West of Zanzibar (1928) User Reviews

Creepy - Sad - Spellbinding!

[movingpicturegal · 8/10 · 24 April 2007]

Very interesting and unusual silent film starring Lon Chaney as Phrosos the Magician, a stage show performer who has a wife he really loves - but she informs him she is planning to leave him for a man named Crane (Lionel Barrymore). When Crane tells Phrosos he is taking her away to Africa - he fights with Phrosos sending him falling over the railing of a second floor landing. His legs now paralyzed, Phrosos goes around riding a cart or pulls himself around by his arms, with his lifeless legs dragging behind. When the wife comes back with a baby, he finds the wife dead - so Phrosos, bitter and full of hate, sets out for Africa to seek his revenge on Crane and the baby daughter. Eighteen years pass - Phrosos, now known as "Dead-Legs", uses his magic to trick the natives with fake "voodoo" so he can steal elephant tusks from Crane, now a trader. Meanwhile, he has the daughter being raised in a Zanzibar brothel and he sends for her to come to him - all part of his evil plan. He now holds the poor girl captive and treats her like dirt - doing such things to her as making her eat on the floor and giving all her clothes to the natives. Twists and turns to follow.

This is an absorbing, well done film - odd, creepy, and sad too. Chaney is really excellent in this - he gets such a look of evil and hate on his expressive face and is just SO good at making his legs look completely lifeless. Mary Nolan, who plays the daughter, spends most of the film looking around her with a complete look of disgust (and who can blame her!) - but her facial expressions are slightly over the top sometimes. Warner Baxter is handsome here playing Doc, Chaney's sidekick in Africa who falls in love with the girl. Very good.

"Lon Chaney Will Get You If You Don't Watch Out!"

[lugonian · 7/10 · 2 November 2001]

"West of Zanzibar" (MGM, 1928), directed by Tod Browning, is the first screen carnation to the Broadway play, "Kongo," which starred Walter Huston. In the silent production made during the dawn of sound, it stars Lon Chaney giving another fine performance, this time playing an embittered cripple out to avenge the man who had wronged him.

The story opens with Phroso (Lon Chaney), a lime-house magician who is assisted by his wife, Anna (Jacqueline Gadsdon) with his magic tricks. After she goes to her dressing room, she is confronted by Crane (Lionel Barrymore), her lover, who wants to take her with away with him to Africa, but Anna hasn't told her husband about their upcoming plans and of her intentions of leaving him. Crane advises her to get ready while he breaks the news to Phroso. After being given the shocking news, Phroso becomes upset, which finds Crane accidentally pushing Phroso over the railing where he crashes into the platform below, causing his spine to break and to become crippled for life. One year later, Phroso is seen heading for a church on a wooded platform on wheels where he is to meet Anna. By the time he gets there, Anna has died, leaving behind a little girl child. Believing the baby to be Crane's, Phroso decides to avenge himself on Crane for all the suffering he has caused by raising the child of his own choosing, and to have her suffer when the time comes. Eighteen years later, the now bald-headed Phroso, now known as "Dead Legs," is living in Africa where he occupies his time in performing magic tricks to the natives. He sends for Maizi (Mary Nolan), the child now a grown woman, and Crane, who is in Africa collecting elephant tusks and ivory, to make preparations to satisfy his long awaited revenge.

Supporting the legendary Chaney are Warner Baxter (only a year away from his Best Actor Academy Award for "In Old Arizona" in 1929) as the young doctor; Roscoe Ward as Tiny; and Curtis Nero as Bumbo, all acting as assistants to Phroso/Deadlegs.

"West of Zanzibar" was one of the 13 silent MGM movies that initially premiered in New York City on the PBS series, MOVIES, GREAT MOVIES (Original air date: WNET, Channel 13, November 1, 1973), accompanied by a new orchestral score. Currently shown on Turner Classic Movies, "West of Zanzibar" is presented with its original musical score and sound effects. If that musical score that accompanies "West of Zanzibar" sounds familiar, portions of it were used for the 1930s presentation of the TARZAN adventure series starring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan. Remade by MGM in 1932 as "Kongo" starring Walter Huston and Virginia Bruce in the Chaney and Nolan roles, the sound version became longer and more of a more violent nature than the Chaney film.

