The movie Michael Caine knew was doomed: “That was a disaster right from the start”
Michael Caine has always been wonderfully honest about his career. If he thought he made a good movie, he’d tell you about it, especially if he believed he delivered a good performance in it. Equally, though, he’s been in so many misfires that he never saw any need to pretend they weren’t awful.
Brilliantly, Caine would always explain why he agreed to any particular project, even if it seemed below his talents, and argued that he never went into a film believing it would be bad. Well, aside from the one movie he knew was doomed from the start, of course. That was the one exception that proves his rule.
After rising to fame in the 1960s with roles in classic pictures like Zulu, The Ipcress File, and The Italian Job, Caine rode into the ’70s with tremendous brio and confidence. The decade started exceptionally well, too, with Get Carter and Sleuth arriving in 1971 and ’72, respectively. However, aside from a couple of high spots, such as The Man Who Would Be King and A Bridge Too Far, the decade turned out to be a sticky period for Caine. Indeed, by ’79, he was at a particularly low ebb.
You see, in ’78, Caine made Irwin Allen’s The Swarm, a risible horror movie about a swarm of killer bees. The wry star claimed the bees defecated on cast members as they tried to make the movie, and that said all he needed to know about the quality of the production. He was lambasted from all corners for even agreeing to participate in such a low-rent movie, and took a ton of flak despite hilariously admitting, “I made The Swarm because my mother needed a house to live in.”
That same year, Caine starred in the anthology movie California Suite, which was nominated for three Academy Awards. However, he only received a quarter of his usual fee because he was only in one of the film’s four stories. Thus, he was on the lookout for another big payday, and one dutifully came along with Ashanti, an action-adventure about a UN doctor who embarks on a quest to rescue his kidnapped wife from slave traders in West Africa.
Caine’s eyes lit up with dollar signs, and he gleefully signed up for Ashanti, but he soon came to regret this decision. He admitted, “That was a disaster right from the start. I’d been working on that for a week, and they fired the leading lady, the director, the art director, and the editor. So, I had a faint inkling that we might be onto a spotty project there.”
Indeed, the iconic star’s memory doesn’t deceive him. The cast and crew had been working on Ashanti in the baking heat of Kenya for only two weeks when director Richard Sarafian was unceremoniously sacked and replaced by Conan the Destroyer’s Richard Fleischer, and the film’s original female lead and cinematographer were also sent packing.
The subsequent shoot was so torturous that it was even rumoured Fleischer and new leading lady Beverly Johnson were also sent home due to heatstroke, although that has been disputed, while Caine’s camel supposedly fainted in the heat. In a later interview, he quipped, “It was so bad that my camel fainted and rolled on top of me. I thought it was a bit much to expect me to act in that heat when my camel was collapsing!”
Ultimately, Caine knew Ashanti was doomed from the second he touched down on location, and the gruelling production only confirmed that prediction. He later dubbed it “the worst, most wretched film I ever made. I knew it, but I was desperate, and I did it.”
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