Kongo (1932 film)

Kongo
Walter Huston and Lupe Vélez
Directed by	William J. Cowen Errol Taggart (asst. director)
Produced by	Louis B. Mayer Irving Thalberg
Written by	Chester De Vonde (play) Kilbourn Gordon (play) Leon Gordon (screenplay)
Starring	Walter Huston Lupe Vélez Conrad Nagel Virginia Bruce
Cinematography	Harold Rosson
Edited by	Conrad A. Nervig
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date	October 1, 1932
Running time	86 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Kongo is a 1932 talking Pre-Code film directed by William J. Cowen and starring Walter Huston, Lupe Vélez, and Virginia Bruce. It is an adaptation of the 1926 Broadway play of the same name, which had starred Huston.

This film is also a remake of the 1928 film West of Zanzibar, directed by Tod Browning and starring Lon Chaney and Lionel Barrymore, which was also based on the 1926 play. Kongo was shot on the same sets as Red Dust, and made the same year as Freaks .

Kongo has been a rarely seen film through the decades, but in recent years it has appeared on Turner Classic Movies. The film was released on DVD as part of the Warner Archive Collection series on May 3, 2011.

"Deadlegs" Flint, an embittered paraplegic who lives in the Kongo, controls the natives by using cheap tricks that appear to be magical. Assisting him with his magic tricks are his fiance Tula, two thugs, Hogan and Cookie, and a loyal native, Fuzzy.

Flint has spent the last eighteen years planning revenge against a man named Gregg who stole his wife and took her away from the jungle. Flint has built a sixty-mile, fortified encirclement of his compound that prevents anyone from entering or leaving without Flint's consent.

Having seen to it that Gregg's daughter Ann is brought up innocently by nuns in a convent in Cape Town, Flint sends Hogan to bring her to his compound. In Cape Town, Hogan, dressed as a missionary, is able to convince Ann to go with him into the Kongo by saying that he will take her to her father.

When she arrives at Flint's compound, Ann is held as a prisoner. After spending months confined to a brothel in Zanzibar, Ann has become a hardened alcoholic, who does Flint's bidding for whiskey, and has no idea why he has brought her to his camp and degraded her.

When a cynical, drug-addicted doctor named Kingsland arrives at the camp, he and Ann fall in love. Flint, who needs Kingsland to be free from drugs in order to perform an operation on his legs, places the doctor in the swamp so that leeches can suck all of the drugs' poison out of his system. Flint also tolerates Ann's relationship with the doctor and its purifying effect, even while he ridicules her.