"West of Zanzibar" adds to the long list of Chaney's many screen characters. As for his many faces, he presents two of them. One as a young magician with make up and dark hair, the second as a mean-faced bald-headed cripple with hate in his heart, dragging himself around by his hands with his useless legs behind him. One thing about Lon Chaney, he never ceases to amaze his audience. Although bizarre as the Chaney-Browning combination is concerned, it's worth a look. (***)

Dark Tod Browning-Lon Chaney Collaboration

[gbheron · 7/10 · 15 February 2004]

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.

Weirdly fascinating chiller from Browning and Chaney...

[Doylenf · 7/10 · 16 December 2006]

Despite the flaws to be expected in a silent film that rushes the story forward by compressing time and events and bridging the gap with a few written words of dialog, WEST OF ZANZIBAR remains another interesting, weird and chilling entry in the cycle of LON CHANEY's horror films.

As to be expected, Chaney once again suffers for his art. He plays a man so damaged by a fall during a struggle with LIONEL BARRYMORE, that he must spend the rest of his life as a cripple, vowing to get revenge against the man who claimed he was going to take Chaney's sweetheart to Africa. Chaney then discovers the woman dead in church (a probable suicide) with her little girl crying near her body.

The scene shifts to Africa where Chaney is bent on revenge and the tale takes some really darker turns involving natives immersed in Voodoo practices, the death of ivory merchant Barrymore, and some revelations about the identity of the girl who is part of Chaney's plan to seek revenge against the man who wronged him.

It's typical Tod Browning/Lon Chaney melodrama and some of it looks pretty primitive by today's standards but silent film lovers will undoubtedly put this one near the top of their list as a film great.

Chaney reveals himself to be a great actor, capable of instilling fear and hatred in his expression and a number of other grimaces in between. As expected, LIONEL BARRYMORE proves that even as early as silent films he was given to much blustery overacting, as is WARNER BAXTER in his drunk scene. MARY NOLAN, as the blonde beauty, seems to be smirking most of the time rather than smiling, probably to suggest the hard life she's been living as a part of Chaney's scheme--but she's effective most of the time.

Well worth viewing for any Lon Chaney or Tod Browning fan.

Chaney gives one of the most powerful acting performances ever seen

[biglee · 9/10 · 1 October 2001]

This film can be discounted as unacceptable by many modern audiences. It is filmed in black and white. It is silent and it shows African blacks in a stero-typic manner that would not be accepted today.

Saying all that, it is a must-see film for any serious student or fan of drama. Chaney gives in this film one of the most powerful and convincing acting performances of any actor in any film. Without a single spoken word he shows anger to the point of madness, sly intelligence and overwhelming remorse and sorrow.

There is no feel of "miming emotions " or "mugging for the camera" about this film. The emotions that Chaney display feel so authentic that at times this viewer feels a discomfort for intruding into the personal torment of the character.

The director has used the talents of Chaney and to a lesser extent those of the other actors to relay most of the story with minimal use of "Text Cards", which otherwise would have disrupted the flow of action.

WEST OF ZANZIBAR (Tod Browning, 1928) ***

[Bunuel1976 · 7/10 · 27 September 2008]

This is one of Silent star Lon Chaney’s most popular and intriguing titles, the penultimate of ten collaborations with director Browning (being virtually a dead cert for an eventual second DVD set of the star’s vehicles from Warners but which has been so long in coming that I opted to acquire it from ulterior sources – culled from the quite extensively scratched print shown on “TCM Underground”). Though this was my first time watching the film, I was already familiar with the plot via a relatively recent viewing of its almost-as-good Sound remake – KONGO (1932), where Chaney was replaced by Walter Huston (who had actually originated the role on stage). Revolving as it does around a long-running, elaborate and, finally, tragically ironic revenge, the material is just what audiences had come to expect of the “Man Of A Thousand Faces” (here utilizing simple yet effectively distinct make-ups for the opening sequence and the rest of the film, occurring eighteen years later) – the star having made this kind of intense, grim entertainment practically his own over the years.

