‘KILIMANJARO’ PROVES FRIGHTFULLY WANTING

Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the veldt, 90,000 crazed baboons--tails flopping, teeth bared, slavering with hunger and blood lust--come rampaging at you “In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro” (citywide).

We’re told that the incident portrayed in this (unconsciously) riotous movie--the bloody baboon siege of a game reserve south of Nairobi--is based on fact.

Perhaps that’s true. Perhaps, in Kenya, real life resembles equal parts of “The Birds,” “Jaws,” “King Solomon’s Mines” and “Night of the Living Dead.” Perhaps the population is a weird mixture of California liberal yuppies, Herculean mining engineers with Bluto beards, jive-talking blacks, Japanese adventurers, bosomy bar owners and sodden old British colonels babbling in their gin. And perhaps the famished, maddened baboons did pin everyone down in the local barracks, screech, bang on windows and eat victims in the food locker.

Maybe there really was a “white hunter” from Santa Barbara (like Timothy Bottoms) who ran around telling everyone to evacuate--and was spared by the ravenous hordes, after feeding them canned corn out of his hand. And a lovable pet chimpanzee who scampered off and returned, uneaten. Maybe a baboon did sneak into the airplane flying for help, bide its time--then leap at the pilot, bite his face and send them crashing into the mountainside. Stranger things have happened--though not much.

The problem with “In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro” is not plausibility--which goes out the window fairly quickly--but a lack of primal fear. Snakes can instill that fear--so can wolves, sharks, rabid dogs. (Even, in a Hitchcock’s hands, gulls and sparrows.)

With baboons, there’s a problem. They look too quasi-human, charmingly goofy. When a baboon turns its hind end toward you, it looks too exposed, too purple, to inspire raw fear. Seeing them from the rear, as you often do here, you can’t help feeling a little sorry for them--no matter how savage their exploits. And, since “Kilimanjaro” presents them as miserable and hungry, you feel doubly sympathetic. With just a little more compassion--or canned corn--peace might surely prevail.

“In the Shadow of Kilimanjaro” (MPAA-rated: R) is directed, apparently with a straight face, by first-timer Raju Patel, whose few coups include some nice shots of Kenya and adequate performances by John Rhys Davies and the African actors. It is the baboons themselves, trained by Clint Rowe, who perform most heroically: making grand charges, diving through windows, baring incisors as the camera zooms in. They’re the most impressive thing in the picture, and one hopes they were rewarded--if nothing else, with a decent meal.

‘IN THE SHADOW OF KILIMANJARO’

A Scotti Brothers Inc. release of an Intermedia production. Producers Gautam Das, Jeffrey M. Sneller. Director Raju Patel. Script Sneller, T. Michael Harry. Executive producer Bachu Patel. Music Arlon Ober. Camera Jesus Elizondo. Editor Pradip Roy Shah. With John Rhys Davies, Timothy Bottoms, Irene Miracle, Michele Carey, Leonard Trolley, Calvin Jung.

Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes.

MPAA rating: R (under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian).