West of Zanzibar

1928 "A story of love and revenge in the African jungles!"
7.2| 1h10m| NR| en
Details

A magician seeks vengeance upon the man who paralyzed him and the illegitimate daughter he sired with the magician's wife.

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Redwarmin This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place
Inclubabu Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.
HottWwjdIam There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.
filippaberry84 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.
kidboots In a telling scene toward the end of the movie "Dead Legs" (Lon Chaney) face shows the insane rage that 18 years of vengeance has reduced him to, but as he learns the horrific truth he becomes pitiable, then very protective. No other actor could show such a range of emotions. The story is exactly what you would expect from a Tod Browning/Lon Chaney collaboration - a macabre, grotesque, completely over the top melodrama. With any other star it would have been a freakish curiosity but Chaney makes it magnificent!!!As Phroso, a renowned English magician, Chaney gives him many of Chaplin's graceful movements, finishing with a cheeky back kick. He is hopelessly in love with his wife but she is having doubts. Crane (Lionel Barrymore) is the man she plans to runaway with. There is a terrible fight between Crane and Phroso, ending in a shocking injury which leaves Phroso a cripple in a wheelchair. Time passes and Phroso finds his wife dead in a church with a little girl crawling about. He vows terrible vengeance on Crane and his "little brat".Eighteen years later his threat is being carried out. He has bought the little girl with him to Zanzibar and left her in the care of a brothel owner. He has emerged as "Dead Legs", leader of a motley band of misfits and hoping to be King of all the natives some day. Mary Nolan gives a very stirring but believable performance as Maizie. Mostly remembered, if at all, for her many Follies scandals, she was a very fine actress and her scenes of hysteria in this film were quite grim. Warner Baxter was also excellent as "Doc", one of the men in "Dead Legs" power. His scenes when he is high on "kerosene" are quite eye-popping, especially when I had only seen him as a staid and solemn leading man of the 30s.Crane is now an ivory trader and "Dead Legs" is poaching it. He plans to entice Crane to his jungle quarters and show him how he has turned Maizie, Crane's daughter, into a drug addict and prostitute. Of course the shock announcement is that Maizie is in reality Phroso's daughter, and that Anna, when she realised what Crane had done to Phroso, did not run off with him. The last scene shows Maizie and "Doc" sailing off to find a cleaner, better way of life, while the natives pick "Dead Legs" pendant out of the ashes. All this in just 65 minutes. Amazing!!!Highly Recommended.
rdjeffers Saturday, December 12, 9:15pm The Castro, San Francisco "Gee, but you're a strange man." A Limehouse magician loses his wife to another man and seeks his revenge on the girl (Mary Nolan) he believes is their child.Based on the Broadway play Kongo, by Chester deVonde, West of Zanzibar (1928) was the sixth of ten films directed by Tod Browning, starring Lon Chaney. Crippled in a fight with his rival, Phroso (Chaney) discovers his dead wife and the child one year later and takes her to a malarial, booze-soaked sub-Saharan hell infested with society's rejects and bloodthirsty cannibals, where the story picks up "eighteen years later." A combination of familiar Chaney themes, West of Zanzibar is noteworthy for the performance of former Ziegfeld Follies star Nolan as Mazie, the ruined girl, and Warner Baxter as Doc, the drunken slob, pulled back from the brink to save her. Lionel Barrymore is sadistically indifferent as the other man, and Chaney delivers a typically earth-shaking emotional performance.Lon Chaney's West of Zanzibar opened at San Francisco's Warfield theatre on Saturday, December 1, 1928 for a one week run. "Rube Wolf and a company of Fanchon and Marco entertainers are featured today in Stairway of Dreams on the stage." The program also featured Fox Movietone Talking News and a Charlie Chase comedy.
