The Last Lion is a 1972 South African action film directed by Elmo De Witt and starring Jack Hawkins, Karen Spies and Dawid Van Der Walt.^[1] The screenplay was written by Wilbur Smith, one of his rare original screenplays.^[2] He used a similar story later on in his novel A Time to Die.^[3]

Ryk Mannering, a terminally ill American millionaire, goes to Africa on a final hunting expedition to track down and shoot a male lion. This lion has always eluded Mannering, who has killed more than 80 lions, and become obsessed with the animal.

Mannering hires a private doctor to keep him alive, and pays a local hunter to track down the lion. When Mannering ruthlessly kills a lioness with cubs, he infuriates both the hunter and the doctor. But he drives them mercilessly to hunt down the male. In a fit of delirium he kills his quarry – and then collapses and dies himself.

"For one it will be the last kill!"^[4]

• Jack Hawkins as Ryk Mannering
• Karen Spies as Doctor
• Dawid Van Der Walt as David Land

Smith had already written one original screenplay and this was a later one. However he eventually realised he disliked writing scripts and focused on novels.^[5]

The film was based on a 1921 novel Uit oerwoud en vlakte by South African author Sangiro (a pen name for Andries Albertus Pienaar (1894 - 1979). The novel had been the subject of a plagiarism action by German author Frits Bronsart von Schellendorf.^[6]

Filming took place in December 1971 at Ossie Bristow's Le Rhone Ranch near Zimbabwe.^[7]

Copies of the film are preserved at the National Film, Video and Sound Archives, Pretoria, South Africa. www.national.archives.gov.za

The film has been released on DVD in February 2011.