The first difference I noticed between the two versions is that, despite being the shorter film, WEST OF ZANZIBAR (running 65 minutes against KONGO’s 86) takes care to depict the incident which crippled and soured Chaney’s character (he’s subsequently referred to almost exclusively as “Dead-Legs”!) – whereas Huston is already ‘crawling around’ when the narrative takes off. Having said that, some of the developments in the storyline are kind of rushed through here – but, then, I recall feeling the same way about the girl’s degradation in KONGO; on the other hand, in the latter film but not here, we get an additional major (albeit perfunctory) character – Huston’s bitter girlfriend played by Lupe Velez. Apart from that, C. Henry Gordon, Conrad Nagel and Virginia Bruce seemed to me to have stood in adequately for Lionel Barrymore, Warner Baxter and Mary Nolan respectively from the 1928 version.

By the way, back then, I had voiced my doubts about the presence in the original of two particular scenes from KONGO: the ‘gimmicks’ utilized to dupe the superstitious locals – since many of them were borrowed from Browning’s THE SHOW (1927), which had featured Barrymore in a similar role – weren’t, in fact, duplicated into WEST OF ZANZIBAR (where they are of a more modest if still attention-grabbing nature); however, the ending – in which the natives turn on Chaney’s confidence trickster/demi-God a' la H.G. Wells’ “The Island Of Dr. Moreau” (this happened to be filming around the same time as KONGO!) – is identical in the two versions. The jungle/squalid atmosphere, too, is pretty much equal in both titles – in retrospect, the fact that the latter film followed the visual style of the original so closely shouldn’t detract from its ultimate quality but rather reflect upon otherwise obscure director William J. Cowen’s good judgment (or, if you like, shrewdness). However, at the end of the day, Chaney’s typically mesmerizing performance and Browning’s undeniable flair for low-life/exotic melodrama are the two driving factors which give the original the edge; besides, for all its better-rounded characterizations, I remember KONGO being bogged down by meaningful, self-pitying talk – here everything is deployed in purely cinematic terms and accentuated, of course, by the emotive acting redolent of the Silent era…

Another Triumph From Mr. Lon Chaney

[Ron Oliver · 10/10 · 7 October 2001]

Somewhere WEST OF ZANZIBAR, a crippled magician insanely plots revenge on the ivory hunter who ruined his life...

Lon Chaney dominates this fascinatingly bizarre little silent movie. More than just a ‘horror actor,' Chaney was a consummate craftsman who, here using a minimum of makeup, could sway an audience with the slightest facial twinge or glance from his haunted eyes. Completely convincing as a cripple, dragging his dead legs behind him across the floor, he becomes more a monstrous aberration than a human being.

Lionel Barrymore, Warner Baxter & lovely Mary Nolan all give excellent performances in supporting roles, but this is really Chaney's picture all the way. The fine production values , courtesy of MGM, only enhance its star's dominance of the medium.

With Tod Browning, Chaney's frequent collaborator, as director, it is fascinating to speculate how much Chaney's physical performance here later influenced Browning's vision in his masterwork, FREAKS (1932).

Another great Browning-Chaney collaboration

[chaos-rampant · 27 August 2008]

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.

Twisted

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 29 March 2007]

In one of his last silent films, Lon Chaney plays a magician who went into a kind of exile in the Belgian Congo after a fight with a man who stole his wife left him a cripple. He's now known as 'Deadlegs' and he's used his mastery of prestidigitation to make himself the local kingpin in his neck of the jungle. But even he has to obey certain native customs.

He's an embittered and twisted man who has worked out a most carefully engineered scheme involving his late wife's daughter. The man who did steal his wife, Lionel Barrymore is now also in Africa. He contrives to bring the two of them together and both kill and degrade them at the same time at the hands of the cannibals he lives with.

Even with this Victorian plot and given the racism of the times, in Victorian Great Britain they would not have had cannibals in Africa because there were no cannibals in Africa. But what did Americans know about Africa?

Still Chaney gives a compelling performance and the role calls for the make up and the contortion that he was known for. In fact in James Cagney's film biography of Chaney there are small portraits of Chaney's various screen roles and West of Zanzibar is one of them. Also look for a good performance by Warner Baxter as the alcoholic doctor who Chaney keeps on a kind of retainer.

It's not a great film, far from it, but it is a fascinating look at the life and art of Lon Chaney.

