WEST OF ZANZIBAR (1928) / KONGO (1932)

Fascinating and appalling . . . mostly appalling.  On B’way with Walter Huston in 1926; a late silent for Lon Chaney in ‘28; then back to Huston as a ‘32 Talkie (incorporating some silent footage).  The Chaney pic, in his familiar masochistic mode, directed by horror specialist Tod Browning, adapted by Waldemar Young, expands last act revelations from the play into a fleshed-out prologue to show rather than tell us how stage magician Chaney lost his wife, lost the use of his legs, and came to ‘Darkest Africa’ to seek a cripple's revenge against the ivory trader who done him wrong.  (Lionel Barrymore in the silent; C.  Henry Gordon in ‘32.)  Weapon of choice?  The villain’s lovely young daughter, raised in a convent, now debauched via drugs, drink & prostitution.  If only that equally depraved doc (silent Warner Baxter; talking Conrad Nagel) would come to the girl's rescue and stop the jungle natives from dragging her off for human sacrifice.  Yikes!  (Pre-Code barely does this one justice.)  That’s stunning Mary Nolan in the silent, a real life drug addict, dead at 46; Virginia Bruce in the remake, reveling in hellish spasms.  Both films effective, both with the usual stereotypical Black Natives; plus rape & leech cures in the Talkie.  The more freely adapted silent earns points for storytelling & pace, in fact, more of everything even though it's two reels shorter.  While little known Talkie megger William J. Cowen does good work with lenser Harold Rosson, yet hardly worked again.  Seen together, a great mini-course on different ways to develop a one-set play into a film.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Surprisingly, both Chaney & Huston born in 1883.  Huston in staggeringly good shape at 49 in the remake, Chaney already dead two years from throat cancer.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: The unusually square frame ratio on the Chaney a result of adding a synch-sound music & effects track to a silent pic before Hollywood started letter-boxing to keep the preferred 1.37:1 ‘Academy’ image ratio by holding space for the soundtrack on the left-hand side on the film strip.  Many early sound films, especially remastered copies made from films that used the Vita-Phone sound-on-disc system, ended up this shape even though none were purposefully shot in the nearly square - 1.1:1) format.  And loads of silents only survive today in prints now permanently missing a crucial 8% of picture info on the left-hand side of the screen.  We’re lucky to have even that; elsewise, they're only available in The Pacific Ocean 'Archive.'

DOUBLE-BILL: After WEST OF ZANZIBAR, go EAST OF BORNEO/’31 for more jungle adventure, casual racism & deadly crocodiles, but B-pic production values.