Watch Africa Screams For Free

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

When I was a youngster, many moons ago, no screen comedians tickled my funny bone more than Abbott and Costello. Be it on film or their "Abbott and Costello Show" on TV (repeats of this 1952-'54 program ran in NYC throughout the '60s for we baby boomers), the team could do no wrong for me. Forty years later, however, I find that A&C have lost much of their sparkle and charm, although the best of the films--such as "Buck Privates," "Keep 'Em Flying," "Pardon My Sarong" and of course "A&C Meet Frankenstein"--remain wonderful entertainments for me. The team does not seem to have aged as well as some others; I find the silent clowns (Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd) and the Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy, W.C. Fields, and the Stooges far funnier, somehow, today. A recent first viewing of the A&C film "Africa Screams," released in 1949, has only served to bolster my opinion here. This is a remarkably stoopid film, made on the supercheap, that is fairly consistently UNfunny, despite a terrific cast. In this one, Lou plays a salesman of safari books, and his character goes by the name of Stanley Livington (oy). His buddy, Buzz Johnson (Abbott), convinces pretty Diana Emerson (Hillary Brooke) that Stanley is a big-game hunter and safari guide (even though Stanley had previously confessed that as a child he was scared by his piggy bank, and that he was 15 before he ate his first animal cracker...double oy!), and so off go the three (along with Diana's thuggish accomplices, played by real-life boxing brothers Max and Buddy Baer) to hunt for the Orangutan gargantua in the African jungle. But wait...what the boys don't know is that Diana is actually an unscrupulous diamond hunter! (This last is not really a spoiler; this movie was BORN spoiled!)Anyway, baby boomers who grew up loving the sweet and lovely Hillary Brooke on "The A&C Show" may be surprised to see her portray a "bad girl" here, but actually, Hillary had been known for playing bad girls for many years (check her out in 1944's "Ministry of Fear" or 1946's "Strange Impersonation" for proof). She manages to escape from this wholly unfunny wreck with her dignity fairly intact. Real-life lion tamer Clyde Beatty is in the film (his scenes with the big cats ARE pretty darn impressive), as is real-life big-game hunter Frank "Bring 'Em Back Alive" Buck, and they too emerge likable and unscathed. Not so for then-current Stooge Shemp Howard, playing a Mr. Magoo type, or for future Stooge Joe Besser (playing Diana's butler and doing, essentially, a warm-up performance for his Stinky Davis character on "The A&C Show" a few years later). "Africa Screams," incidentally, marked the first time that A&C, Brooke and Besser worked as a team, and is the only time that Shemp and Besser appeared together.As may be expected, the film dishes out all kinds of shenanigans with lions, crocodiles, zany monkeys, "Umgawa"-spouting cannibals, and the seemingly inevitable man in a gorilla suit; you can doubtless imagine. Instances of extreme stoopidity include that ridiculous native chant, Stanley's use of an egg beater as a ship propeller, and the film's protracted ending, during which A&C, Diana and her thugs, cannibals, monkeys and that darn gorilla chase each other through the jungle. Homages to then-recent films "Mighty Joe Young" and "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" fail to engender any laffs, either. Actually, I only chuckled three or four times during the course of this 79-minute film, but they were more chuckles of disbelief at the inanity on screen than chuckles of actual mirth. AND, strange to say, Bud struck me as more amusing than Lou in this outing. Go figure. Truly, "Africa Screams" is a movie for hard-core A&C historians only, and possibly kids up to age 6 (and even THEY might be rolling their eyes). The lousy print quality of this Westlake Video DVD doesn't help matters, either. Y'know, it just struck me that this film makes the 1963 Bob Hope vehicle "Call Me Bwana" look like high art! To quote Buzz, as he watches Stanley jump into a crocodile-infested river: "What a belly flop!"

