The Ghost and The Darkness (1996) **

Memory plays tricks on you, some big, and some small. In this case, I could have sworn that the name of this movie was “The Ghost IN the Darkness.” It makes sense. But the title is “The Ghost AND The Darkness,” because the African and Indian workers who were terrorized by a pair of man-eating lions in this tale named one of the lions The Ghost and one of them The Darkness.

The story is set in Kenya, in 1898. British Lt. Col John Henry Patterson (Val Kilmer) is an engineer sent to build a railroad bridge over the Tsavo River. Under his capable command, things go swimmingly until a pair of man-eating lions start killing off his workers. Construction grinds to a halt, and all of Patterson's energies become consumed by trying to kill the lions. The beasts really come to seem evil spirits, as they repeatedly evade Patterson's traps and feed on his workers. Even a famous American hunter (Michael Douglas) is stymied by the lions.

The true story is fascinating, but the movie is a hot mess. Val Kilmer was in the middle of a divorce and fresh off the legendary disaster that was “The Island of Dr. Moreau.” He just looks exhausted, and while that sometimes fits his character, it mostly just leaves us with bad acting of a bad script. Michael Douglas does the best he can with the cringey lines he has to recite, but there is only so much you can do with a horrible script. Screenwriter William Goldman is known for wonderful films like “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Princess Bride,” but with “The Ghost and The Darkness,” he takes an amazing true story and mangles it. Even director Stephen Hopkins admitted the film “was a mess... I haven't been able to watch it.”

The historical true story of John Henry Patterson and the lions is one outrageous tale. Those two cats really did manage to stymie the efforts of the British Empire for a brief period. The number of men they killed is unknown. Patterson, in his book “The Man-Eaters of Tsavo,” claims the number was 135. The railroad company only verified 28 deaths. Either way, the terror they created was undeniable, and it remains one of the most notorious examples of man-eating behavior in wild animals. Patterson killed both lions himself, without the help of any fictitious American hunter (sorry, Michael Douglas), and their stuffed remains are on display at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. It remains a mystery why these two cats developed such a taste for human flesh. Almost as big a mystery is how a legendary screenwriter and a couple of talented actors turned this amazing true story into such a mess.

2 stars out of 5