movingpicturegal Very interesting and unusual silent film starring Lon Chaney as Phrosos the Magician, a stage show performer who has a wife he really loves - but she informs him she is planning to leave him for a man named Crane (Lionel Barrymore). When Crane tells Phrosos he is taking her away to Africa - he fights with Phrosos sending him falling over the railing of a second floor landing. His legs now paralyzed, Phrosos goes around riding a cart or pulls himself around by his arms, with his lifeless legs dragging behind. When the wife comes back with a baby, he finds the wife dead - so Phrosos, bitter and full of hate, sets out for Africa to seek his revenge on Crane and the baby daughter. Eighteen years pass - Phrosos, now known as "Dead-Legs", uses his magic to trick the natives with fake "voodoo" so he can steal elephant tusks from Crane, now a trader. Meanwhile, he has the daughter being raised in a Zanzibar brothel and he sends for her to come to him - all part of his evil plan. He now holds the poor girl captive and treats her like dirt - doing such things to her as making her eat on the floor and giving all her clothes to the natives. Twists and turns to follow.This is an absorbing, well done film - odd, creepy, and sad too. Chaney is really excellent in this - he gets such a look of evil and hate on his expressive face and is just SO good at making his legs look completely lifeless. Mary Nolan, who plays the daughter, spends most of the film looking around her with a complete look of disgust (and who can blame her!) - but her facial expressions are slightly over the top sometimes. Warner Baxter is handsome here playing Doc, Chaney's sidekick in Africa who falls in love with the girl. Very good.
theowinthrop West of Zanzibar was based on one of those torrid dramas that were big on Broadway in the 1920s, set in some distant rain forest or jungle. The best recalled is WHITE CARGO, in which a half-breed (as they were called in the 1920s) named Tondelayo manipulates one man into marrying her, and later tries to poison him for her own comfort. The play RAIN was based on a better piece of fiction (Somerset Maugham's short story of the same name) and set in the South Seas - and told of how a holy man proved more man than holy man after he met a prostitute.But KONGO, the basis of WEST OF ZANZIBAR, is not as well remembered except for the two films that came out of it: the silent film here with Lon Chaney as "Deadlegs" and the talkie movie version with Walter Huston called KONGO. They gave the same type of background - exotic and rotting to White "European" types. But KONGO / WEST OF ZANZIBAR also is a study in vengeance and it's dangers and limitations.Lon Chaney Sr. plays a prominent magician named Phroso, who is married when his wife deserts him for a rival named Crane (Lionel Barrymore). There is a fight, and Crane cripples Phroso by throwing him down. Crane leaves with the wife, but a year of so later she tries to return to Phroso, who rejects her. She dies, leaving a young girl. Phroso takes the girl, believing it is Crane's daughter.Tod Browning's films were good on building suspense and showing the odd in life from "Freaks" to Mad Magicians to Great Vampires (of fake Vampires). But the plot lines are not well thought out. Phroso learns Crane is an ivory dealer in Africa, so he follows him there, sets himself up as an ivory dealer too, and proceeds to slowly drive Crane out of business as part of a long term plan for vengeance. He also brings up the daughter (Mary Nolan) as a drudge and a drug addict. His compound in Africa includes a drunken doctor (Warner Baxter) and the local natives. It is with the scenes and plot developments with the natives that the creakiness and racism of the play shows through - Phroso keeps the natives under control by his magic tricks. Baxter, who is usually soused, is seen playing a guitar rapidly in one scene, while a heavy native woman is "shimmying" in a suggestive dance. One thing in the plot that the natives have been promised is that when Crane dies they can put the daughter to death as a sacrifice to their gods.Eventually two things upset the plotting of Phroso. First, Baxter finds that he is falling for Nolan. Soon, instead of being pliant to Chaney he starts defending her defiantly. Second, when Chaney finally confronts Barrymore, he learns that the latter could not care less about what happened to Nolan - because she is not Barrymore's daughter, she's Chaney's! All of his plotting has only endangered his own child!The film was a good one for Chaney, playing one of his most belligerent and dangerous fiends, but one who recovers his own humanity too late. Barrymore played mostly villains in the movies at this time, and makes Crane a person devoid of any charm at all (one wonders what Phroso's wife saw in him to begin with). Baxter and Nolan do the best with their roles, Baxter pulling himself together and belatedly discovering Chaney's rediscovered humanity. If not as well known to the public as THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA or THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, WEST OF ZANZIBAR gave Chaney another eccentric villain to play with, and is worth watching.