The Ghost and the Darkness

[Pen Dragon]

Just caught this one on TV after skipping it for years because I was convinced it was junk. Boy was I wrong -- it's far worse than junk.

It was based on a fascinating real event, wtf happened? And what was up with Kilmer's now you hear now you don't Irish accent. Gives Costner's pathetic accent in Robin Hood a run for its money. Val didn't look like he really wanted to be in this picture at all. His career really slid into oblivion around this time. No wonder; terrible performance. Almost as bad as Michael Douglas looking like he strode out of Deadwood half drunk and found himself on the African Savannah with a chip on his shoulder.

No character development in this at all. No structure. No suspense beyond Lions predictably jumping out of the night. No believable story points. Awful movie. William Goldman wrote it too. He's written a fair share of turkeys.

[Pencey]

I agree. I haven't seen it in years but I thought it was crap back then and for many of the reasons you mentioned.

[Fortean]

Hollywood had me cheering for the lions, (very early on), then shoots down my hope that they'd change the ending of this true story, (as is their usual practice), to let the lions win.

[wolfy262]

I enjoyed it.

[britwrit]

Yeah, in limited defense, it was better if you saw it in the theaters. Not all that much better but the photography, capturing the savanah and all, was brilliant.

[dpaterso]

Yup, I enjoyed it too, it looked good and had more than its share of thrilling moments.

For a short while people greeted each other by holding up their hands up like claws, baring their teeth and growling. Majorly uncool, but funny.

-Derek
My Web Page - naked women, bestial sex, and whopping big lies. (http://hometown.aol.co.uk/DPaterson57/scripts.htm)

[RKBentley]

I liked it. The soundtrack is a nice, too.

Sure the story was Hollywoodized, but what stories aren't? This is the type of movie with the scenary that Widescreen would probably be a little better than pan and scan.

The lions are in a mueseum somewhere, unfortunately they don't look as menacing as they were since the taxadermist did a horrible job of stuffing them.

[Hairy Lime]

William Goldman discusses what went wrong with this story in one of his books. Can't remember if it was discussed in Adventures in the Screen Trade or Which Lie Did I Tell?, but it's in there. Basically, according to Goldman, the film was ruined when Michael Douglas decided to star and thought the script needed some work. Work which destroyed Goldman's original vision for the film.

[English Dave]

It was ''Which Lie did I tell' Hairy. I think he blamed both Douglass for weakening the Redbeard character by giving him a pathetic back story and Kilmer for, well just being a complete dick.

[vmf]

He also mentions that due to cultural influences and other movies, America simply wasn't ready to accept a couple of man-eating lions in a feature film. I think he may have a point there, but Goldman doesn't really address the fundamental problems with the script and story.

I had never seen Waldo Pepper before reading the book, so I went straight to the video store and rented the DVD - talk about clap-trap. Goldman does not want to admit the script was flawed and instead blamed it on Redford and how audiences viewed him at that time.

Goldman is far better at weaving a tale about one of his successful movies, than he is pointing fingers, making bizarre excuses and basically foisting off all blame, when writign about one of his failures.

[English Dave]

No , I agree with Goldman. It is always someone else's fault. Definitely!


Although to be fair he did take the rap for that turkey about red wine whose name escapes me.

[Hairy Lime]

Year of the Comet

[English Dave]

Ta, hairy. Must have been a sickner for all the sci-fi geeks who turned up expecting an armageddon.

Am I the only one who gets bored in long sections of Butch Cassidy?

[Deus Ex Machine]

I remember hearing stories that Kilmer was responsible for stopping shooting for days at a time because he would disappear and go to see the sights as if he was on vacation and not actually there to make a movie.The movie had all the right parts, they just weren't put together very well. It could have been the bad acting, the bad directing, the bad rewriting or all three.

[jimjimgrande]

Hairy is mostly right. The original plan was to get Connery, but they couldn't make his schedule work, so they then tried to get Anthony Hopkins, but that didn't work out either. The movie was already moving forward, and Douglas, whose production company was behind the film, stepped in and his take on the role was far different than what was on the page and trying to make last minute adjustments had negative effects.

[Pen Dragon]

This is a story that would have been right up David Lean and Robert Bolt's alley. They would have found the themes (industrial greed, human limitation in the face of nature, dealing with and controlling one's fear, the arrogance of Britain's empire dealing with an Irish subordinate and with the locals and their culture and superstitions), and character depth that would have elevated the story cinematically and infused it with the proper suspense.

The real Patterson, much older, looked nothing like matinee idol Kilmer, and Remington was a Hollywood invention. This was pretty much why I skipped it in the first place. The movie went totally into the tank when Douglas turned up with half of the scenery hanging out of his mouth. The actual two lions didn't have manes, and Patterson shot both of them himself.

link to see the actual lions (http://home.texoma.net/%7Ehardini/lions_of_tsavo.html)

It's an interesting story. Totally ****ed up by all concerned.

[dclary]

Are there any screenwriters or filmmakers you think AREN'T hacks, Vimmer?

[vmf]

Are there any screenwriters or filmmakers you think AREN'T hacks, Vimmer?

I never said Goldman was a hack, only that when a film he wrote tanks or gets bad reviews, he tends to point the finger pretty quickly, and not at his script.

If you've seen Waldo Pepper and read Goldman's account of why the movie failed, it becomes pretty obvious.

[Pen Dragon]

Loved Waldo Pepper. One of my favorite movies.

[vmf]

I liked it, but the real question was why audiences didn't relate. I thought that was pretty clearly a script/character problem, and not Redford or his portrayal.

[Pen Dragon]

Audiences hardly ever relate to anything good. But Goldman is a curmudgeon, no doubt. Redford was great in that pic.