Lon Chaney as "Dead-Legs", voodoo tribespeople, Tod Browning... and the downside?

[Quinoa1984 · 10/10 · 1 June 2009]

What would appear on the outset to be another insane horror feature along the lines of Freaks (at least from the definitely deceptive publicity picture with Lon Chaney as a chicken or other, which never happens in the film), West of Zanzibar is just another melodrama. Actually, that's a lie. West of Zanzibar is one of the finest examples of the wild, over-the-top melodrama in the silent era. This is a filmmaker who understands what makes a melodrama tick and tickle, and in this film it's about the details of its plot unfolding at a quick clip but with enough characterization to make it never less than fascinating. At worst, it is painfully dated (the stereotypes of tribes people on screen seem a little flagrant), but at best its an example of what could be possible when a director could get his cast to convey all necessary through pantomime and gesture, of grandiosity loaded with little details stitched in there.

It helps that Lon Chaney is starring, however. This is probably what makes it a must-see for me; between just seeing two of his films, this and Phantom of the Opera, he appears to be one of the giants of his time. Maybe even more-so in the case of Zanzibar, one sees Chaney's skills without make-up, with the only gimmick of his "Dead-Legs" not obfuscating what is most interesting about him which is his face and eyes. This man conveys so much without ever, for a second, going too far over the top, at least to how far Browning's melodrama commands. Lionel Barrymore, for the supporting-role time he's on camera, doesn't disappoint either, and character players Mary Nolan and Warner Baxter don't do bad at all, but Chaney just hits it so far out of the park it's without compare in this case.

Playing especially this character, a man with a revenge plot that he has 18 years in the making (sound like that guy in 2009 Star Trek to you?), is a leap of faith, but its one the audience will make since this actor is so determined in this character, invested to the point where we believe how he's a jaded guy, as Doc describes him as despicable and very human at the same time. It's far more complex a character than I would have ever expected going in; the casket he has isn't too shabby, either.

As for Browning fans looking for mood, there's lots of it, especially of the voodoo kind (again, some of it is a little squirm-in-your-seat variety, just in terms of the faces not necessarily the rituals and fire-dances). It's never too laugh-out-loud funny, but it has its moments, like when Maizie's clothes are used for ritual purposes by the tribe-folk. There's also a very sublime touch near the end, perhaps expected in the bittersweet vein but still very satisfying, and I'm sure that was the filmmaker's sensibility all the way. It's a wonderful movie, for fans of the star and director, and if you can see it with a live piano by any chance it's highly recommended.

Haunting, if slightly underwhelming Chaney affair

[Weezy-LUiGi · 7/10 · 28 July 2013]

I feel Lon Chaney was the first extremely great actor to come out of the American film industry. He embodied characters like nobody's business. The fact that he was in this alone got me interested. Overall, the film was worth a watch to see Chaney portray the jaded stage magician turned African warlord. He was just so stone cold throughout the whole thing only to keep the audience guessing what he was actually going to do next. Lionel Barrymore was also a neat addition as the truly heartless villain who hadn't a care in the world, even when his life was at stake. Not as inspired as The Unknown or Phantom of the Opera, but still a worthy addition to the Lon Chaney catalog.

Exceptional

[preppy-3 · 10/10 · 2 December 2002]

Silent film of crippled Lon Chaney Sr. who blames a man (Lionel Barrymore) for causing it. He tortures and turns his young daughter (Mary Nolan) into a drug addict to punish him.

Very strange but absolutely fascinating movie. The story is strong (but not overly gruesome like its remake "Kongo") with great acting. Nolan is very good at playing innocent and drugged out. Barrymore isn't in it much, but he's very good when he is. Chaney is just great in his role--quite possibly one of the best performances I've ever seen on film, and I've seen hundreds of them.

Quite simply, this is one of the best silent films ever. A definite must-see.

Plot is a bit weak but Chaney's performance makes up for it

[NellsFlickers · 6/10 · 6 December 2018]

The first thing that struck me while watching this film was Chaney's very first scene, where he is a vaudevillian-type character doing a magic trick on stage. The camera is far away enough that he looked like a young Fred Allen! I knew, of course, it wasn't Fred, but I sure didn't expect Chaney to be dressed up like a relatively "normal" stage entertainer!

