West of Zanzibar (1928)

The beginning of the film is really hard to take seriously. Lionel Barrymore was miscast in his role as the lover. It is hard to believe that someone as beautiful as Jacqueline Gadsdon could fall in love with him in preference to Lon Chaney. They really should have cast someone younger and more handsome. That being said the story is rather sad... especially when Lon Chaney realizes he has made a big mistake... and has been wrong all along in his assumptions. He plays his part well and you can't help feel sorry for him. Mary Nolan is beautiful and plays her part well. Warner Baxter looks rather silly/crazy when he "goes native" and starts dancing but otherwise plays his part well. The Synchronized Score with music and sound effects is pleasing and quite effective and sets the spooky/dark mood effectively.

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.

One year after these two prominent figures of the silent era cinema worked together for The Unknown, here they team again for another tragic story of despair, loss and revenge. Clocking at little more than an hour, West of Zanzibar combines the best of both worlds: Browning's atmospheric direction that turns Africa (or the studio backlot that stood for it) in a dark limbo where cannibal tribes perform weird rituals to their gods and drums of doom sound in the night, and Lon Chaney, the man, the myth.Saying that Lon Chaney is among the finest character actors of all time is an understatement. Mostly known for his macabre make-up that made him almost unrecognizable from one role to the other, Chaney was also a fantastic actor, able to emote and connect with the audience with a gesture or a look of his eyes. West of Zanzibar's story works on the same motif of tragic irony that made The Unknown so good and offers the perfect role for this great actor. Unsurprisingly he makes the most of it.A great companion piece for The Unknown and a fine movie on its own right, West of Zanzibar is the result of two inspired artists at the top of their craft working together. Recommended.

Crippled during a confrontation with his wife's lover, Phroso, a famous English magician (Lon Chaney, Sr), vows to exact terrible revenge on wife and lover. A couple of year's later when the wife, fatally ill, returns to London with a young child, Phroso's plans are put into action. After she succumbs to her illness, Phroso emigrates to Africa with her child, where the wife's lover is an ivory trader, a vocation also undertaken by Phroso. Now known as Dead-Legs he becomes the most feared and degenerate backcountry ivory trader west of Zanzibar. He raises his daughter, who he presumes is not his own, to be a drug-addicted prostitute. With his wife's child debased, he waits like a spider in his web for the man who cuckolded and then paralyzed him. Dark stuff, this.It's a morbid although entertaining little tale, and Lon Chaney gives his usual top-notch performance, transitioning from the big-hearted Phroso to the crippled (in both body and sole) Dead-Legs. The movie is worth watching just for his performance. Tod Browning is in his element and delivers up a dark, creepy tale. So what that the plot twists are telegraphed from a mile away, and the portrayal of Africans is negatively stereotyped. If these shortcomings can be overlooked, this is a good example of the Browning-Chaney collaborations. Not bad for a silent film, which has a recorded soundtrack, coming as it did on the cusp of the transition to sound.