Thirty years on, The Ghost and the Darkness still occupies a strange corner of 1990s Hollywood: a big-budget historical adventure with a Best Sound Editing Oscar, a Razzie-nominated star and a director who has said he cannot watch it. As the man-eater thriller turns 30 this week, here are eight things you probably did not know.
The real killers had no manes
The film is based upon The Man-eaters of Tsavo by Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson, the man who actually killed both real lions. While the real man-eaters were, like all lions from the Tsavo region, a more aggressive, maneless variety, those used for filming were actually the least aggressive available, for both safety and aesthetic reasons. Paramount’s cinematic lions were two male African lions with manes.
Caesar and Bongo were the scene-stealers
The two male African lions with manes were mostly performed by Caesar and Bongo of Clarington, Ontario, Canada’s Bowmanville Zoo. Caesar and Bongo were also featured in George of the Jungle. This cinematic production featured three other male African lions: two from France and one from the United States.
The shoot felt like a survival movie
Director Stephen Hopkins later said of the shoot: “We had snake bites, scorpion bites, tick bite fever, people getting hit by lightning, floods, torrential rains and lightning storms, hippos chasing people through the water, cars getting swept into the water, and several deaths of crew members, including two drownings.”
Val Kilmer arrived under extreme strain
Hopkins said Kilmer came to the set under the worst conditions imaginable. He was completely exhausted from doing The Island of Dr. Moreau, was dealing with the unfavorable publicity from that set, was going through a divorce, and barely had time to get his teeth into the role. Hopkins worked him six or seven days a week for four months, and said the actor really came through.
The box office was a qualified win
During its opening weekend, The Ghost and the Darkness grossed $10.3 million. The film ultimately grossed over $38.6 million domestically, and $75 million worldwide, against a production budget of $55 million.
One film, an Oscar and a Razzie
The film won the Academy Award for Best Sound Editing (Bruce Stambler) at the 69th Academy Awards. Val Kilmer, however, was nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor along with The Island of Dr. Moreau at the 17th Golden Raspberry Awards.
Critics could not agree
Reviews were mixed, with Rotten Tomatoes giving it a 51% rating based on 53 reviews. The site’s consensus states: “The Ghost and the Darkness hits its target as a suspenseful adventure, but it falls into a trap of its own making whenever it reaches for supernatural profundity.” Metacritic assigned the film a score of 46 out of 100, based on 26 critics, while audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it an average grade of “B+” on an A+ to F scale. Roger Ebert said the film was so awful it “lacked the usual charm of being so bad it’s funny” and put it on his list of the worst movies of 1996. David R. Ellis, however, listed this film at #8 on his “Top 10 Animal Horror Movies” countdown.
The director still cannot watch it
Hopkins said in a 1998 interview that the film “was a mess… I haven’t been able to watch it.” For collectors, Paramount Home Video released the DVD on December 1, 1998, and Shout! Factory issued The Ghost and the Darkness on Blu-ray in a new 4K scan on May 10, 2022.
That’s our list of overlooked details. Which one surprised you most — the maneless real lions, the casualty-heavy shoot, or the fact that the director can’t rewatch the film that won an Oscar for Best Sound Editing? Tell us your favourite.
Facts from Wikipedia: The Ghost and the Darkness, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Film images from TMDB. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
