Reading that Universal got Virginia Mayo's services for Congo Crossing in exchange for Rock Hudson going to Warner Brothers I was stunned and thinking in baseball terms. The biggest one sided deal I had ever heard of since the Mets parted with Nolan Ryan to the Angels for Jim Fregosi. The cast didn't even get the benefit of a nice African location shoot.
Shot in the Botanical Gardens of Los Angeles this routine action adventure film has Virginia Mayo as a socialite on the run and George Nader an engineer on a surveying mission.
They're both at a real sleazy town in the French Congo where Peter Lorre runs a rather loose enforcement policy. There's also Michael Pate who is a hit man contracted to get Mayo.
Nader's mission to survey the place as the Congo River boundaries have changed and find out whether Lorre's jurisdiction of Congotanga is in the French or Belgian Congo. The ambiguity of the situation causes concern for all and it's made Congotanga the wide open place it is. Everyone wants to know, but many don't want the knowledge to go public.
In this is a very nice portrayal from Rex Ingram of a black doctor running a hospital. Which colonial power he lives under is of little concern to him. He knows the white man will be gone soon enough, but while he's there he wants what he needs to run his hospital.
Congo Crossing is a below average action adventure film. Must George Nader ever have envied Rock Hudson.