UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

MamaGravity good back-story, and good acting

Console best movie i've ever seen.

wes-connors In London, dapper magician Lon Chaney (as Phroso) entertains audiences by turning a skeleton into beautiful Jacqueline Gadsdon (as Anna), his wife and partner. But she is planning to run away with lover Lionel Barrymore (as Crane), an African ivory merchant. He gives Mr. Chaney the bad news and their confrontation leads to Chaney being tossed over a balcony. Consequently, Chaney loses the use of his legs. He begins a heartless revenge after obtaining his quickly expired wife's "love child" and taking her to Africa...Eighteen years later, "West of Zanzibar", Chaney (now known as "Dead-Legs") retrieves pretty blonde Mary Nolan (as Maizie) from her childhood as an alcoholic prostitute. This is how Chaney wants to present Ms. Nolan to her father, Mr. Barrymore. While staying with Chaney, Nolan arouses Warner Baxter (as Doc), an addicted physician helping Chaney cope with his disability. Chaney uses his magician background to dupe superstitious natives. Their propensity to eat and burn people could come back to bite or burn him...Perverse and predictable, this lurid melodrama contains enough Browning/Chaney dramatics to recommend, although the story is far from their best. There would be only one more collaboration, "Where East Is East" (1929), due to Chaney's untimely death. "West of Zanzibar" is one of the pictures the legendary filmmaking team might have re-made with sound. The short running time hints story elements were dropped at some stage; a longer film might have improved the pacing, and made the big scenes more surprising.****** West of Zanzibar (11/24/28) Tod Browning ~ Lon Chaney, Lionel Barrymore, Mary Nolan, Warner Baxter

chaos-rampant One year after these two prominent figures of the silent era cinema worked together for The Unknown, here they team again for another tragic story of despair, loss and revenge. Clocking at little more than an hour, West of Zanzibar combines the best of both worlds: Browning's atmospheric direction that turns Africa (or the studio backlot that stood for it) in a dark limbo where cannibal tribes perform weird rituals to their gods and drums of doom sound in the night, and Lon Chaney, the man, the myth.Saying that Lon Chaney is among the finest character actors of all time is an understatement. Mostly known for his macabre make-up that made him almost unrecognizable from one role to the other, Chaney was also a fantastic actor, able to emote and connect with the audience with a gesture or a look of his eyes. West of Zanzibar's story works on the same motif of tragic irony that made The Unknown so good and offers the perfect role for this great actor. Unsurprisingly he makes the most of it.A great companion piece for The Unknown and a fine movie on its own right, West of Zanzibar is the result of two inspired artists at the top of their craft working together. Recommended.

theowinthrop West of Zanzibar was based on one of those torrid dramas that were big on Broadway in the 1920s, set in some distant rain forest or jungle. The best recalled is WHITE CARGO, in which a half-breed (as they were called in the 1920s) named Tondelayo manipulates one man into marrying her, and later tries to poison him for her own comfort. The play RAIN was based on a better piece of fiction (Somerset Maugham's short story of the same name) and set in the South Seas - and told of how a holy man proved more man than holy man after he met a prostitute.But KONGO, the basis of WEST OF ZANZIBAR, is not as well remembered except for the two films that came out of it: the silent film here with Lon Chaney as "Deadlegs" and the talkie movie version with Walter Huston called KONGO. They gave the same type of background - exotic and rotting to White "European" types. But KONGO / WEST OF ZANZIBAR also is a study in vengeance and it's dangers and limitations.Lon Chaney Sr. plays a prominent magician named Phroso, who is married when his wife deserts him for a rival named Crane (Lionel Barrymore). There is a fight, and Crane cripples Phroso by throwing him down. Crane leaves with the wife, but a year of so later she tries to return to Phroso, who rejects her. She dies, leaving a young girl. Phroso takes the girl, believing it is Crane's daughter.Tod Browning's films were good on building suspense and showing the odd in life from "Freaks" to Mad Magicians to Great Vampires (of fake Vampires). But the plot lines are not well thought out. Phroso learns Crane is an ivory dealer in Africa, so he follows him there, sets himself up as an ivory dealer too, and proceeds to slowly drive Crane out of business as part of a long term plan for vengeance. He also brings up the daughter (Mary Nolan) as a drudge and a drug addict. His compound in Africa includes a drunken doctor (Warner Baxter) and the local natives. It is with the scenes and plot developments with the natives that the creakiness and racism of the play shows through - Phroso keeps the natives under control by his magic tricks. Baxter, who is usually soused, is seen playing a guitar rapidly in one scene, while a heavy native woman is "shimmying" in a suggestive dance. One thing in the plot that the natives have been promised is that when Crane dies they can put the daughter to death as a sacrifice to their gods.Eventually two things upset the plotting of Phroso. First, Baxter finds that he is falling for Nolan. Soon, instead of being pliant to Chaney he starts defending her defiantly. Second, when Chaney finally confronts Barrymore, he learns that the latter could not care less about what happened to Nolan - because she is not Barrymore's daughter, she's Chaney's! All of his plotting has only endangered his own child!The film was a good one for Chaney, playing one of his most belligerent and dangerous fiends, but one who recovers his own humanity too late. Barrymore played mostly villains in the movies at this time, and makes Crane a person devoid of any charm at all (one wonders what Phroso's wife saw in him to begin with). Baxter and Nolan do the best with their roles, Baxter pulling himself together and belatedly discovering Chaney's rediscovered humanity. If not as well known to the public as THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA or THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, WEST OF ZANZIBAR gave Chaney another eccentric villain to play with, and is worth watching.

gbheron Crippled during a confrontation with his wife's lover, Phroso, a famous English magician (Lon Chaney, Sr), vows to exact terrible revenge on wife and lover. A couple of year's later when the wife, fatally ill, returns to London with a young child, Phroso's plans are put into action. After she succumbs to her illness, Phroso emigrates to Africa with her child, where the wife's lover is an ivory trader, a vocation also undertaken by Phroso. Now known as Dead-Legs he becomes the most feared and degenerate backcountry ivory trader west of Zanzibar. He raises his daughter, who he presumes is not his own, to be a drug-addicted prostitute. With his wife's child debased, he waits like a spider in his web for the man who cuckolded and then paralyzed him. Dark stuff, this.It's a morbid although entertaining little tale, and Lon Chaney gives his usual top-notch performance, transitioning from the big-hearted Phroso to the crippled (in both body and sole) Dead-Legs. The movie is worth watching just for his performance. Tod Browning is in his element and delivers up a dark, creepy tale. So what that the plot twists are telegraphed from a mile away, and the portrayal of Africans is negatively stereotyped. If these shortcomings can be overlooked, this is a good example of the Browning-Chaney collaborations. Not bad for a silent film, which has a recorded soundtrack, coming as it did on the cusp of the transition to sound.