Review of West of Zanzibar

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.