Best Safari Movies
Safari.
The experience is almost impossible to describe and even more so to share on film.
Still, many have tried over the years.
Some movies have missed the mark completely, others came close, and some are just straight up bad.
Here’s a look at five films that come close to capturing all that is the safari experience.
Based on the classic 1885 novel of the same name by Sir H. Rider Haggard and adapted to film seven times, the 1950 version staring Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr is by far one of the best safari movies ever made. It features the grandeur and difficulty of life on safari, was filmed on location, and has true indigenous persons “acting” as natives. It being the second highest grossing movie of the year also sparked an interest in African safaris that lasted for decades.
Like King Solomon's Mines, the 1953 version of Mogambo is a remake of an earlier film. The movie stars Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, and Grace Kelly as morally corrupt individuals thrown together on safari. The movie was filmed on location in several African countries and that desire for realism resulted in three of the crew being killed in accidents. The locations for filming were so remote that 10 Professional Hunters were hired to provide game meat for cast and crew.
That safari enough for ya’?!
Reason to watch: Gardner and Kelly are gorgeous and Gable seduces both of them. Or was it the other way around?
John Wayne jumped into the safari game in this 1962 classic. Swahili for danger, Hatari! features the Duke as the leader of a group who catches animals for zoos and circuses.
Try doing that for a living now!
Wayne and cast travel from one end of Africa to the other catching animals, fighting, drinking, and romancing. It’s safari with a live capture twist but well worth your time.
Reason to watch: All the animals caught on film were actually caught on film by the actors.
Based on the book of the same name by Peter Viertel, White Hunter Black Heart is a fictional account of the filming of The African Queen of which Viertel was the uncredited writer. During the shoot of Queen, director John Huston drove everyone mad due to his desire to hunt elephant rather than shoot the movie. Clint Eastwood plays the Huston character John Wilson to a T and comes across as a first-class jerk who cares of nothing other than hunting.
I can certainly relate to that mindset.
Reason to watch: Eastwood is a jerk, and you’ll love to hate him.
The hunt is on…
For the Professional Hunter.
After a safari offends a local tribe, that tribe kills all but PH Cornel Wilde in horrific ways before letting the latter go so they can hunt him. The hunt is just as brutal and covers several days of chase on the African Savannah.
Reason to watch: Wilde is the original action hero!
Honorable Mention
Although not a safari movie this one does take place in Africa and features hunters…
And is absolutely insane.
The movie stars Noel Marshall and Tippi Hedren as nuts that live on a Big Cat Preserve in Tanzania. Plot doesn’t matter as the movie is famous for featuring a ton of live cats that rip, tear, and bite the actors on camera. All in all, over 100 people working on the film were injured by cats and 14 lions and tigers died due to illness. Marshall needed 58 stiches on his head after a cat bit into his head and later developed gangrene. Hedren was also bit in the head by a cat.
Reason to watch: this movie is some of the most insane thing you will ever see on film.
This piece first appeared in the Fredericksburg Standard.
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