In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro

Michele returned to Hollywood for one final appearance after a short hiatus to raise her son as he was a high school student at the time of the films production.

Michele was excited to travel to Kenya for the filming but was disappointed with its final presentation.

Michele officially retired from acting within days of returning to her home in California.

Michele passed away on November 21st, 2018 at the age of 75 having never returned to her acting career.

A ridiculous story of a drought in Africa which results in 90,000 baboons deciding to attack humans as their only way of getting food. Yes, that's right, 90,000 red-assed baboons munch their way through the cast during this silly 97 minute horror flick. There's a fair bit of needless gore, which doesn't help, and lots of build ups which peter out without delivering an exciting or frightening pay-off. The only decent thing about this movie is John Rhys-Davies (who was so great in Raiders of the Lost Ark), who injects a bit of interest in a somewhat underwritten role.

This movie is suppose to tell the true tale about how 90,000 baboons went on a killing spree because of a severe drought in 1984. This movie bombed badly at the theaters. And it bombs badly as a movie itself. Did this really happen, I don't know. This movie is good for a laugh.

The basic plot of IN THE SHADOW OF KILIMANJARO (1986) is that an army of crazed, homicidal babboons are killing folks left and right in the middle of nowhere. The thing the filmmakers should of realised is that babboons always look kind of bored. An example comes in one scene where a movie character has a flat tire in the desert. We cut to shots of yawning, pre-occupied looking monkeys watch him from afar. They seem to be saying "Hoo-Hummm, I dunno, should I kill him? I don't know, rather sit here and pick flies off my fur. (Yawn....) Okay. Let me go down and kill 'em." We had a good laugh with this one.

We've certainly seen our share of killer primate movies. From 'Monkey Shines: An Experiment in fear' to 'Link', 'Shakma' and 'In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro'. (I'm not mentioning 'Congo' and 'King Kong' here because they weren't real animals). 'In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro' is undoubtedly one of the most realistic and terrifying of all.

Based on fact, the film depicts the moment when thousands of baboons turned to humans as food substitute during a drought. Entirely filmed on location in Kenya, this adds to the realism of the movie (so sad to think 'filmed on location' will soon be a thing of the past with the ever-growing use of CGI...).

Timothy Bottoms stars as ranger Jack Ringtree, whose wife Lee (Irene Miracle) comes to visit him begging to come home. Her timing couldn't have been worse, as all hell is about to break loose. Nearby, a mining company run by Chris Tucker (John Rhys-Davies) encounters several problems while running out of contract time, but things are about to get much worse as the baboons descent on the small town.

The attack scenes are brutal, realistic and simply terrifying. The use of real baboons makes it all the more scarier and the suspense is nail-biting. This is the stuff nightmares are made of!

'In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro' is one of my all-time favourite and most memorable 80's horror films.

Would I watch it again? Absolutely!