence, several brutally bloody attacks and the final standoff make for an effective thriller.
Based on a true story, it concerns an engineer (Kilmer) sent to the site of a rail bridge construction in 19th century Africa to deal with two rogue lions.
He teams up with experienced hunter (Douglas) to track down the pair and it becomes something of a classic Jaws motif, the wild African desert the oceans of Amity, the lions the horrifying jaws of death.
The actual case involved a pair of males who hunted together (very anthropologically unusual, apparently) and, after getting a taste for human meat, made off with over a hundred of the native African and Indian workers over a period of months, halting the construction and playing havoc with the schedule.
The nightmarish dream sequence, several brutally bloody attacks and the final standoff make for an effective thriller.