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.
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.