George Dzundza as Paul Landers Charlotte Cornwell as Miss Wilding, Wilson's secretary Norman Lumsden as George, Wilson's butler Marisa Berenson as Kay Gibson Richard Vanstone as Phil Duncan Catherine Neilson as Irene Saunders, an aspiring writer who pitches her film to Wilson Edward Tudor-Pole as Reissar, British partner Roddy Maude-Roxby as Thompson, British partner Richard Warwick as Basil Fields, British partner Boy Mathias Chuma as Kivu Timothy Spall as Hodkins, bush pilot Clive Mantle as Harry, Hotel Manager Production During the 1950s, Ray Bradbury wrote an unproduced version of the film for MGM. At times, Eastwood, as the John Huston-like character of John Wilson, can be heard drawing out his vowels, speaking in Huston's distinctive style. The film was shot on location in Kariba, Zimbabwe, and surrounds including at Lake Kariba, Victoria Falls, and Hwange, over two months in the summer of 1989. Some interiors were shot in and around Pinewood Studios in England. The boat used in the film was constructed in England of glass fibre and shipped to Africa for filming. It was electrically powered, and was fitted with motors and engines by special-effects expert John Evans to make the boat appear to be steam-powered. The elephant gun used in the film was a £65,000 double-barrelled rifle of the type preferred by most professional hunters and their clients in this era. It was made by Holland & Holland, the gunmakers who also made the gun used by Huston when he was in Africa for The African Queen in 1951. The White Hunter Black Heart filmmakers took great care with the gun and sold it back to Holland & Holland after filming "unharmed, unscratched, unused." Critical reception The film was entered into the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. The film received positive reviews with review tallying website Rotten Tomatoes reporting that 30 out of the 36 reviews they tallied were positive giving a 83% rating. The consensus reads: "White Hunter Black Heart is powerful, intelligent, and subtly moving, a fascinating meditation on masculinity and the insecurities of artists." The film has grown significantly in critical stature, especially in light of the films Eastwood made immediately afterwards. Many of these, like White Hunter, Black Heart, turned out to be self-reflexive and self-conscious works criticizing and deconstructing Eastwood's own iconography. Jim Hoberman of The Village Voice hailed it as "Eastwood’s best work before Unforgiven...[an] underrated hall-of-mirrors movie about movie-inspired megalomania." Dave Kehr