As for the rest of the film, it follows the usual Lon Chaney plot line, where his character is done wrong by someone, who he then must get revenge on. Usually in the end something happens to either allow him to redeem himself, or die tragically. In this film, he does both.

While this format can get a bit dull when viewing his films too close together, usually Chaney's makeup and performance makes up for the familiarity.

And NO ONE could display looks of both revenge and personal horror like Chaney. And his performance as a man with "dead legs" is very convincing. The man must have been as strong as an ox...

While the plot is a bit weak in spots, it is worth a watch just to see Chaney's performance. Mary Nolan reminds me of Brigitte Helm as she stares at Chaney with daggers in her eyes.

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival 5th Annual Winter Event, David Jeffers for SIFFblog.com

[rdjeffers · 10 December 2009]

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.

Zanzibar's dissipation well conveyed.

[st-shot · 7/10 · 23 September 2011]

Todd Browning's West of Zanzibar featuring Lon Chaney as a crippled game hunter does a fine job of transporting the audience to the lower depths with his perversely drawn portraits and inferences culminating in darkest Africa.

Proso (Lon Chaney) the Magician's finds out his wife is about to run off with a swell named Crane Lionel Barrymore). He confronts the pair and Crane cripples him in the process. When a repentant and dying wife returns Froso puts Cranes daughter to work (Lupe Velez) in a brothel before bringing her to his jungle home where he'll reintroduce her to dad Crane whose making a killing in the ivory trade down the road.

Zanzibar starts brutally and seldom lets up in the violence and emotional cruelty department with Chaney and Barrymore going at each other in dueling degeneracy. Browning creates an apt setting and mood for both setting up for a pair of suspenseful climaxes with signature Chaney masochism and Browning's deft touch with the macabre.

Hard to find, worth the effort.

[TSMChicago · 9/10 · 10 September 2010]

The opening sequences of Lon Chaney as the magician foreshadow the dark atmospheres that director Tod Browning would later create for Freaks and Mark of the Vampire. Excellent photography and an astonishing physical performance that was the hallmark of Chaney's work.

I remember this film being shown on Chicago's PBS outlet WTTW-TV during the 1970s. It was tinted in certain scenes and featured a new score that was fresh, yet not too modern. A master from this television showing has to exist somewhere.

Why this fantastic film is not more readily available is a mystery. It deserves to be seen on DVD or Turner Classic Movies.

Lurid Melodrama in Africa

[wes-connors · 6/10 · 13 August 2012]

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

Is there a Mightier Actor than Lon Chaney!!!!

[kidboots · 10/10 · 12 December 2009]

In a telling scene toward the end of the movie "Dead Legs" (Lon Chaney) face shows the insane rage that 18 years of vengeance has reduced him to, but as he learns the horrific truth he becomes pitiable, then very protective. No other actor could show such a range of emotions. The story is exactly what you would expect from a Tod Browning/Lon Chaney collaboration - a macabre, grotesque, completely over the top melodrama. With any other star it would have been a freakish curiosity but Chaney makes it magnificent!!!

As Phroso, a renowned English magician, Chaney gives him many of Chaplin's graceful movements, finishing with a cheeky back kick. He is hopelessly in love with his wife but she is having doubts. Crane (Lionel Barrymore) is the man she plans to runaway with. There is a terrible fight between Crane and Phroso, ending in a shocking injury which leaves Phroso a cripple in a wheelchair. Time passes and Phroso finds his wife dead in a church with a little girl crawling about. He vows terrible vengeance on Crane and his "little brat".

Eighteen years later his threat is being carried out. He has bought the little girl with him to Zanzibar and left her in the care of a brothel owner. He has emerged as "Dead Legs", leader of a motley band of misfits and hoping to be King of all the natives some day. Mary Nolan gives a very stirring but believable performance as Maizie. Mostly remembered, if at all, for her many Follies scandals, she was a very fine actress and her scenes of hysteria in this film were quite grim. Warner Baxter was also excellent as "Doc", one of the men in "Dead Legs" power. His scenes when he is high on "kerosene" are quite eye-popping, especially when I had only seen him as a staid and solemn leading man of the 30s.

