blueglas-159-114603 Viewers: Hello. This movie does not show up on Cable very often. It reminds me of a much more recent movie, The Ghost and the Darkness. Similar plot...but has historical truth, of the two lions of "Ranchipour". The British colonel was building a bridge over the river, and some 150 workers were eaten by the two lions. He killed the lions. Those two lions , "taxidermied", are on display at the Chicago Field House,Chicago, IL.

MartinHafer I will admit that "Bwana Devil" is not a great movie, but to compare this groundbreaking 3-D movie to "Plan 9 From Outer Space" is utterly ridiculous, as "Bwana Devil" is not bad--but it is slightly below average. The negatives are Robert Stack's overacting and forgetting his accent frequently as well as a few cheesy scenes (seeing a stuffed lion tossed on Nigel Bruce when he was supposedly being attacked was unintentionally funny). The HUGE plus is that this film was made mostly in Africa and looks so much better than the tons of schlocky African films of the 1930s-50s.The story is a dramatization of a real story of a couple man-eating lions and the man who ultimately killed them. It's the same story you'll see in the newer and better "Ghost and the Darkness"--so my advice is see this film instead. But, if you don't, you'll essentially learn the same story...along with Stack's less than stellar performance. Not a bad film at all--just not one that will bowl you over, either.

bkoganbing The first film shot in 3D finds an inebriated Robert Stack pining away for his fiancé and trying to get a railway constructed in the heart of Africa at the turn of the last century. He's in British Equatorial Africa which later became Kenya colony and where the Sahara meets the veld. What's stopping the progress of the colonial British dream of a railway from Capetown to Cairo is a pair of lions.These two lions have the natives scared out of their wits. Lions are not known to attack humans, you leave them alone and they'll leave you alone unless they're hungry. But these two, a male and female have developed a real taste for human flesh. Showing no fear of man or anything man made, they attack humans indiscriminately at will. No one wants to work until this lion problem is solved.Stack's got both a lion problem and an unsatisfied testosterone problem. The second is remedied by the arrival of Barbara Britton, no one it seems can deal with the first.Bwana Devil was shot in Africa and it's writer Arch Oboler owes a lot to Moby Dick. These two lions and Stack's obsession with them are taken from the Herman Melville classic. Good thing Barbara Britton arrived when she did, she provides something Captain Ahab didn't have.Best scene in the film and it's almost laughable was when these three white hunters, best in their line of work are imported by the railroad to kill these lions. So what do the lions do, but actually enter the private railroad car where the hunters are hoisting a few with Nigel Bruce who plays Stack's sidekick and a doctor and proceed to kill them all and carry the cadavers off for a later snack. Presumably based on a true story according to the credits, don't you believe it. The 3D jungle scenes are nice, but it's attached to one ridiculous story.

jackbwhittaker Based on a true story. Bwana Devil, filmed in Natural Vision 3-D,came out at a time when movies were competing with the growing popularity of television, which was keeping audiences out of theaters in droves, Arch Obler's thiller has some spectacular photography of the African plains and is somewhat of a documentary. Lot's of shots of animal herds and native tribal dancing. The outdoor shots are brightly lit but the studio shots are quite dark. Third Dimension photography requires sets to be brightly lit. Starring Robert Stack, Barbara Britton and Nigel Bruce. This tale of a "Great White Hunter" hired, by the English rail-road company,to hunt down and kill two lions, that are killing off workers, is slow to start but the 3-D action picks up later with many shots of spears being thrown at the screen, on-coming trains heading stright for the camera and, of course, leaping lions jumping from the screen. This movie can still be screen on television, in 2-D of course, and is interesting to see the shots that had audiences jumping in their seats back in 1952.