salvidienusorfitus The beginning of the film is really hard to take seriously. Lionel Barrymore was miscast in his role as the lover. It is hard to believe that someone as beautiful as Jacqueline Gadsdon could fall in love with him in preference to Lon Chaney. They really should have cast someone younger and more handsome. That being said the story is rather sad... especially when Lon Chaney realizes he has made a big mistake... and has been wrong all along in his assumptions. He plays his part well and you can't help feel sorry for him. Mary Nolan is beautiful and plays her part well. Warner Baxter looks rather silly/crazy when he "goes native" and starts dancing but otherwise plays his part well. The Synchronized Score with music and sound effects is pleasing and quite effective and sets the spooky/dark mood effectively.

John T. Ryan WHEN ONE WANTED to take an already frightening story and turn it into an even more disturbing shocker, there are two steps that would insure success. First, cast Lon Chaney in the Lead. Secondly, have Todd Browning direct. Fortunately for MGM, in 1925, WEST OF ZANZIBAR had both going for them.AS MANY OF the dramas of the period did, this film had a Show Business setting. In this case, we have Stage Magician, Professor Phroso (Lon Chaney), suffers the loss of his spouse, Anna (Jacqueline Gadsden)to her lover, Crane (Lionel Barrymore). The two men quarrel and fight, where Phroso suffers a severe fall; leaving his legs paralyzed and "dead." YEARS LATER, BOTH men are in Darkest Africa, where Phroso operates a trading outpost; where he uses his skills at prestidigitation to cheat Natives out of ivory. Eventually, Mazie (Mary Nolan) daughter of the now deceased Anna, comes under Phroso/"dead Legs" control and is left to wallow in the worst den of debauchery in Zanzibar.AFTER DIRECTLY CONFRONTING Crane, "Dead Legs"/Proso discovers that Mazie is after all his daughter. A sudden uprising by the African Natives, who have been cheated for so many years in the "Dead Legs" trading post, threatens to kill the Daughter and Proso sacrifices his own life; allowing Mazie to escape with young 'Doc' (Warner Baxter).OUR SYNOPSIS CAN do no justice to the film. With this outstanding "Duo of the Macabre", being Mr. Chaney and Mr. Browning, every scene is saturated with disturbing and frightful implications. DISDAINING THE BLOOD & gore that has come to be synonymous with "Horror", the production team instead creates all of their horror in the mind of the viewer.Please, please take the time to screen this film if you haven't yet done so. If you have, see it again

rdjeffers Saturday, December 12, 9:15pm The Castro, San Francisco "Gee, but you're a strange man." A Limehouse magician loses his wife to another man and seeks his revenge on the girl (Mary Nolan) he believes is their child.Based on the Broadway play Kongo, by Chester deVonde, West of Zanzibar (1928) was the sixth of ten films directed by Tod Browning, starring Lon Chaney. Crippled in a fight with his rival, Phroso (Chaney) discovers his dead wife and the child one year later and takes her to a malarial, booze-soaked sub-Saharan hell infested with society's rejects and bloodthirsty cannibals, where the story picks up "eighteen years later." A combination of familiar Chaney themes, West of Zanzibar is noteworthy for the performance of former Ziegfeld Follies star Nolan as Mazie, the ruined girl, and Warner Baxter as Doc, the drunken slob, pulled back from the brink to save her. Lionel Barrymore is sadistically indifferent as the other man, and Chaney delivers a typically earth-shaking emotional performance.Lon Chaney's West of Zanzibar opened at San Francisco's Warfield theatre on Saturday, December 1, 1928 for a one week run. "Rube Wolf and a company of Fanchon and Marco entertainers are featured today in Stairway of Dreams on the stage." The program also featured Fox Movietone Talking News and a Charlie Chase comedy.

MartinHafer The movie begins with Lon Chaney and his wife doing a stage magic show. Shortly after they finish, the wife runs off with her lover AND the lover attacks Chaney and leaves him paralyzed from the waist down--and all this occurs in the first few minutes of the film! Several months later, Chaney finds his wife dead in a church with a baby that he assumes is her lover's child. What an odd coincidence, huh?! The movie then picks up about 18 years later. What has Chaney done with his life in order to get revenge on his wife's lover? Yeah, exactly what any other man would do--follow the guy to Africa, start a cult among the natives so you can be their chief and bring the now addicted baby (who is now 18 and going through DTs) there to torment her in front of her biological father, naturally! This is all very creepy and convoluted and just plain weird. In a way, it's very entertaining but also pretty ridiculous. This story is one of the more bizarre tales I have seen in a silent film, though pretty consistent with director Browning and Chaney's styles. And while many of the story elements are quite scary and unsettling, the pacing of the film is a real problem--particularly at the end of the film. Instead of wrapping everything together and dealing with the suspense, the movie just starts to bog down and becomes rather plodding. This is a real shame, as it tends to lessen the dramatic impact and slow the movie to a crawl. A truly interesting and creepy relic, but far from Lon Chaney's best film, though his ability to mimic a disabled man and pull himself along with floor with "dead legs" (also his nickname in the film) was incredible--a fine job of acting on his part.