West of Zanzibar

Director: Tod Browning Tod Browning

Overview

Even by the standards of star Lon Chaney and director Tod Browning, West of Zanzibar is an unrelentingly grim and gruesome melodrama. Chaney delivers an unforgettable performance as Flint, the crippled "king" of a faraway jungle island. Swearing vengeance against Crane (Lionel Barrymore), the man who stole his wife and left him a paraplegic, Flint concentrates his hatred on Crane's daughter Anna (Jane Daly). Bankrolling the girl's convent education, Flint brings Anna to his island domain, where he pumps her full of narcotics and forces her into a life of prostitution and all-around depravity. As a final humiliation, he intends to allow Anna to be sacrificed in a native ritual. But when he finds out that Anna is actually his own daughter, Flint does an abrupt about-face and does all he can to rescue the girl and her dissolute sweetheart Doc (Warner Baxter) from the rampaging natives. West of Zanzibar was remade (and, it has been, argued, vastly improved upon) as Kongo (1932), with Walter Huston in the Chaney role.

Product Details

Release Date:	05/24/2012
UPC:	0883316485286
Original Release:	1928
Rating:	NR
Source:	Warner Archives
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:05:00
Sales rank:	33,394

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Lon Chaney	Phroso 'Dead-Legs'
Lionel Barrymore	Mr. Crane
Mary Nolan	Maizie
Warner Baxter	Doc
Jacqueline Gadson	Anna
Roscoe Ward	Tiny
Kalla Pasha	Babe
Curtis Nero	Bumbo

Technical Credits

Elliott J. Clawson

Waldemar Young

Tod Browning	Director
Elliott J. Clawson	Screenwriter
Waldemar Young	Screenwriter
Irving G. Thalberg	Producer

Editorial Reviews

One of the Tod Browning-Lon Chaney team's best efforts -- in retrospect at least -- West of Zanzibar was met with some derision in its day, one trade-paper going so far as to actively campaign for exchanges not to book the film. And West of Zanzibar certainly is lurid, but by today's standards, most entertainingly so. Chaney is quite simply marvelous as the stage magician wreaking vengeance on the man (Lionel Barrymore) whom he mistakenly believes ran off with his wife (Jane Daly) and fathered her child. Filmed entirely at the MGM back lot in Culver City and employing the usual colorful Browning types in supporting and bit roles, this melodrama remains an eye-opener all the way through, and boasts a climax that still packs a punch. Leading lady Mary Nolan, formerly "Bubbles" Wilson and Imogene Robertson, was on loan from Universal and her performance, one surmises, drew heavily on her offscreen experiences as the former mistress of blackface comic Frank Tinney -- by all accounts a real-life version of Chaney's vengeful magician. As Nolan's ill-fated mother, Jane Daly (aka Jacqueline Gadsden) was given little material to exhibit her special brand of icy beauty, but Lionel Barrymore, as her seducer, was let loose by Browning and emerged overblown in comparison to Chaney's carefully wrought cripple. Music-hall eccentric Chaz Chase (no relation to Charlie!) appeared briefly as himself in the opening cabaret scene.