Crane is now an ivory trader and "Dead Legs" is poaching it. He plans to entice Crane to his jungle quarters and show him how he has turned Maizie, Crane's daughter, into a drug addict and prostitute. Of course the shock announcement is that Maizie is in reality Phroso's daughter, and that Anna, when she realised what Crane had done to Phroso, did not run off with him. The last scene shows Maizie and "Doc" sailing off to find a cleaner, better way of life, while the natives pick "Dead Legs" pendant out of the ashes. All this in just 65 minutes. Amazing!!!

Highly Recommended.

Lots of sordid and interesting story elements, but also suffers from poor pacing

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 29 December 2006]

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.

A small masterpiece from director Tod Browning and actor Lon Chaney

[zetes · 10/10 · 11 October 2001]

Tod Browning is a marvelous director. I guess I've known this since i've seen his two most famous films, Dracula (the Bela Lugosi version) and Freaks. But neither of those films could have prepared me for the two films that I saw tonight (well, okay, maybe Freaks did; Dracula's not all that great a film). First, The Unknown from 1927 and, second, West of Zanzibar from the next year. Both of them starring Lon Chaney (Sr.). They are two of the most well-acted, well-directed, inventive, literate, powerful, and beautiful films I've ever seen. The difference between the two is that I had before heard of The Unkown - it's plot is too bizarre to be all that unknown. It's easily mentioned in the same breath with Freaks (in my opinion it is a step above it; that film is only interested in showing the freaks, although there are a couple of great, great scenes); there are thematic and plot similarities. But West of Zanzibar - it's not a typical film at all (not that The Unknown is, either, mind you!). In fact, it would be pointless to reveal any plot here, for if you've seen it (and I have no clue how many have), you'll likely remember it. If you haven't, it would be nice to come in fresh. See this underrated gem, I implore you!

Interesting late collaboration of Chaney and Browning

[funkyfry · 7/10 · 7 April 2008]

It's hard to know where to begin discussing this odd little film, a medium budget MGM production with a streamlined jungle aesthetic that's reminiscent of both the more visually audacious film "White Shadows in the South Seas" produced by Thalberg at MGM the same year as well as the cleaner and more claustrophobic jungle setting of Thalberg's 1932 production "Red Dust." In the latter film, Clark Gable played a character who was sort of a combination of Phroso "Dead Legs" as played in this film by Lon Chaney and "Doc" as played in this film by Warner Baxter.

Phroso is a man who was paralyzed from the waist down in a fight with the philandering Mr. Crane (Lionel Barrymore). After he finds his wife dead in a church, he swears vengeance on Crane and his descendants including the baby daughter Crane had with his wife. Phroso's elaborate plan includes stealing Mr. Crane's ivory in Africa and unveiling the ruined daughter (Mary Nolan), whom he has placed in a whorehouse to get a proper "education." While keeping the daughter prisoner at his jungle hideout, Phroso forces the daughter to become an alcohol addict while trying to convince the local natives that he is a wizard. Everything builds up to a fiery climax in which Lon Chaney dons a witch-doctor costume and does a bizarre dance to prevent the cannibal natives from burning the daughter alive. There is also a major (and fairly predictable) revelation about her true identity which triggers the by-1928 typical Chaney sacrifice theme.

As some critics at the time noted, the theme of self-sacrifice and masochism as portrayed by Chaney and Browning was getting a little bit stale by the time this film was made. It feels like a directionless film, as if the film itself basically exists as an excuse for Chaney and Barrymore to engage in an acting competition as larger than life characters. Another criticism which could very fairly be leveled at the film is that it's depiction of the native people is incredibly patronizing -- the natives for example are fooled easily by a man dressed in a silly monster costume (former pro-wrestler Kalla Pasha) into dropping their ivory so that Phroso's compadres can steal it. Only their ancient leader sees through Phroso's tricks. Tod Browning's direction is aimless and unimaginative, but he does create the seedy atmosphere that he was most famous for. And the main reason to watch the movie anyway is to see Chaney's performance -- he doesn't disappoint but he also doesn't do anything particularly new for him. In my opinion he's working here just a little bit too much in his comfort zone. He's convincingly psychotic and vengeful and then eventually he manages to turn the audience's emotions to pity and understanding, but by the time this movie came out that was starting to be a cliché in his films. In order for it to continue to work there needed to be an interesting variation and this film didn't really provide one. One thing that was interesting however was the fact that even after Phroso changed his attitude about the daughter (after the big revelation), he still continued to mistreat Doc and the others. So you could read the ending less as a "conversion" than as merely the re-direction of his psychosis. Tod Browning was famous for his bitter and sometimes ironic endings and it feels to me like this is how he intended us to read it.

