Three Movies for World Rhinoceros Day

September 22 is Elephant Appreciation Day, but I have already done numerous elephant themed posts. Fortunately, it’s also World Rhinoceros Day so I thought I would do a small post on these endangered real life unicorns. Obviously we’re not in favor of hunting of trapping these animals, as depicted in two of these films. If anything, there are certain species of rhino that I’d like to bring back. Paraceratherium was one of the largest land mammals that we know about. It stood over 16 feet at the shoulder, with a raised head height of about 26 feet tall, and a length of around the same. This made it much larger than contemporary elephants and giraffes. (Elephants around ten feet tall at the shoulder; giraffes are about 16 feet tall at the head). Seeing one of these in person would be an amazing spectacle! Here are some others:

Hatari! (1962)

This movie had a big impact on me when I watched it on television as a kid, though today I watch it with a different pair of eyes. It’s about a company of adventurers who trap African animals for zoos and circuses. The film made an impression on me for a couple of reasons. One is that it begins and ends with set pieces featuring the heroes’ effort to snare a rhinoceros, which they do by driving their jeep alongside one with prods and nets and things. In a manner reminiscent of the whales in Moby Dick, the rhinos give as good as they get, and they keep ramming the vehicles, making it seem like the trappers are in as much danger as the rhino is, which seems doubtful.

As a kid, the thrills were compounded for me by the fact that two of the stars were in disaster movies that I loved, Red Buttons from The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Hardy Kruger from The Flight of the Phoenix (1965). As in many such male driven buddy movies, they are part of an international all star team of talents: Buttons is a New York city cab driver named Pockets (Buttons, Pockets, what’s the diff?). Kruger is a German race car driver. The team also has a Mexican bullfighter, a Native American sharpshooter, and a few others, all led by John Wayne, a tough, unsentimental monster in the vein of many of the characters he had played since Red River (1948). Several of his people wind up injured in the pursuit of all the critters they trap, but he has his eye only on the mission. Both movies were directed by Howard Hawks, who loved that Ahab sort of thing. Hatari! was a big hit the year it was released; today it is somewhat forgotten.

Rhino! (1964)

Robert Culp plays a conservation minded guide who is unknowingly leading a client (Harry Guardino) into the savanna so that he can trap two rare rhinos. Shirley Eaton is the love interest. It seems highly derivative of Hatari! right down to the exclamation point in the title. Both movies seem part of the same run of African themed movies during that era, which also includes such pictures as The African Queen (1951), Mogambo (1953), Elephant Walk (1954), and Zulu (1964).

Rhinoceros (1974)

Good lord, what a terrible poster! Ionesco’s absurdist play is one of the great theatre works of the 20th century. Director Tom O’Horgan (Hair) and producer Ely Landau seem to have converted it into a monster, just as the human beings in the film all transform into rhinos. Zero Mostel reprises his role from the 1961 Broadway production. Gene Wilder has the lead as Berenger. It has all been updated to be set in New York city during the time of Richard Nixon, not at all a brilliant transplantation. The play had been written to depict the existential horror that takes place when a totalitarian state begins to corrupt everyone into getting with the program. That doesn’t really describe America in the ’70s. Now? Yes, now, would be a much more apt time to set a production of this play. By the way, no rhinos are shown in the film; the effect of the metamorphosis is achieved by acting techniques and cinematic effects.