That was an excellent one.

Expected more

Best movie ever!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Lon Chaney and his long time collaborator Todd Browning turn in another fine picture full of ghoulish atmosphere and a horrific plot. Chaney stars as a magician named Phroso who is devoted to his wife Anna with all his heart and soul. He has a rival for his wife's affections in Crane a fellow performer who wants to take her off to Africa with him. Anna is hesitant because she truly does love Phroso, Phroso sees Crane with her and goes berserk. Crane pushes him off a balcony to his near death. Phroso now a twisted cripple discovers his wife's dead body with a child he assumes to be Crane's. He vows to the Virgin Mother that he will avenge his wife's death. Phroso moves to Africa and becomes a black market ivory dealer who is known as Dead-Legs. Dead-Legs scams the natives into thinking he is a God, and at any opportunity he scams his competitor Crane out of the precious ivory.Phroso decides to bring his revenge plan into full fruition and he takes Crane's daughter Maizie, who had raised in Zanzibar and turns her into a drunken drug addict. The Congo has a unique tradition, when a man dies the woman must be burnt on the funeral pyre with his corpse. Phroso will finally have his revenge but he has a surprise in store for him...Lon Chaney and Todd Browning complete each other. Chaney knows exactly what kind of character Browning is looking for and Browning knows exactly how to highlight Lon's mastery of character development. Every one of their collaborations is character driven and an interesting character can carry a picture. The atmosphere in West of Zanzibar is perfect. Chaney looks like a Kurtz figure as the crippled jungle demigod Dead-Legs. The physical devotion to the role from Chaney is amazing, he crawls through the rooms with no gotcha moments where his legs might slip. Everything about the picture is damn near perfect except for the racial stereotypes. I feel I can't truly give the picture the elusive perfect rating because of this. It's too bad but I know Chaney was not a racist. Maybe it was a symbol of the times but if so thank God we've come that far. By no means skip West of Zanzibar because of this because it is a fine picture with another masterful performance from the Man of a Thousand Faces directed by the man who used him best.

This is one of Silent star Lon Chaney’s most popular and intriguing titles, the penultimate of ten collaborations with director Browning (being virtually a dead cert for an eventual second DVD set of the star’s vehicles from Warners but which has been so long in coming that I opted to acquire it from ulterior sources – culled from the quite extensively scratched print shown on “TCM Underground”). Though this was my first time watching the film, I was already familiar with the plot via a relatively recent viewing of its almost-as-good Sound remake – KONGO (1932), where Chaney was replaced by Walter Huston (who had actually originated the role on stage). Revolving as it does around a long-running, elaborate and, finally, tragically ironic revenge, the material is just what audiences had come to expect of the “Man Of A Thousand Faces” (here utilizing simple yet effectively distinct make-ups for the opening sequence and the rest of the film, occurring eighteen years later) – the star having made this kind of intense, grim entertainment practically his own over the years.The first difference I noticed between the two versions is that, despite being the shorter film, WEST OF ZANZIBAR (running 65 minutes against KONGO’s 86) takes care to depict the incident which crippled and soured Chaney’s character (he’s subsequently referred to almost exclusively as “Dead-Legs”!) – whereas Huston is already ‘crawling around’ when the narrative takes off. Having said that, some of the developments in the storyline are kind of rushed through here – but, then, I recall feeling the same way about the girl’s degradation in KONGO; on the other hand, in the latter film but not here, we get an additional major (albeit perfunctory) character – Huston’s bitter girlfriend played by Lupe Velez. Apart from that, C. Henry Gordon, Conrad Nagel and Virginia Bruce seemed to me to have stood in adequately for Lionel Barrymore, Warner Baxter and Mary Nolan respectively from the 1928 version.By the way, back then, I had voiced my doubts about the presence in the original of two particular scenes from KONGO: the ‘gimmicks’ utilized to dupe the superstitious locals – since many of them were borrowed from Browning’s THE SHOW (1927), which had featured Barrymore in a similar role – weren’t, in fact, duplicated into WEST OF ZANZIBAR (where they are of a more modest if still attention-grabbing nature); however, the ending – in which the natives turn on Chaney’s confidence trickster/demi-God a' la H.G. Wells’ “The Island Of Dr. Moreau” (this happened to be filming around the same time as KONGO!) – is identical in the two versions. The jungle/squalid atmosphere, too, is pretty much equal in both titles – in retrospect, the fact that the latter film followed the visual style of the original so closely shouldn’t detract from its ultimate quality but rather reflect upon otherwise obscure director William J. Cowen’s good judgment (or, if you like, shrewdness). However, at the end of the day, Chaney’s typically mesmerizing performance and Browning’s undeniable flair for low-life/exotic melodrama are the two driving factors which give the original the edge; besides, for all its better-rounded characterizations, I remember KONGO being bogged down by meaningful, self-pitying talk – here everything is deployed in purely cinematic terms and accentuated, of course, by the emotive acting redolent of the Silent era…

In one of his last silent films, Lon Chaney plays a magician who went into a kind of exile in the Belgian Congo after a fight with a man who stole his wife left him a cripple. He's now known as 'Deadlegs' and he's used his mastery of prestidigitation to make himself the local kingpin in his neck of the jungle. But even he has to obey certain native customs.He's an embittered and twisted man who has worked out a most carefully engineered scheme involving his late wife's daughter. The man who did steal his wife, Lionel Barrymore is now also in Africa. He contrives to bring the two of them together and both kill and degrade them at the same time at the hands of the cannibals he lives with.Even with this Victorian plot and given the racism of the times, in Victorian Great Britain they would not have had cannibals in Africa because there were no cannibals in Africa. But what did Americans know about Africa?Still Chaney gives a compelling performance and the role calls for the make up and the contortion that he was known for. In fact in James Cagney's film biography of Chaney there are small portraits of Chaney's various screen roles and West of Zanzibar is one of them. Also look for a good performance by Warner Baxter as the alcoholic doctor who Chaney keeps on a kind of retainer.It's not a great film, far from it, but it is a fascinating look at the life and art of Lon Chaney.

Silent film of crippled Lon Chaney Sr. who blames a man (Lionel Barrymore) for causing it. He tortures and turns his young daughter (Mary Nolan) into a drug addict to punish him.Very strange but absolutely fascinating movie. The story is strong (but not overly gruesome like its remake "Kongo") with great acting. Nolan is very good at playing innocent and drugged out. Barrymore isn't in it much, but he's very good when he is. Chaney is just great in his role--quite possibly one of the best performances I've ever seen on film, and I've seen hundreds of them.Quite simply, this is one of the best silent films ever. A definite must-see.