This is a weird one. It's sort-of a mix between some stupid Disney family film about lions and a horrific animals-attack film. Tippi Hedren(of THE BIRDS fame) and Melanie Griffith(her daughter) are the 2 big names in this. The rest of her family, her husband Noel Marshal and 2 sons John and Jerry, are also featured and do most of the various hardcore wrasslin with lions and tigers but the gals are not spared and end up being tossed around by an elephant when not being hunted down by the big cats.(Griffith apparently ended up needing plastic surgery to her face after a lion attack) While beautifully shot in California, which doubles for Africa in the film, I couldn't help but feel nervous as hell while watching this thing that someone was going to get mauled to death. I'm sure the intention was to show how man can live in harmony with nature but I think that message gets instantly lost when we see the families patriarch, Noel, getting one of his hands bloodily ripped open by some over-rambunctious feline killing machines. You can't help but ask yourself why any sane human would subject their family to this kind of treatment but maybe it made some kinda hippie conservationist-sense back in 1970 when they originally started filming this thing(it took 11 years to complete!). Overall it doesn't seem worth the risk to me to make such an absurd film but it certainly is a unique spectacle.
Didn't seem all that comedic to me but they do add some cartoonish music to give it that feeling!:
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