Congo Maisie

1940 ""I wouldn't take you, big boy, if I won you at BINGO !""
6.2| 1h11m| NR| en
Details

Maisie gets lost in a jungle in Africa and the jungle of romance. The African jungle has snakes, crocodiles and witch doctors. The romantic jungle has a dedicated doctor with an un-dedicated wife and an embittered doctor who is dedicated to no one.

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Reviews

Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
Humbersi The first must-see film of the year.
Married Baby Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?
Hattie I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.
dougdoepke Since it's a Maisie, I was expecting more of a comedy. But the laughs, such as they are, are secondary to a rather dramatic plot. Due to a series of mishaps, our girl ends up in a medical research station in darkest Africa. There she mingles with a strapping fellow refugee (Carroll), along with the current research doctor (Strudwick) and his classy wife (Johnson). In the background lurks a restive native tribe and their jealous witch doctors. Naturally, emotions wander while the natives grow more restless.Sothern's brassy persona remains intact but with many more dramatic moments than usual for the series. And that's despite a really clever opening. Looks to me like the studio was still unsure of the series direction. Not so with the handsome Carroll, who's clearly a Clark Gable hopeful in both voice and manner, and getting a lot of screen time, to boot. Fortunately, Maisie gets some snappy lines, along with the movie's highlight where she out-performs the witch doctors with a magic act. And catch her slinky outfit that's a real eye-catcher. Too bad for Rita Johnson's rather dour and dowdy role as the neglected wife.All in all, it's a well-mounted B-picture whose sets and effects reflect MGM's concern with quality. Nevertheless, the 71-minutes largely fails to show off Maisie's street-wise comedic appeal to best effect. The series would soon find a surer footing for that appeal.
MartinHafer During the late 30s and through the 40s, Ann Sothern made ten Maisie films. They were clearly B-movies--short, relatively low budget (for MGM) and meant as second films in a double-feature. Yet, despite this, they also were very polished and entertaining. Clearly, MGM made nice looking B-films.In this second installment, Maisie is inexplicably in central Africa! Why is never really explained well and seeing the blonde Sothern traipsing about what is supposed to be African jungle is rather surreal. As far as the plot goes, it's a reworking of "Red Dust" but due to the Production Code, the sexiness of the remake is much more subdued than the original. In the original, Jean Harlow was a tramp--a nice tramp but clearly a tramp. Here, Maisie is a nice girl--a show girl but a NICE show girl.When the film begins, Maisie stows away on a boat. Instead of heading down river to Lagos, it heads up river to disease-ridden and superstition-filled jungle. Along the way, she teams up with a grumpy ex-doctor, Dr. Shane (John Carrol), and they head to a jungle hospital--where the "Red Dust"-like plot ensues. There, another doctor's wife is bored and lonely and immediately falls for Dr. Shane. But, Maisie being a good girl, she does what she can to help the lady realize her problems WON'T be solved with an affair. How all this works out you'll just have to see for yourself.Aside from stealing a few clips from "Trader Horn", the film looks pretty good for a stage-bound B-movie set in the jungle. And, the acting and story work well. Overall, it's an agreeable little film and a decent remake since the story is more a reworking than a direct remake. Worth your time even if it is a bit patronizing in how it depicts many of the Africans.
bkoganbing MGM's Tarzan sets got some extra use when in Ann Sothern's Maisie series she did an African film Congo Maisie. The plot which was recycled from Red Dust would get recycled again for Mogambo only that one was actually done on African location.Ann Sothern stows away on the wrong boat, she has a job in a coastal African town, but this boat commanded by J.M. Kerrigan is going upstream to a small settlement, a research facility where married couple Sheppard Strudwick and Rita Johnson. Even further into the wild is another former doctor now rubber plantation magnate John Carroll and all three go visiting there.Where both an outbreak of witch doctor fundamentalism and an attack of appendicitis on Strudwick puts the whole party in jeopardy. But not with the ever resourceful Maisie using some tricks she learned from when she was a magician's apprentice.Using her Maisie character as a bridge between what Jean Harlow and later Ava Gardner did with same part, Sothern is light, breezy, entertaining and very wise in a street smart way. The Maisie series went on for about a decade and Sothern's ingratiating and affable personality was the reason why. We could all use a wise Maisie in our lives.
ilprofessore-1 This film is worth watching if only for one supremely silly moment when Ann Southern dressed in a Carmen Miranda head dress subdues a native rebellion in the African jungle by singing "St. Louis Woman" (pronounced here "Lewis") to the sole accompaniment of jungle drums and then doing magic tricks to the amazement and eventual pacification of the natives. Shot on MGM sound stages in 1940 with a large crowd of extras speaking mumbo-jumbo and wearing outlandish quasi-African costumes, it's a sad reminder that once upon a time this sort of nonsense was the only kind of employment available to African-American actors in Hollywood.