BOOTLEG FILES 181: “Christian the Lion” (1971 documentary following a London lion back to his ancestral Kenya).
LAST SEEN: Playing online at MovieFlix.com
AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: Only in dupes from public domain labels.
REASON FOR DISAPPEARANCE: Barely-known, barely-seen film.
CHANCES OF SEEING A DVD RELEASE: It would be nice.
The British documentary “Christian the Lion” is a fascinating example of life imitating art. In this case, the art was the 1966 film classic “Born Free” starring Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna. That film was based on the real-life story of George and Joy Adamson and their successful efforts to re-introduce an orphaned lion into the wilderness.
“Christian the Lion” found Travers and McKenna in an advanced case of déjà vu. In 1970, they were shopping for a desk and ventured into the World’s End furniture store on the King’s Road in London. The store managers, the Australian duo John Rendall and Ace Berg, recognized Travers and decided to show him the store’s mascot: a young lion. Rendall and Berg had purchased the lion from the Harrod’s department store a year earlier and were raising him on their own. But, of course, a furniture store is no place to keep a lion – and the combined salaries of two furniture store managers were barely keeping the animal fed.
Travers and McKenna, who had become highly visible as animal rights activists following the success of “Born Free,” realized that the lion could not be kept as a domestic pet. And selling him to a zoo seemed like a cruel idea – zoo design was still fairly primitive in the early 1970s and imprisoning a majestic lion in a stark cage was a ghastly notion. Thus, Travers and McKenna decided to reprise their “Born Free” odyssey and called on George Adamson for an unlikely plan: to bring the London lion to Africa and teach him how to be a wild animal at home with nature. (Joy Adamson had separated from her husband in 1970 and, thus, was not a part of this venture.)
Travers and McKenna also decided to record this story as a documentary. The resulting “Christian the Lion” actually gets off on a bit of a strange opening, with a clumsy recreation of the actors’ initial discovery of Christian. For starters, the sound is badly out-of-sync – watching the opening sequence is disconcerting, as it is easy to assume the production is an amateur outing. Even worse, the facts have been trimmed to the bone. Contrary to the film’s assertion, Christian’s presence was not a surprise to everyone – the lion was actually something of a minor celebrity in London before Travers and McKenna showed up, and it was even featured in a fashion advertising campaign. Furthermore, the film ignores Rendall and Berg’s respective girlfriends, who helped in the care and maintenance of Christian. Rendall also wrote a book called “A Lion Called Christian,” but that’s not cited here.
After that initial clumsy segment is over, “Christian the Lion” finds its traction and is presented as a real-time, real-life adventure. Travers and McKenna invited Christian and his owners to live with them while arrangements are made to transport him to Africa. They took the lion on outings for a spot of exercise – a romp in a closed-off church courtyard (with the vicar watching nervously from behind a curtained window) and a visit to the beach. The latter trip might have prompted the inclusion of the old British music hall ditty “Oh, We Do Like to be Beside the Seaside,” but instead the film’s score is provided in hippy-dippy melodies by the English folk-rockers Pentangle.
Getting Christian to Kenya required a great deal of negotiations with the Kenyan government (obviously they had enough lions and weren’t eager to import one from England). Travers and McKenna, who alternate as narrators of the film, mention in passing that dealing with the Kenyan authorities took more time and energy than they expected. Nonetheless, they are able to get Christian transported to Kenya and into the care of George Adamson’s game reserve.
The remainder of the film follows Adamson’s efforts to integrate Christian into his new surroundings. That first involved introducing him to other lions – up until this point, Christian lived exclusively with human company. Adamson tried to create a new pride of lions consisting of Christian and three other orphaned animals: the female Katania, the frisky tyke Super Cub, and a male lion named Boy who took an immediate dislike to Christian. However, once Boy and Christian determined the pecking order among them (Boy won the Alpha Male spot), the two became happy blokes.
Adamson’s next challenge was getting this new pride to take care of itself in the wild. The lions had to learn to hunt and to defend themselves from other lions that roamed Adamson’s preserve. Did Christian and his new family make it in the wild?
Well, I don’t want to give away the film’s ending. But I can say that “Christian the Lion” provides some of the most compelling and memorable wildlife footage ever put on film. Christian’s story literally becomes one for survival and the film provides an amazing record of the difficult and often harrowing challenges faced by this London-bred lion in his untamed and often dangerous surroundings.
I can say, however, that there are two sequences late in the film that will soften even the most cynical of hard-hearts. The first finds McKenna at a zoo in Amsterdam, where she has located Christian’s parents. The two lions are locked in a small, bare cage with a concrete floor. They pace endlessly and monotonously back and forth. It is tragic to behold these beautiful animals in such cruel captivity, and the viewer knows the beasts will never experience the chance for freedom that their offspring experienced.
The second sequence comes a year after Christian bids farewell to Rendall and Berg. The duo traveled to Kenya to check on Christian’s progress and they were uncertain if the lion would recall them. They put themselves in the open, waiting to see how Christian reacts. The lion did remember them and jumped playfully on them in the manner of their old days back in London. It is literally a moment where one cannot help but let out a big “Awwwww!”
Details on the production history for “Christian the Lion” are somewhat difficult to track down. Some sources list the film as a 1971 production, others claim it was from 1976. One online source states the film was produced in conjunction with Rendall’s book, which came out in 1972, so that would probably put the film’s production closer to the earlier date. Also, a recent article in the Daily Mail outlines a 1974 reunion between Christian and his London buddies, but that meeting also included Christian’s lioness and cubs. There is no mention of this in the film, so I would assume the production wrapped in 1971 (it would seem peculiar to leave this post-script from the film). 1976 most likely reflects the year the film played in the U.S.
The film also has something of a problem with its name. The original British title was “The Lion at World’s End,” a reference to the London neighborhood where Christian was raised. However, that reference had no meaning outside of the U.K., so the film was given a new title for its American release: “The Lion Who Thought He Was People.” The film’s U.S. distributor, Scotia American, created a poster with Christian wearing big round eyeglasses – making him look like the leonine equivalent of the cartoon canine Mr. Peabody. Of course, that title was even worse than the original, and the film was renamed “Christian the Lion” for its U.S. and global distribution. In the U.K., it is now called “Christian – The Lion at World’s End.”
There are also a few sources that insist “The Lion at World’s End” and “Christian the Lion” are two different movies. That is not the case.
So what is “Christian the Lion” doing in the Bootleg Files? Scotia American went out of business in the mid-1970s and nobody seems to be claiming the film’s U.S. rights. Several distributors who specialize in public domain titles have been offering faded, muddy prints of “Christian the Lion” on home video and DVD. The entire film can even be found on MovieFlix.com, which specializes in public domain titles. The other week, I saw a double bill of “Christian the Lion” and the 1942 film version of “The Jungle Book” on a $1 DVD at Walgreen’s.
“Christian the Lion” is a wonderful movie and it deserves to be seen. Anyone with a genuine passion for wildlife conservation will be deeply moved by Christian’s unlikely odyssey to his ancestral homeland. You go, lion!
IMPORTANT NOTICE: The unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material is not widely appreciated by the entertainment industry, and on occasion law enforcement personnel help boost their arrest quotas by collaring cheery cinephiles engaged in such activities. So if you are going to copy and sell bootleg videos, a word to the wise: don’t get caught. The purchase and ownership of bootleg videos, however, is perfectly legal and we think that’s just peachy! This column was brought to you by Phil Hall, a contributing editor at Film Threat and the man who knows where to get the good stuff…on video, that is.
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