उपयोगकर्ता समीक्षाएं

This is a talkie remake of WEST OF ZANZIBAR (1928) which, alas, is one of the few of the legendary Tod Browning/Lon Chaney collaborations which has eluded me thus far. To begin with, I was shocked to learn that William Cowen (who only directed 6 films during his brief career, this being his most substantial effort) made the lackluster OLIVER TWIST (1933; which I watched only a few weeks ago) soon after! Anyway, KONGO is not really a horror film – but, with the accent being on sadism and degradation, it certainly makes the most of the liberal Pre-Code attitude of the time. Besides, you can almost feel the humid jungle atmosphere: actually, apart from a few of the Chaney films and this one, MGM did several other African-set adventures during this time including TRADER HORN (1931), RED DUST (1932) and the Johnny Weissmuller/Maureen O'Sullivan "Tarzan" films (1932-42). Walter Huston is as commanding as ever in Chaney's old role (though he had originated it himself on stage!) – even if he wasn't quite his equal, I think, particularly where pathos is concerned. Interestingly, the film's plot is also quite similar to that of THE SHANGHAI GESTURE (1941) – which also stars Huston but where his role is more or less reversed! The entire cast is excellent (C. Henry Gordon' role, replacing Lionel Barrymore from the original, is brief but pivotal) including, surprisingly, the 'romantic' leads (Virginia Bruce and Conrad Nagel) – though that's because their roles are complex rather than insipid, as was the norm during this time. As for Lupe Velez – who had been Chaney's daughter in WHERE EAST IS EAST (1929) – the passage of just 3 years has seen her relegated to 'other woman' types and, despite receiving second billing, her role is basically a supporting one (especially since Velez practically disappears during the latter stages of the film).

The film drags in spots and is perhaps overlong for its purpose; however, there's an abrupt passage of time – in which we never get to see Bruce's descent to the skids at Huston's hands – which confused me at first into thinking that she was actually her own mother! Huston exerts his grip on the fearsome, gullible natives by the use of magic tricks (including, ironically, the decapitation routine I had seen only a couple of days earlier in Browning's THE SHOW [1927]!; could this have been used in WEST OF ZANZIBAR, too?) and a lot of rather silly chanting of mumbo-jumbo. While I knew of the plot revelation, it's still very effectively handled; indeed, given Cowen's non-reputation, I have to wonder how this film compares scene by scene with the original, i.e. whether the director here consciously copied Browning and that's why KONGO is so powerful! Curiously, Huston's comeuppance at the hands of the natives he had exploited for so long is strikingly similar to that of ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1933) – though it's considerably less graphic (also because here we're not told what really happened to him {is it the same with WEST OF ZANZIBAR?}, whereas we know what Dr. Moreau's fate is going to be without having to actually witness it).

I doubt that the film's reputation is solid enough to justify a stand-alone (and most probably bare-bones) DVD release from Warners – and, despite the obvious connection, I would think it'd be out of place on an eventual second set of Lon Chaney vehicles; still, I would very much like to have an official DVD edition of this one, also because my copy froze for an instant during a crucial scene

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.

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."

It won't be shown during "family" hours, so stay up or set your VCR. This pre-Code tale of revenge, sex, brutality, and, ultimately, redemption was one of Walter Huston's best performances (not that he was capable of a bad one). It's like a train wreck--you don't want to watch, but you can't turn away. Virginia Bruce is excellent as the innocent convent-educated girl who becomes a pawn in Huston's diabolical revenge scheme. Drug addiction and abuse of women run rampant, along with racism and superstition. Sweaty, dirty, and disheveled characters, sex, violence, drugs, and great performances. It doesn't get any better than this. Even though you'll guess the ending early on, you'll still want to watch it, and you'll want to see more of Walter Huston's films.

A beautiful, young woman is mentally and physically tortured by a rival of her father. Bizarre, to say the least. VERY very brutal even by today's standards. The film opens with a decapitation! There's also rape, whippings, drug abuse, torture, incest...basically the works. It's very surprising that MGM let this film be made let alone released! It's a really good movie but very tough. For strong stomaches only.

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.

