Kongo (1932)

Director:

William J. Cowen

Writers:

Chester De Vonde (play) &
Kilbourn Gordon (play) ...

Release Date:

1 October 1932 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Horror

Plot:

This remake of West of Zanzibar (1928) made four years later tries to outdo the Lon Chaney original in morbidity...

Plot Keywords:

Magic | Africa | Melodrama | Trader | Ivory

Cast

Walter Huston	...	King 'Deadlegs' Flint, aka Rutledge
Lupe Velez	...	Tula
Conrad Nagel	...	Dr. Kingsland
Virginia Bruce	...	Ann Whitehall
C. Henry Gordon	...	Gregg, aka Whitehall
Mitchell Lewis	...	Hogan
Forrester Harvey	...	Cookie Harris
Curtis Nero	...	Fuzzy

Runtime:

86 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Sound System)

Certification:

USA:Passed (National Board of Review) | Australia:M

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Trivia:

Virginia Bruce married John Gilbert during the production.

Movie Connections:

Features West of Zanzibar (1928)

Time is a great healer

***SPOILERS*** Living among the natives in the jungles of Zanzibar Big Boss-man Flint, Walter Huston,has taken over the leadership of the Voodoo worshiping people. Using a combination of cheap carnival tricks and sugar cubes, Flint got the natives addicted too and had them create a kingdom for himself in the most remote part of darkest Africa.

Having his underling native Chief Fuzzy,Curtis Nero, create a 80 mile impregnable JuJu circle no one can come in or out of Flint's kingdom without him knowing about it and that's exactly how he want's it. For some 18 years Flint has been planning his revenge against Gregg Whitehall,C. Henry Gordon. Whitehall not only caused him to lose his ability to walk, by breaking Flint's spine, but stole his wife who he later had a daughter with Ann, Virginia Bruce. Now the time has come for the Boss-man to get even with him for past dues.

Having destroyed his slave and Ivory trade business by having Fuzzy and his warriors knock off Whitehall's safari's in the jungle along the notorious JuJu circle Flint also had one of his flunkies Hogan, Mitchell Lewis, impersonate a white jungle preacher, Babcock. Hogan went to fetch Ann from a convent in Capetown and bring back to Flint in his jungle kingdom to be used as a human sacrifice together with her father Gregg Whitehall.

Sick and demented the crippled Flint has Ann addicted to cheap brandy which causes her to come down with black fever that's slowly killing her. It's then when Fuzzy and his men find Dr. Kingsland ,Corad Nagel, lost and staggering around in the jungle and bring him back to the Boss-Man's place where things starts to unravel for him. It turns out that Kingsland's involvement with Ann who turns out to be not what Flint thought she was: It turns out that he's actually Ann's father!

Kingsland addicted to the Bhang Root kicked that monkey off his back only to later have Flint's live-in maid and sex-slave Tula, Lupe Lopez,get him hooked back on it in order to bed down the handsome and sexy young doctor. Capturing Whitehall and about to do him in for what he did to him 18 years ago Flint is stunned to find out, with Kingsland confirming it with Ann's birth certificate, that he not Gregg Whitehall is her father.

With the natives now whipped up into a frenzy screaming for blood, after Chief Fuzzy shot and killed Whitehall, and with no modern means of communications Flint couldn't get the word back to Fuzzy to call off Whitehalls assassination. Now Flint is desperate in preventing his "daughter" Ann to be immolated along with him which is an ancient native custom. Flint plays his last trick by holding off the angry and rampaging natives as Ann Dr. Kingsland and the rest of his crew Tula Hogan & Cookie, Forrester Harvey, make their way out of the jungle by a secret underground tunnel.

It took Boss-Man Flint all these years to find out that the revenge that he was planning for Whitehall's daughter would in the end not only boomerang and bring him back to sanity; It would also give him the humanity and courage that he lost so long ago in the madness of the steaming and disease infested African jungle.