Have You Seen Kongo (1932)
This is new to me.
I always had the notion that old movies, black white era, 20 and 30’s films are boring yawn producing affairs and that at best could put you to sleep. (OK - I exaggerate, but you get the drift.) Since I am getting a bit tired of watching yet another remake, I was looking for something different to see and have run into a couple of reviews of a film from 1932 called Kongo.
This is an 86 minute MGM production staring Walter Huston and Lupe Velez who previously played these same roles in a play the movie is based on and also a remake of a silent movie called West of Zanzibar, Erich Kuersten from Acidemic Film says that this fact makes them seem especially comfortable in their roll, producing outstanding performances.
Anyway, Kongo is a pre-code movie, and since in that period of time, prudishness was frowned upon the horror and sadism have no limits as dictated by code, and as apposed to the expected black and white naivety it is sinister and lurid and as graphic, (almost) as can be.
The plot, in a nutshell, is set in the Congo, and is a revenge story.
This involves Flint (Huston) taking custody of his enemy’s daughter and putting her through an all girls convent school, only to pull her out on her 18th birthday and throw her into a Zanzibar brothel for a year or two (it wouldn’t any fun if she grew up debauched and had no height to fall from; Flint gets her all holy virginal before tossing her to the crew, as it were). After she’s sufficiently debauched he drags her out to his godforsaken corner of the jungle, gives her “black fever” and strings her along on booze and beatings.
and it goes on and on.
This movie seem particularly interesting to me, since as all thing periodical it reflects a lot about the politics and the political correctness, or that lack there of, also typical of that time.
Erich Kuersten also writes
More than anything, Kongo is a valuable window into a time when “going native” in the mind of Hollywood and post-Victorian morality meant being a law unto yourself and indulging in whatever capricious and kinky cruelty suited your mood. The implied notion of Africans as inferior savages to be manipulated and abused runs strong and deep.
I Don’t have TMC so I guess I am just going to have to wait to have it released on DVD (I don’t think is has been)