I want to make sure not to leave the other performers out -- Mary Nolan had a striking face and a decent talent for acting. She's got a pretty juicy role because she gets to look so awful for most of the movie and she gets to play kind of a desperate woman which you don't see very often in post-code films. Warner Baxter is a good solid actor and his work here showed promise that he later fulfilled. Lionel Barrymore gave one of his more restrained performances here, choosing to underplay to Chaney in their big confrontation scene. I like how completely unredeemed his character is -- he manages to make the character somewhat interesting even though ultimately we care little when he's killed off-screen.

Unfortunately this film doesn't rise to the levels of the better Chaney/Browning films like "The Unholy Three" and "The Unknown" but it does manage to create a grittier jungle look than most "exotic" adventure films, it features memorably twisted and sadistic characters particularly from Chaney, and it explores some themes and topics that would have been verboten in the 1930s jungle films so it is kind of a curiosity.

Chaney, Chaney, Chaney: the master

[Enrique-Sanchez-56 · 9/10 · 11 October 2001]

This movie is totally Lon Chaney - now almost forgotten - but an acting talent for the ages. Thousands of actors then and now pale to the breadth of his gargantuan talent. I tremble and shake before the gifts he has bestowed to posterity.

His utter concentration literally consumed me as I held my breath before the fabulous spectrum of his delivery.

In West of Zanzibar, this still-reigning and consummate master of make-up shows us just how high he could jump.

Catch him if you can...I dare you.

questionable premise

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 17 July 2020]

Professional magician Phroso (Lon Chaney) is married to his assistant Anna. She is set to leave him for rival Crane (Lionel Barrymore) but she cannot bring herself to tell him. Phroso confronts Crane and gets pushed off a balcony. He becomes a paraplegic. Later, he finds Anna dead in a church with her baby. He vows revenge. It's 18 years later, west of Zanzibar. Phroso rules a small trading outpost using his magic tricks to control the local savages and steal elephant tusks from Crane. He had raised Anna's baby Maizie in the lowest Zanzibar without her ever meeting her father. He sends for her with the promise of finally meeting her father.

I don't understand why Phroso makes the assumption about the baby. That whole premise doesn't make sense. The twist is no twist since it's my assumption from the beginning. It's such a big part of the story and it suffers. Skipping 18 years also raises the question if Phroso had been harassing Crane for all that time. The plot is a bit too convenient and convoluted. All of this does not take into account the way the Africans are portrayed. It is old Hollywood and some leeway must be given. All in all, Lon Chaney's performance is magnetic even if the movie has flaws.

Great Chaney

[GManfred · 13 September 2017]

"West Of Zanzibar" is so wildly improbable that it needs some masterful acting to hold it together. That is where Lon Chaney comes in, with another of his patented acting performances. You've no doubt read other reviews on the website and gotten the gist of the story, which might sound like comedy material to some. But Chaney delivers as Phroso/"Dead Legs", cuckolded magician turned Emperor in darkest Africa. His face reflects a spectrum of emotions from anguish to amused contempt and he puts the picture over.

He is not without help, as MGM has surrounded him with a stellar cast; Warner Baxter, Lionel Barrymore and Mary Nolan make up the supporting players. In short, "West Of Zanzibar" is not one of Chaney's minor films, but another example of this splendid actor's marvelous talent, a great actor who died too soon. Although it is technically in the sound era, it is a silent picture - Chaney made only one sound film before his death.

West of Zanzibar review

[JoeytheBrit · 6/10 · 4 May 2020]

Rather bloodless chiller from Tod Browning. Lon Chaney goes a long way towards overcoming a muddled plot (which might possibly be due to a reel or two missing) but the whole thing lacks momentum.