Walter Huston got to recreate his stage role of 'Deadlegs' Flint when Kongo was done as a sound film in 1932. The original production ran for 135 performances and then a silent version entitled West Of Zanzibar was done by MGM that starred Lon Chaney. So for those of you who marveled at Chaney's compelling performance in West Of Zanzibar, be advised that Huston actually created the part on Broadway.

The jungle sets used for Trader Horn's interiors and later for the Tarzan films are put to good use in Kongo. The rest of it revolves around Walter Huston's equally compelling performance as a crippled degenerate paraplegic who rules a jungle kingdom with some equally degenerate associates and who keep the natives in line with some old magician's tricks. That and a knowledge of the narcotic effect of some of the jungle plants.

Huston lives for only one reason to exact a terrible vengeance on another white overlord of some jungle turf, the man who crippled him and stole his wife at the same time, C. Henry Gordon. The instrument of his revenge will be Virginia Bruce who is Gordon's convent raised daughter who Huston lures into his jungle domain.

Lupe Velez is on hand as Huston's mistress of undetermined racial origin since she certainly doesn't look like any of the natives. Lupe does have a roving eye however since her sex life with Huston has to be somewhat limited. She gleefully aids in Huston's depravities however.

Kongo in one sense takes a really horribly racist point of view toward the natives. At the same time however it certainly doesn't show the whites as anything noble. Both Huston and Gordon aren't hypocrites, you won't see them mouthing any pablum about the white man's burden.

It's a dated film, but Walter Huston will keep you riveted to your seats with what he does with this part.

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.

This is one of the most perverse pre-code films ever made. Drug addiction, rape, incest, nudity, you name it. Every time I show it to people their jaws drop, I burned a TCM showing onto DVD but would love to see an official MGM release.

There is no comparison to the original, "West of Zanzibar". As great as Chaney was, and in my opinion he was one of, if not the, greatest actors that ever lived, "Kongo" beats just about every film I've ever seen for sheer seaminess. C'mon, Virginia Bruce a forcibly drug-addicted heroine forced into prostitution by her father?

"Freaks" has nothing on this one.

***SPOILERS*** Living among the natives in the jungles of Zanzibar Big Boss-man Flint, Walter Huston,has taken over the leadership of the Voodoo worshiping people. Using a combination of cheap carnival tricks and sugar cubes, Flint got the natives addicted too and had them create a kingdom for himself in the most remote part of darkest Africa.

Having his underling native Chief Fuzzy,Curtis Nero, create a 80 mile impregnable JuJu circle no one can come in or out of Flint's kingdom without him knowing about it and that's exactly how he want's it. For some 18 years Flint has been planning his revenge against Gregg Whitehall,C. Henry Gordon. Whitehall not only caused him to lose his ability to walk, by breaking Flint's spine, but stole his wife who he later had a daughter with Ann, Virginia Bruce. Now the time has come for the Boss-man to get even with him for past dues.

Having destroyed his slave and Ivory trade business by having Fuzzy and his warriors knock off Whitehall's safari's in the jungle along the notorious JuJu circle Flint also had one of his flunkies Hogan, Mitchell Lewis, impersonate a white jungle preacher, Babcock. Hogan went to fetch Ann from a convent in Capetown and bring back to Flint in his jungle kingdom to be used as a human sacrifice together with her father Gregg Whitehall.

Sick and demented the crippled Flint has Ann addicted to cheap brandy which causes her to come down with black fever that's slowly killing her. It's then when Fuzzy and his men find Dr. Kingsland ,Corad Nagel, lost and staggering around in the jungle and bring him back to the Boss-Man's place where things starts to unravel for him. It turns out that Kingsland's involvement with Ann who turns out to be not what Flint thought she was: It turns out that he's actually Ann's father!

Kingsland addicted to the Bhang Root kicked that monkey off his back only to later have Flint's live-in maid and sex-slave Tula, Lupe Lopez,get him hooked back on it in order to bed down the handsome and sexy young doctor. Capturing Whitehall and about to do him in for what he did to him 18 years ago Flint is stunned to find out, with Kingsland confirming it with Ann's birth certificate, that he not Gregg Whitehall is her father.

