Overlooked and underrated over the years. But in an era that appreciates pulp cinema for its own gleefully cheesy values, Ghost and the Darkness represents a fairly unique marriage between lowbrow creature feature and highbrow historical epic.

The picture is too lightweight, too posturing and too self-important to go in an introspective direction.

Ranges in quality from adolescent boys' adventure stories to Heart of Darkness.

The film has a core competency - being a meat-and-potatoes thriller about killer lions - and as such, it's kind of frustrating how much time it spends not doing that.