IN THE SHADOW OF KILIMANJARO (1986)

'SHADOW OF KILIMANJARO': A SCARY KIND OF HOKUM

Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - June 30, 1986

Author: JOE BALTAKE, Daily News Film Critic

"In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro." A thriller starring John Rhys-Davies and Timothy Bottoms. Directed by Raju Patel from a screenplay by Jeffrey M. Sneller and T. Michael Harry. Photographed by Jesus Elizondo. Edited by Paul Rubell. Running time: 97 minutes. A Scotti brothers release.

Who says they don't make movies like they used to?

More than 30 years ago, "The Naked Jungle" had Charlton Heston as a South American plantation owner fighting off an army of man-eating red ants. That was in 1954. And in 1963, Alfred Hitchcock trained a flock of crows to feast on Rod Taylor and Tippi Hendren in "The Birds."

Now, here we are in 1986, watching Timothy Bottoms as an African game warden contending with a band of bloodthirsty, marauding baboons.

In "In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro," an exotic new horror film, a recurring real-life situation is exploited with lip-smacking enthusiasm. It's a problem that has starving wild animals periodically attacking Kenya's national parks and eating people.

The site of the attacks in this movie is the Amboselli National Park and the culprits are primates that are not only three times stronger than man, but also as intelligent. That makes for a nasty combination - and a lot of bloodletting.

Bottoms is the senstive voice of reason, a ranger who wants to protect man and beast alike, and John Rhys-Davies is the trigger-happy macho miner who is beefy enough to keep a family of baboons fed for a full year. (I don't know. There's something about a big, burly man with a gun that makes one want to urge on the beasts.)

The movie surrounding them, about something we all fear, is old-fashioned hokum, predictable, funny, more than a little frightening.

Parental guide: Rated R for violence.
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`KILIMANJARO` FILM APES REAL THRILLERS

Sun-Sentinel - June 11, 1986

Author: Roger Hurlburt, Entertainment Writer

Move over Stallone, Bronson and Eastwood -- when it comes to revenge in the movies, nobody does it better than Mother Nature.

In the past, moviegoers have braved the effects of killer bees, chomping sharks, voracious grasshoppers, spiteful killer whales, angry birds, ravenous frogs, squadrons of bats and even hordes of killer tomatoes. All have had a bone to pick with mankind at one time or another.

But compared to the hirsute horrors prowling about In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro, any other marauding managerie becomes child`s play.

How about an army of 90,000 man-eating baboons?

It seems that a severe drought on the African plain has made food scarce. So armies of baboons come out of the foothills to turn the natives and a group of mine developers into the breakfast of chimps.

Supposedly based on a true story, In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro is a film that makes a monkey out of the viewer.

Disjointed and contrived, the film is nothing more than an overblown, fictionalized account of what actually happened in Kenya a few years ago when starving baboons attacked and killed a few people. The events were indeed tragic, but not the fodder films are made of.

"Anything can happen when an animal is starving," comments game warden Timothy Bottoms. And sure enough -- just about everything does in this shoddy film.

Bottoms wants to evacuate the area. He knows the dangers of dealing with a "thinking, intelligent primate." Baboons, we learn, like to hunt in packs and are three times stronger than a human.

Unfortunately, we also learn that humans like to walk around in the bush at night alone -- proving they are three times dumber than an ape.

John Rhys-Davies, who gives a fine performance despite the story, isn`t scared. He has a mining operation to run. So what if bands of hungry baboons are looking for dinner? Time is money and he`s in a hurry.

As if there aren`t enough problems, enter Bottoms` nagging Beverly Hills girlfriend Michele Carey. Garbed in designer fashions, she arrives at the game preserve to get him to stop all the conservation nonsense and come back to California. Bottoms has too much at stake to leave -- namely, a sick cheetah and a neurotic water buffalo.

Though filmed on location in Africa, In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro rapidly reveals its threadbare story about a bizarre, singular incident. The screenplay barely supports the drama, so director Raju Patel goes out of his way to spice up the sequence of events.

Top honors must go to the bit where a crazed baboon, unknowingly placed in a crate inside a plane, climbs out at 20,000 feet and decides to have the pilot and passenger for lunch. Come on.

While one or two shots of the throng of baboons racing across the plain are visually disarming, the characters are not. Bottoms sleepwalks through his role and at one point is upstaged by a rhinoceros. Rhys-Davies bellows and stomps around in enjoyable fashion, but even he labors to keep a straight face.

Mostly, it`s the choppy editing, myriad of distracting subplots and a wealth of dialogue padding that makes time spent In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro a decidedly dark and dank experience.