West of Zanzibar (1928) - film review

Anna cannot bear to tell her devoted husband, the magician Phroso, of her intention to leave him for another man, Crane.  It is the latter who breaks the news and, in the ensuing brawl, Phroso falls from a great height and breaks both his legs.  A year later, the crippled Phroso learns that Anna has returned to his town, with what he assumes to be Crane’s child.  When Anna dies, Phroso vows vengeance on the man who has ruined both of their lives.  Eighteen years later, Phroso has traced Crane, now an ivory hunter, to an African settlement near Zanzibar.  Using his skill as a magician, Phroso gains the confidence of the natives, who revere him as their leader.  By stealing Crane’s ivory crop, Phroso lures his former rival into his carefully laid trap.  The natives have a quaint custom: when a man dies, his daughter must also perish...

The last but one of the ten collaborations of director Tod Browning and actor Lon Chaney is one of their best and, whilst not strictly a horror film, it is the film in which Chaney gives arguably his most chilling performance.  The film was adapted from the successful stage play Kongo, which was performed on Broadway in 1926.  Walter Huston played the lead role in that play and in the subsequent 1932 sound film version, directed by William J. Cowen.

Today, most people know Tod Browning through his 1931 horror classic Dracula, but that film pales in comparison with his earlier silent films, which are amongst the finest that Hollywood made in the 1920s.  West of Zanzibar is a particularly striking film, with its atmospheric sets (which offer an authentic recreation of the torrid African setting), brisk pace, and mounting tension achieved through its brooding chiaroscuro cinematography and sharp editing.  

In one of his last roles before he succumbed to cancer, Lon Chaney plays a truly memorable villain, the crippled magician Phroso.  The intensity and realism that Chaney brings to his performance makes the film relentlessly dark, almost sadistic – up until the moment when his character realises his fatal mistake.  At this point, Chaney’s portrayal changes in an instant, from that of a monster to that of a man wrought by guilt and sorrow.  There aren’t many actors who can take you through so many contrasting emotions, making you shiver with fear one minute, making you weep in sympathy the next. Lon Chaney was one of this rare breed, richly deserving his epithet The Man of a Thousand Faces.

© James Travers 2009

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