With the natives now whipped up into a frenzy screaming for blood, after Chief Fuzzy shot and killed Whitehall, and with no modern means of communications Flint couldn't get the word back to Fuzzy to call off Whitehalls assassination. Now Flint is desperate in preventing his "daughter" Ann to be immolated along with him which is an ancient native custom. Flint plays his last trick by holding off the angry and rampaging natives as Ann Dr. Kingsland and the rest of his crew Tula Hogan & Cookie, Forrester Harvey, make their way out of the jungle by a secret underground tunnel.

It took Boss-Man Flint all these years to find out that the revenge that he was planning for Whitehall's daughter would in the end not only boomerang and bring him back to sanity; It would also give him the humanity and courage that he lost so long ago in the madness of the steaming and disease infested African jungle.

I guess I must've seen a different film than the others who gave this such glowing reviews.

For me it was a one-note film, heavily marred by Huston's hammy bellowing and scenery-chewing performance. My gawd, in this film he makes Rod Steiger seem like Marcel Marceau...

The only redeeming feature was Virginia Bruce, who was willing to play it rough, in many scenes without any makeup, a niche Bette Davis claimed as hers and hers alone. Sorry Bette, Virginia beat you to it.

Walter Huston steps into Lon Chaney's wheelchair to play the evil crippled magician commanding a "juju" cult of natives who burn women alive. Lupe Velez is on hand [and narrowly escapes getting her tongue twisted out with a wire]. Enter blonde Virginia Bruce, a convent girl forced into prostitution in Zanzibar, but now a hopeless alcoholic. Enter Conrad Nagel, a doctor who is now a hopeless drug addict [his cure involves being covered with leeches and buried up to his neck in a swamp]. Don't worry: there's still MORE plot! Everyone sweats a lot, on leftover sets from RED DUST, but the direction is rudimentary and lacks the courage of the plot's kinkiness. Still, it's some kind of must-see since they sure don't make them like this anymore!

During one of the most horrifying years of the Great Depression (1932), Hollywood offered some of its most horrifying films, opening the year with "Freaks" and concluding it with "Island of Lost Souls." Toward the end of the year (and the pre-Code era), this show had it all: murder, torture, immolation, mutilation, scarification, drug addiction and moral and sexual degradation. Wheel-chair bound Walter Huston, called "Big Boss" by the ignorant natives, overawed by his feats of magic, is the inculcation of hatred and bitterness. His object is sweet, lovely, virginal Virginia Bruce, with naive, well-meaning doctor Conrad Nagel being her only hope. Still, is happiness possible?

While watching this film, I kept asking myself if I'd seen it before, but then it struck me that this was a talkie remake of Tod Browning's outrageous "West of Zanzibar," which had been made only four years before. Walter Huston plays a conniving wheelchair bound magician in the jungles of Africa who frightens and manipulates the natives with his carnie magic tricks, though most of the film is spent on Huston cruelly treating the daughter of the man he holds responsible for crippling him. The film does manage to be just about as over-the-top as Browning's original film, although it unfortunately also retains the racist portals of native people, but overall I still prefer Browning's silent version that featured the great Lon Chaney in the Huston role.

This remake is a pale ghost of Tod Browning's "West of Zanzibar" (1928). It systematically manages to remove all of the punch of the original film.

Not everyone can handle silent movies, and many people will like "Kongo" better, just because it's a talkie. It's pretty obvious that's the reason MGM remade it after only three years. It certainly couldn't have been an attempt to outdo the quality of the original.

Every powerful moment or sequence in "West of Zanzibar" is either missing or ruined in "Kongo."

First, while Houston tries to be abhorrent in the role of Dead Legs Flint, he doesn't arouse anywhere near the repugnance that Lon Chaney does with his Dead Legs Phroso character. I found Houston's portrayal in "Rain" (1932) to be far more chilling, even though his character there is much more human. But here, I found him merely interesting, a curiosity, not particularly goose-pimpling or gut-roiling the way Chaney is.

