Kongo

Walter Huston plays Flint, a paraplegic living in a self-made ivory empire in deepest, darkest Africa. Flint is cruel, brutal, and autocratic. Using simple stage magic and sleight of hand to make the superstitious natives believe he is semi-divine, he also employs a handful of Europeans to help him run his trade. He is a vengeful man and his vengeance when it comes to an old rival and his daughter is horrifying. Some of the implications are far darker and more grim than would be permitted to be openly portrayed in a film of the 1930s.

Until it aired recently on a cable television movie channel, I was totally unaware of this film. It is impressive. It is set in the tropics and just watching it makes you want to sweat. Walter Huston's chilling performance as Flint is excellent. The supporting cast is solid and the romance that blossoms between two characters seems far more genuine than many such relationships that are portrayed in other films of the early 1930s. This is a film that is not to be missed by anyone who enjoys classic suspense or adventure.

The acting was so avant-garde for a 1932 version, I had to go back to the schedule twice to make sure it was filmed in the early days. I've seen Emmy-winning 1999 TV soaps that didn't have the shine the soapy scenes here have. Lupe Velez was, to me, a very untalented stock actress until I watched her in this tropical human-condition story. She almost outshines Walter in her portrayal of a love-starved wench stuck in an outland of men. But both women did better, in my opinion, than some of the Actors' Guild graduates today. Thanks.

Flint (Walter Huston) is a grizzled, twisted paraplegic holed up in the African jungle where he lords it over a tribe that mistakes his cheap vaudeville magic tricks for supernatural powers and provide him a living by running trade missions from which he profits handsomely. He also controls the whole area for miles around due to some sort of ill-explained mumbo-jumbo involving a magical circle called "ju-ju" which dooms anyone who dares to trespass. But his main focus in life is to lure, trap and wreak vengeance on Gregg, a rival who once upon a time fought him, kicked him in the spine and paralyzed him below the waist. Through plot machinations too complicated to detail, Flint manages to entrap Gregg's innocent daughter (Virginia Bruce), subject her to physical and psychological torture, then lure the father to the scene of the crime, where he hopes to revel in the man's despair before doing away with both father and daughter. To keep his mind focused during the long years of planning of this feat he marks off the passing months on a crude homemade calendar emblazoned with the words "he sneered," which keep fresh the memory of the facial expression of his nemesis after the paralyzing kick.

All the while he hangs out with two cronies and a vivacious Portuguese girl (Lupe Velez at her most engaging) who seems to be in a constant state of heat. They are surrounded by strapping black natives who obey orders in return for occasional cubes of sugar which has the same effect on them as a biscuit to a dog. Everyone glistens with perspiration.

The outrages he perpetrates against the captured Virginia Bruce are evidently so horrid that the film doesn't even show them. One moment we see her as a prim young lady preparing to venture out of the convent and the next time we see her she is a fever-crazed basket case who apparently lives on brandy. The contrast is so stark and sudden that for a while it's not clear that we are still watching the same actress. Into this bizarre setup staggers Conrad Nagel as a doctor who has become addicted to a local intoxicating root. Huston breaks the doctor's addiction by piercing his torso with a knife and then tying him to a log in a swamp so that leeches can suck the poison from his system, then having sobered him, enlists his services to perform surgery to stop the pain from his spinal injury. And on and on it goes, as overstuffed a scenario as one is likely to see.

Huston also played this role in the original Broadway stage version of this piece in 1926 and clearly has an actor's field day, dragging his limp limbs across the stage, hoisting himself into a wheelchair, scowling with his scarred face and permanently squinting eyes and breaking into demented peals of laughter as he abuses poor Virginia Bruce. It would be hard to find any other early 30s film in which a young, attractive female is allowed to look so messed up for so long. There is something startlingly modern in the way her long, gnarled blonde hair falls loosely over her shoulders. The only signs of makeup on her face are the sometimes obviously drawn-in naso-labial creases and under-eye bags that are supposed to indicate exhaustion and dissipation. She tries hard to give a good performance and often succeeds. There are some lovely moments between her and Conrad Nagel as they realize they are falling in love. Nagel also gives his best and manages to squeeze charm and gallantry out of a role that might have been written for Dwight Frye at his weirdest.

