White Witch Doctor

Lonni Douglas (Robert Mitchum) is a trapper working in Africa around the turn of the 20th Century. He captures large, exotic animals that he then sells to zoos around the world. His partner, Huysman (Walter Slezak), who is more the type to stay in the "office" and supervise, has an ulterior motive--he believes there is gold in "them thar" hills. So Douglas has been searching for the gold for years. There is only one place left to look--a remote area far up the Congo, inhabited by a tribe hostile to white men. When nurse Ellen Burton (Susan Hayward) arrives as an assistant for a doctor in a village neighboring the remote one, however, Huysman sees it as the perfect opportunity, with a benevolent "false front" presented to the tribes-people, for Douglas to take her up the Congo and search for the source of the gold.

Based on a novel by Louise A. Stinetorf, director Henry Hathaway and screenwriters Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts created a genre-spanning feast for the eyes, ears and mind in White Witch Doctor. The film combines adventure, suspense, romance, drama, intentional and unintentional humor, and an almost documentary-like travelogue through Africa.

The Technicolor cinematography is fantastic, and a great choice as we are treated to various African cultures in traditional dress, occasionally performing traditional dances and other ceremonies, throughout the film. I don't know a lot of background information on the film, but I would bet that some shots were filmed as documentary material in Africa. Possibly, some was stock footage.

But the heart of the film is Douglas, his relationship to Burton, and an often subtle, mostly subtextual commentary on a clash of cultures, which was far ahead of its time. Both Mitchum an Hayward are fabulous, with Mitchum occasionally approaching an enjoyable camp in his macho swagger and Hayward, in the context of the film and its characters, showing an also ahead-of-its-time underlying strength, intelligence and independence beneath her more stereotypical initial appearance as a beautiful but dependent woman. The script has an effective combination of serious drama with the difficulties of dealing with different cultures as well as a light playfulness.

This is a little-known gem of a film that deserves a serious first or second look. A 10 out of 10 from me.

Routine film dealing with the Congo of 1907 before Belgium took over.

The glamorous Susan Hayward comes there from America to be a nurse and help the missionary Dr. Mary. Problem is that Mary dies at Hayward's arrival time.

Robert Mitchum is a zoo keeper who is in partnership with a sinister Walter Slezak. Slezak wants to go upstream and get the gold there from the natives. That's where Hayward wants to get to so you know where the film is heading.

The film explores that Hayward is able to treat the chief's ailing son. Without joking, the chief looks like Spencer Willians (Andy Brown) of "Amos and Andy" fame on television.

Nice scenery with a routine plot and subplot. You know where this one is heading to very quickly. Nonetheless, Hayward and Mitchum do well together.

Henry Hathaway had a way with taking so-so scripts and making a decent movie out of it. And it helps to have Robert Mitchum and Susan Hayward playing the leads. Mitchum and Hayward play off each other almost as good as Mitchum and Kerr. And Hayward looks beautiful as she did in all her movies.

This movie was filmed in Africa. It has great cinematography. And plenty of action scenes. If you like movies about animal trappers, witch doctors and falling in love in the dark of Africa. You will want to see this one.

Now this movie like so many of Robert Mitchum movies is not on DVD. It's a shame I know. But you should be able to see it on one of the old cable channels. This is another fine family movie you can watch with your kids. I remember seeing this one at a young age and loved it. And still do.

"White Witch Doctor," which premiered on July 1, 1953, is the type of movie that I can enjoy greatly while watching it, all the while knowing that I am not watching anything great or extraordinary. And the main reason for that enjoyment, in this case, is the presence of Miss Susan Hayward in the title role. Has there ever been an actress who combined such drop-dead good looks with extraordinary acting ability? Not for me, anyway! Hayward's sheer presence in a movie makes it hard for me to be objective in a critique; I can enjoy anything she appears in, just by looking at that marvelous face. Anyway, you know where I'm coming from. In this picture, Hayward plays a nurse who ventures into the Congo in 1907 to help out at a remote mission. Her guide is Robert Mitchum (her costar in 1952's "The Lusty Men"), who takes her into this Bakuba territory with an ulterior motive: the finding of the gold deposits that supposedly reside there. Along the way, the two encounter just about every safari-movie cliche in the book: the mad gorilla (actually, a man in a gorilla suit), a charging lion, totem fetishes warning journeyers to "STAY OUT," angry witch doctors, a rope bridge, wildly dancing natives and the like. (Sorry, no quicksand.) At one point, Hayward awakens in her tent to find a tarantula crawling on her (a "gift" from a jealous witch doctor), almost a full decade before James Bond, in "Dr. No," faced the same dilemma. I wish I could say that Susan's nurse character faces the predicament with Gems' cool, but in a situation like that, how many people could? Neither Hayward nor Mitchum travelled to Africa to make this picture (this is NOT "The African Queen"!), but there is a lot of location photography of a very beautiful order. The studio sets and actual locales are very well integrated, so the picture never really looks phony. Mitchum here plays a very likeable character, with little of the sluggish moroseness so characteristic of many of his other roles. And Hayward, "the Brooklyn Bombshell," is simply wonderful as Ellen Burton, the American nurse on her first trip into the wilds of Africa. She manages to impress the viewer and the natives alike with her medical abilities and her courage, despite an understandable scream or two when faced with the odd spider, snake, or spear-wielding native. Hayward, 35 when she made this picture, is given many close-ups that reveal what a remarkable beauty she was. In that tarantula scene, for example, director Henry Hathaway shows her lying asleep in bed, her long titian tresses framing her face in close-up, and she really does look stunning in beautiful color. Though the picture doesn't enable either of the two leads an opportunity for any great thespian displays, both manage to make the best of things, pros that they are. The picture really is a rather pedestrian affair, albeit one with great photography and yet another moody Bernard Herrmann score, but it is totally redeemed for me by the presences of the two leads...especially Hayward's. "White Witch Doctor" would make a wonderful double feature with Hayward's other African picture, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," or perhaps with a picture that came out the following year, "The Naked Jungle," featuring another redheaded beauty, Eleanor Parker, stuck in the jungles of South America. I'm not sure that "White Witch Doctor" is in the same league as those other two, but it still makes for a marvelous entertainment, and is eminently suitable for the kiddies, as well. I thoroughly enjoyed it...but, like I said, you know where I'm coming from!

I hate to disillusion all you commentators who think that SUSAN HAYWARD and ROBERT MITCHUM really went to Africa to film WHITE WITCH DOCTOR. A lot of the stock footage was filmed in Africa and used throughout, but the stars and the supporting players were all photographed on Fox's studio lot, never setting a foot outside the studio except for location scenes filmed elsewhere in California.

And the story, watchable enough as it is, is not exactly worthy of comparison to either THE African QUEEN or MOGAMBO. In fact, in barren outline, it sounds more like material for a B-picture, a typical '40s jungle film that might have starred Johnny Weissmuller as the big white hunter and fake studio sets to shown tribal natives going into their frenzied dances.

However, the African footage is blended so well into the studio shots that it's easy to see why some think that this was a film entirely shot on location in Africa. It wasn't.

SUSAN HAYWARD and ROBERT MITCHUM do competent enough work as the dedicated nurse and the would-be treasure hunter, who uses the pretext of being Hayward's guide into Bakuba territory in order to do a hasty search for hidden treasure so that he can inform his companion, WALTER SLEZANK, of its whereabouts. Slezak plays his usual smarmy standard villain role with relish.

Nothing spectacular happens and the fake gorilla is laughably obvious--but it has its moments of danger and suspense that make it passable enough as moderately interesting entertainment.