Wow! The usually frumpy Costello looks positively dapper in his snazzy salesman's suit at movie's start. Superior A&C comedy with good routines, productive premise, and unusual cast. The boys get to chase around the wilds of a Hollywood sound stage pretending (not very hard) to be adventuring in darkest Africa. Of course, Lou gets to do his slow-to-catch- on routine as crocodiles, gorillas, and other assorted man-eating critters nuzzle up in humorously menacing fashion. I love it, though, when that savage-looking kitten scares the be-Jesus out of him in a downtown department store, no less.And whose great idea was it to load up the cast with some real characters. Take the giant Baer brothers, Max and Buddy, for example. Together they look like they could tear down the Empire State building without a wreaking ball. Not exactly, your usual movie types, and when they start scuffling, you can almost feel the ground shake. Then too, what an inspiration to stick coke-bottle glasses on Shemp Howard of Three Stooges fame and turn him into a nearly blind big-game hunter! So, better hide the house pets. But I really am curious how little, fat comedian Joe Besser snuck on set when the movie already had a little, fat comedian who's a lot funnier. Add real life adventurers Clyde Beatty and Frank Buck, along with the always regal Hillary Brooke who glitters, as usual, but never gets in on the fun, and it all adds up to a lively and entertaining bunch of characters. Perhaps best of all, A&C are still looking fresh in their roles, and if some of the routines wheeze a bit, the boys are still able to give them the needed lift, something they did not do in the last few years before the final 1956 break-up. Sure, this kind of nonsense is not everyone's cup of tea. But I defy even the sourest sour-puss not to surrender a few chuckles as the boys bumble along Africa-style.

Even by Abbott & Costello standards, 'Africa Screams' is a terrible film with a few amusing moments. There are some items of interest to movie buffs today, such as the casting of two of the Three Stooges, Shemp Howard and Joe Besser, in secondary roles; this was seven years before Besser replaced Shemp as the 'third Stooge.' 'Africa Screams' was a rare independent production for A&C. It was filmed by Nassour Studios, though the team was still under contract to Universal. The previous year had seen Bud and Lou reach the top of the box office after a slump in the mid-forties, with 'Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein,' arguably their best film ever. Whether 'Africa Screams' was planned prior to that success or was a result of it, I don't know. In any event, it was a 'one-off,' as A&C immediately returned to Universal afterward and stayed there until 1955, when they were dropped. They made one more independent film in 1956, 'Dance With Me, Henry', before calling it quits for good. 'Africa Screams' is a hodgepodge of old routines, a few new ones, and an 'African safari' plot that pops up occasionally, mainly to justify the presence of animal trainers Clyde Beatty and Frank Buck. The pro boxing brothers, Max Baer and Buddy Baer, are along for the ride too as a couple of tough henchmen. So we get the obligatory 'lion-taming' sequence from Mr. Beatty, and a punch-out scene with the two Baer brothers. Frank Buck, fortunately, has virtually nothing to do. Joe Besser has one funny moment when he hears one of the others reveal a secret; he punches the guy on the arm and in his best spoiled-brat voice says, "Ooo, you're such a snitch!" Shemp Howard, like Frank Buck, is nowhere to be seen during most of the action and when he is, has nothing amusing to do. As for Abbott & Costello themselves, they resurrect any number of old routines, most of which are not related to the plot at all. It's almost like watching an early television variety show where they come on at intervals, do a sketch, then depart. Abbott does the familiar bit where he thinks Lou has been killed and delivers a long, mournful monologue about what a great guy Lou was and how he, Abbott, is to blame... even though Lou's standing right there. (How many times did A&C AND the Three Stooges use that routine?) My favorite is Lou reprising the 'whispering threat' business from 'Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap' where he challenges the bad guys to a no-holds-barred fight, but from a distance where they can't see him and in a voice so slight they can't hear him. For about three minutes, it's a very funny film. The casting of Besser and Hillary Brooke, as the female lead, foreshadows in fact the Abbott & Costello TV show of the early fifties, as both would be regulars. Production values of 'Africa Screams' are bottom-of-the-barrel, making any of the team's Universal flicks look like 'Gone With The Wind' by comparison. Well, the good news is, there are about 35 other Abbott & Costello films to watch instead.

Leonard Maltin gives 3 stars to this movie, and only 1.5 star to "Abbott and Costello Go to Mars". That's strange, because not only is "Africa Screams" easily worse than "Go to Mars", it's probably one of the worst films that Abbott and Costello ever made. There are some funny moments (Lou whispering threats to the bad guys when they have their backs turned to him), a lovely leading lady (Hillary Brooke), some impressively trained animals, and some good special effects. But there are also too many tedious stretches (this is one of the longest 78 minutes you'll ever spend), and too many predictable gags (hmmm, they have made a trap for a gigantic orangutan, do you think Lou will fall in it?). In some of those gags, Lou is made to look downright retarded instead of amusingly dumb. The scene where he mugs to the camera for about 3 minutes straight because he is scared of a gorilla is more excruciating than funny. (*1/2)