In sum, the persuasiveness of the plot is only medium. The impact comes from the exotic setting, the outlandishness of the goings-on and the insane intensity of the central character. It has more the feel of a talky thriller than an engrossing dramatic narrative. This is one of two stylish 1932 films in which Huston plays a fanatic in the tropics, the other being Rain. Despite the problems, it really should be seen to be believed.

As pre-Code as they get, and very un-MGM-like for 1932, this stage success and remake of "West of Zanzibar" is both hilariously racist and quite creepy, with nightmarish imagery and lots of sadism. Walter Huston, hamming it up entertainingly, is the warped, lame white-boss-man whose appetite for vengeance leads him to make a disastrous mistake. He's surrounded by some MGM players at the modest peaks of their careers: Conrad Nagel as a drug-addicted doctor, Lupe Velez as Huston's two-timing mistress, and most memorably, Virginia Bruce (without makeup, very unusual for the time, and emoting affectingly) as a convent school girl driven into prostitution and drink. The love story between her and Nagel is more convincing than usual: These two do seem made for each other, and there's little of the hearts-and-flowers romantic excess of the era. But the prime appeal is how beastly Huston is to all around him, and how memorably he gets his comeuppance. The natives' ooga-booga costumes, dances, and obeisance to the white massa are kind of hard to take, and William J. Cowen's direction is workmanlike at best. But the piece is, in its own way, as horrifying and memorable as that other atypical MGM horror classic of 1932, "Freaks."

You're immediately plunged into a nightmare world similar to that psychotic, psychedelic half-world which Colonel Kurtz presided over in APOCALYPSE NOW. It's so unreal, it's like a never-ending bad acid trip which you can't believe it's actually happening but can't escape from. This is not a normal picture. If you've seen SAFE IN HELL or RAIN made around the same time and think this will have a similar feel, you're wrong. This is unique; it's strange, disturbing cruel sick and nasty but like the drug you feel you must have taken to experience this, it's totally addictive.

Walter Huston plays a crazed character who has devoted his life to hatred. The theme of this picture is hatred and everything you see is of a result of his insane dedication to vengeance. He rules an isolated tribe of savage cannibals like people from prehistory but it's he who is the least uncivilised and is virtually a base savage beast. His 'Flint' might be the least likeable character ever put onto celluloid. Although he is beyond evil, by the genius of Walter Huston's manic (over)acting, it is he and not the innocent girl he captures, degrades and tortures whom we empathise with. It's exceptionally clever filmmaking.

The direction and stunning, claustrophobic photography (by the same guy who filmed THE WIZARD OF OZ!) create an absurdly over the top sense of menace, dirt and utter unpleasantness. The expressionistic lighting makes Flint glow with evil whilst allowing darkness to hide the edges of the frames - the fuzziness enhances its dreamlike quality. You can't see everything which is happening, you can't see Flint's henchman raping the girl, you just get to see Flint's manic grin outside the door. You don't see the people being burned alive on Flint's pyre but you hear the screams, you hear the pain. The sound makes the nightmare real. There's constant noise, constant drums, the constant sound of eternal despair.

Sound is massively important to this film. It's a remake of the silent WEST OF ZANZIBAR made just a few years earlier but without sound, that is a million times inferior to this. In the original, there's an explanation of why Flint became this monster but in this version he's just thrown at us - the shock value works so much better. We don't need to see that he was a third rate music hall magician. We don't need to see how his rival (Lionel Barrymore!) ruined his life. We don't need to see the humanity he once had. If he is to be our antihero-hero, we have to accept him for who is is now.

A lot of symbolism can be seen in this; there's good versus evil, there's redemption, there's humanity versus savagery and of course love versus hate. Unlike in the original there's even an allegory of Adam and Eve. Lupe Velez is inexplicably attractive and sensual amongst the filth, grime and squalor representing temptation. She's doesn't need to seem real, she is simply Flint's manifestation of unrestrained sexual desire, tempting and offering forbidden fruit.

Irving Thalberg at MGM loved to (and indeed could afford to) take risks, to do something a bit more edgy than normal and nothing in 1932 was more edgy than this. It's not a happy film, it's actually genuinely disturbing but it's also pretty amazing and will be something you will always remember.