WEST OF ZANZIBAR (director:Tod Browning; screenwriter: Elliott J. Clawson/Joseph Farnham/Waldemar Young; cinematographer: Percy Hilburn; cast: Lon Chaney (Phroso, "Dead Legs" Flint), Lionel Barrymore (Crane), Mary Nolan (Maizie), Jacquelin Gadsdon (Anna), Tiny Ward (Tiny), Kalla Pasha (Babe), Curtis Nero (Bumbu), 1928-silent)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
Tod Browning (DRACULA (30)/FREAKS (1932)/THE UNHOLY THREE (1925)/ THE BLACKBIRD (1926)/ THE ROAD TO MANDALAY (1926)/DEVIL DOLL (1936)) has a long and distinguished career in making silent and talking pictures. His predilection is for most of his heroes to be deformed or have suffered heavily at the hands of another. They also melodramatically face the conflict between the better and worse sides of their natures which are usually split into two identities.
The film opens in a London Music Hall with Phroso the magician covering up a coffin with a skeleton inside it and when he opens it again, there is his lovely wife Anna (Jacquelin), whom he adores, appearing there. She is part of his illusion act. But she will break his heart, having fallen in love with a handsome African ivory trader, Crane (Lionel), who is seen kissing her backstage. She couldn't bear to tell her kindly husband that she is running away to Africa with him, and so the brusque Crane says, I'll do it. In his confrontation with Phroso, he pushes the magician over the balcony causing him to be crippled, as his back is broken and his legs become useless.
When he is told some years later that his wife has returned with a child and is in the local church, he crawls like a baby to her side, as she is lying there dead, in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary with the child next to her. He thereby vows to the Virgin to get revenge on Crane and his brat daughter.
The scene next shifts to the Congo eigthteen years later and the area west of Zanzibar, where he assumes the name of Dead Legs and is a changed man, who is lecherous, embittered, and ruthless, surrounded by drunken henchmen. His followers include a drug-addicted doctor (Baxter) to treat him, and two strong-armed men to carry out his nefarious work, Tiny (Tiny) and Babe (Kalla). He is now an African trader, and he keeps the cannibal natives under his control by using illusionary tricks on them, where he dresses up in a mask and tells them he is a God who can keep the evil spirits away.
He begins to extract his revenge by hatching a plot to rob ivory from a trader, Crane, and to have him and the girl, Maize (Mary), brought to him. She is the daughter his wife gave birth to, and unbeknownst to her, he is the one who had her raised by a madame and kept her working in a dive as a prostitute.
When arriving in his jungle retreat, she witnesses a ceremony according to the cannibal custom, that when a man dies- they always burn his wife or daughter with him. That is the law of the Congo.
The plan of Dead Legs takes on a change, when Crane tells him that the girl couldn't be his daughter because Anna refused to run away with him after that incident, therefore she must be your daughter. But it is not possible for Dead Legs to stop the natives from carrying out their custom, since they would never believe him now after he told them that Crane was her father and that he should be killed by them to bring away the evil spirits.
The simplistic plot can be seen from a mile away as to how it will develop and turn out. It exhibits the kind of racist outlook shown to the natives that movies will not allow today. The film treats the natives as savages, who eat their victims, as being inferior to even the white rabble, who are merely mercenaries, thieves, and drunks. What distinguishes this film, is the virtuoso performance of Chaney as a villain, as he transforms himself into a fearsome character, and his expressive face keeps changing with his different moods. He could be tender and fatherly at one moment and the next moment he could have a menacing look. His unbelievable pantomine skilled was learned from childhood, where he had to learn how to communicate with his deaf parents. He also has a flare for wearing just the right makeup for the part he plays; here he looks almost bald, giving him the extra chilling look he needed to have for the part. His speciality in the grotesque made him a silent star icon, someone who will not be forgotten, who could get the audience's attention by either inspiring them with the vulnerability of his character or by his morbid sense of getting into his character. In "West of Zanzibar," he is the one who makes the film work so well. The film is a strangely curious relic, not because of the story, but because he played this legless man so convincingly. It should be noted that his wife, Hazel, had earlier been married to a legless man.
Kongo (32) was a remake with Walter Huston.
REVIEWED ON 1/3/99 GRADE: B-
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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