This film is based on the 1934 novel "Congo Landing" by Wilson Collison and is not a remake of Red Dust (1932). Although the two films are similar, and promotional material for Congo Maisie compared them, Red Dust was based on the 1928 play of the same name, also by Collison. The play was adapted in a second version as Mogambo (1953) with the setting changed from Indochina to Africa.
In the film, the character Kay McWade, mentions her teenage fantasy "book" crush was on Dick Heldar, the protagonist in Rudyard Kipling's novel, "The Light That Failed." A major plot point in the novel is Dick Heldar's unrequited love of a orphaned girl he grew up with - named Maisie.
The second of ten movies starring Ann Sothern as the heroine Maisie Ravier released by MGM from 1939 to 1947.
Bare-breasted African women can be seen sitting at the right foot of the witch doctor as he stirs the natives to attack the doctor (from the footage used from Trader Horn (1931)).