Attention:
1) Possible spoilers.
2) This is the translation of a post that I've published the Saturday right here on Steemit. If you're a Spanish native speaker or a Spanish learner, you can click here to read the Spanish version.
Known in Latin America with the names Garras and El fantasma y la oscuridad, and Los demonios de la noche on Spain, The Ghost and the Darkness is an adaptation of the well-known story of Tsavo, Kenia's men eaters lions, which happened in 1898.
Directed by Stephen Hopkins and with the outstanding performances of Val Kilmer as Gral. John Henry Patterson and Michael Douglas as the professional hunter Charles Remington, the movie transport us to the last years of the XIX Century, in the middle of Africa's colonization. From London, Patterson at Tsavo with the sole purpose of building a bridge which would unite Kenia and Uganda. At the beginning, things are going well; the bridge was about to be finished... But The Ghost and The Darkness had another plans.
I remember the first time I watched this movie; I was a 9, 10 years old little girl when it was transmited on TV. My mom, my aunt and my grandmother, as far as I remember, sat to watch it. The four were on the board of our sits watching the carnage made by the lions.
Even now, years later, that same suspense effect affects yet. And my grandmother, who watched it with me and my aunt the Saturday, said that these lions were not men eater. Quoting her, "it seems that they dissected each movement made by the man (Patterson)... They thought as human beings".
I gave her the reason in that side; the villains of this movie were smart, clever, perhaps excellent connoiseurs when it comes to at whom are going to attack and whom are going to avoid. That's tangible in the scene where Patterson and Remington, locked in a far building, were waiting for the lions, which are supposed to be seduced by the odor of the blood of cows. Nevertheless, the plan backfires; in a certain way the lions realized that they were going to a trap, same that favoured them inmediately when they entered to the camp and attacked the hospital.
The lions didn't need to excuse their killing with the famine; "they're hunting by pleasure", as well as Remington said when he and Patterson, astonished and horrified, discovered a lot of human bones in the lions cave.
They were, actually, serial killers.
If you're a fan of the adventures and thriller movies, this movie is highly recommended for you to watch in a weekend with family and friends.
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Consulted sources
- "Tsavo Man-eaters", on Wikipedia.
- "The Ghost and the Darkness", on Wikipedia.
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