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Hatari! is the story of a group of adventurers in East Africa, engaged in the exciting and lucrative but dangerous business of catching wild animals for delivery to zoos around the world. As "Momella Game Ltd.", they operate from a compound near the town of Arusha. The head of the group is Sean Mercer (John Wayne); the others are safari veteran Little Wolf a/k/a "the Indian" (Bruce Cabot); drivers "Pockets" (Red Buttons), a former Brooklyn taxi driver, and Kurt (Hardy KrÃ¼ger), a German auto racing driver; roper Luis (Valentin de Vargas), a former Mexican former bullfighter, and Brandy (Michele Girardon), a young woman whose late father was a member of the group; she grew up there.
Their method (shown in several action sequences) is to chase the selected animal across the plains with a truck, driven by Pockets. Sean stands in the bed of the truck with a rope noose on a long pole, and snags the animal by its head. (For smaller animals, Sean rides in a seat mounted on the truck's left front fender.) A smaller, faster "herding car," driven by Kurt, swings outside, driving the animal back toward the "catching truck". Once the animal is snagged, Luis, an expert roper, catches its legs and secures it. The animal is then moved into a travel crate and carried on a third truck, driven by Brandy. The captured animals are held in pens in the compound, tended by native workers, until they are shipped out at the end of the hunting season.
Sometimes the group ranges far outside the compound for several days, accompanied by additional trucks with camp equipment.
In the opening sequence, the group chases a rhinoceros, but it attacks the herding car and severely gores the Indian, who has to be transported to the Arusha hospital. While they are waiting to hear about the Indian's condition, a young Frenchman (Gerard Blain) approaches Sean about taking the Indian's job. This offends Kurt, who knocks the Frenchman down. Then Dr. Sanderson (Eduard Franz) says the Indian may die without a transfusion of rare type AB- blood. However, the Frenchman has that type. He provides the transfusion, but only after making Kurt ask him.
The group returns to the compound after celebrating the Indian's survival. There, Sean, and then Pockets, are very surprised to find a strange young woman sleeping in Sean's bed. The next morning, she introduces herself as Anna Maria D'Alessandro ("Just call me Dallas"; Elsa Martinelli), a photojournalist sent by the Basel Zoo to record the capture of the many animals they have ordered. Sean is annoyed, but under the contract with the zoo they must accommodate her, and Dallas quickly makes friends with the others, especially Pockets. Dallas rides along on the group's catching runs, snapping pictures.
She is immediately attracted to Sean, and (she thinks) he to her, but he treats her brusquely. Pockets explains: a few years earlier, Sean was engaged to a woman who came to the compound, and then abruptly left him. Ever since, he distrusts women - especially those he is attracted to. If he weren't attracted to Dallas, he wouldn't be rude to her.
The young Frenchman comes to the compound, and after proving himself a crack shot, is hired to replace the Indian. His name is Charles Maurey, but Sean dubs him "Chips". His job is to ride with Kurt in the herding car, carrying a rifle in case of animal attack.
The Indian returns, and urges Sean to forego catching any rhinos this season. A "nice Belgian kid" was killed in an earlier rhino chase, as was Brandy's father, and now the Indian was nearly killed. He suggests there is a jinx. Sean agrees only to postpone rhino to the end of the season.
Dallas makes some progress with Sean, but friction between them continues, especially after Dallas adopts first one, then two, and finally three orphan elephant calves. This leads to her adoption by the local Warusha tribe as "Mama Tembo" ("Mother of Elephants").
Chips and Kurt flirt with Brandy; as Sean notices, "She's all growed up." But she falls for Pockets instead. Animal chases continue, with the group capturing a zebra, a giraffe, a gazelle, a buffalo, and a wildebeest. They also trap a leopard in a baited cage. When the herding car is mired during a river crossing, Chips shoots a crocodile that is threatening Kurt. Pockets spends several days privately tinkering in the compound workshop. He invents a method of flinging a net over a tree full of monkeys, which the zoos want, catching over 500 of them.
With all other orders filled, the group catches a rhino without serious incident, and the Indian agrees that the jinx is broken. The group goes to Arusha to celebrate the end of the season, but Dallas declines. She is frustrated, because though she has had some intimate moments with Sean, he has never quite declared his feelings. When Sean urges her to join the group's excursion, she lashes out at him and bursts into tears, leaving him baffled.
The next morning, she's gone, leaving a farewell letter with Pockets. Sean and the group rush to Arusha to catch her. To help locate Dallas they take along one of the baby elephants, to track her by smell. Not wanting to be left behind, the remaining two baby elephants run after the truck. The ensuing chase ends when the elephants corner Dallas in a hotel lobby.
In the final scene, Dallas is again in Sean's bed when he enters the room, and they reprise the dialogue from their first meeting. As before, Pockets also comes in drunk and again asks Sean "What is she doing in your bed?" But this time, Sean announces "We got married today!"
Who urges Dallas to join the group's excursion?
Sean