Second, C. Henry Gordon as Gregg is a B-movie caricature compared to the masterful job done by Lionel Barrymore as Crane in WOZ. (And why have all the characters' names been changed?)

Third, there is a gratuitous "mistake" on the part of Flint's lieutenant, where for no reason he says, ">>withheld<<," even though Flint has said the opposite only moments before, and interrupts him to say the opposite again. I won't say why, because I don't want to reveal any more, but this severely deflates the main impact of the film.

Fourth, the deterioration of Ann Whitehall is missing, so jarringly that it may be lying on a cutting room floor somewhere. In one scene, she's a nice girl at a convent school. The next time you see her she is, completely without any explanation, a degraded alcoholic.

Fifth, the flashback to when Dead Legs could still walk, that provides the entire explanation and motivation for the whole story, is entirely missing in "Kongo." The facts are recounted in one quick narrative monologue by Dead Legs, but again the impact is utterly lost.

Finally, Houston doesn't even begin to attempt the heart-wrenching pathos Chaney invokes after his entire life crumbles. Chaney's acting at that point is some of the best I've seen in silent film. The way your reaction to him changes from horrified revulsion to admiring sympathy is one of the magic moments in film. I didn't feel anything similar for Houston, or maybe the ghost of a feeling.

And the sacrifice Phroso makes at the end of WOZ is also either missing or so downplayed that I failed to catch it in "Kongo," once again removing one of the major points of the movie.

The only character who at least equals his counterpart in the original is Conrad Nagel, who does a fine job in all phases of his role, from deranged dope fiend to caring lover, far better than what Warner Baxter ("Crime Doctor" (1943)) does in WOZ.

Lupe Velez is also a delight, although she doesn't have much on-screen time.

For those who can relate to the silent movie genre, there is no point in wasting any time on the etiolated "Kongo." Watch the Real Thing: "West of Zanzibar."

A white witch doctor rules his personal kingdom without mercy. He terrifies the natives and controls his small group of lost souls with an iron hand. All with one burning goal in mind. This picture has so many stomach churning, heart wrenching elements to it, they are too many to count. Walter Huston plays one of the most sadistic brutes ever portrayed on film. Yet, we find, after all, the brute has a heart. Virginia Bruce, in easily the best role of her career, plays a thoroughly debased victim. Kidnapped by Huston in a twisted plot to punish the man he thinks is her father, she proves that inherent goodness is impossible to destroy. Watching him desperately try is what makes this film so worthwhile. If you get the chance - don't miss it.

A white evil wheelchair-bound man named Flint Rutledge (Walter Huston) rules over African villagers by scaring them with his second-rate magic tricks. He uses liquor and sugar to entice them. Ann Whitehall (Virginia Bruce) has been tricked and trapped at the compound.

This was degraded to B-movie status due to its disturbing nature. Today, it has issues with its racism and general ugliness. At least, the white people are drunken corrupt rulers. Flint is an interesting villain, but I still need a better protagonist. A modern movie would have the blonde girl take revenge and burn the whole place down by herself. This is a jungle exploitation movie when nobody would call it that.

Salinger must have seen this movie to come up with the title for his famous short story, which is nothing like this movie.

This movie is the epitome of squalor.

It's based on a tale of jungle revenge from a hideous white man against another hideous white man.

The squalor is not just in the way the people live, which the setting does a great job of showing, but in the characters, top to bottom.

The hero and heroine might be said to have originally developed the term "anti hero". They are not so much standard hero and heroine as much as they are simply pathetic, but nobler than the others.

The squalor is so well depicted here, as are the brutal savagery of the characters, while not going overboard on the savagery that today's "my sadist can outsadist your sadist" piles of crap are, that even today it looks fairly impressive.

Also impressive is the way the movie doesn't become contrived to kill every ignoble underling. Only a few characters die, and they are not contrived deaths.

Still, the natives are depicted a bit too much the Jim Crow way, especially in their savagery towards each other. This is somewhat alleviated by the fact that the lead bad guy takes credit for encouraging and perhaps even causing their savagery.

A few slow spots. Not a memorable movie, but fairly good. 6/10 seems a fair evaluation to let you know what to expect.