Watch White Witch Doctor For Free

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Don't believe the publicity photos; even though Susan Hayward and Robert Mitchum starred in two romances together, there were no fond feelings off screen. The year after they starred in The Lusty Men and had a notoriously low opinion of one another, they reluctantly reunited for White Witch Doctor, a period piece about a missionary's work in Africa.Susan Hayward, a young widow, travels to the Congo, but Robert Mitchum, who has lived there for many years, warns her about the dangers of staying. It's the turn of the century, so women doctors are a novelty and not highly respected. The natives won't take to her, he claims, and the insects and animals can be deadly. But it's Susan Hayward-no warning will stop her! Bob escorts her to her assigned village because he and Walter Slezak believe they can find gold as a natural resource, and along the way, she's faced with many obstacles. Everything Bob warned her about is true, but Suzy is as strong as she always is and refuses to give up.It feels like most of the movie is spent observing native ceremonies, dances, rituals, and medical practices, but those scenes probably make up about one-third of the running time. The rest of the plot feels a little thin and improbable. Upon her arrival, Suzy claims she's studied dozens of native languages, but she isn't able to speak to anyone without an interpreter. Bob fights off an enraged gorilla, and after getting mauled by a ferocious lion, a young man is seen to only have a few scratches on his chest. But if you like movies like Mogambo, Untamed, or The African Queen, you'll be able to sit through this one. I love both the leads, so I found it entertaining, but it did feel a little long in the tooth after a while.

This remarkably silly, hackneyed adventure movie takes hilarious liberties with its source material, an uplifting account of two nuns' mission to bring modern medicine to the Congo. By the time it reached the screen, it had Susan Hayward as a headstrong young nurse, and Bob Mitchum as a treasure-hunter escorting her through Bakuba country. The script is unbelievably clunky, with Mitchum having to translate all the Congolese dialects into English for Hayward! Haha, how rubbish! Fans of Walter Slezak won't be surprised to find him playing a slimy, greedy, reptilian, overweight villain, albeit this time in a safari suit.Hathaway mixes hard-won documentary-style footage with alarmingly transparent studio crap as Hayward wins over natives with her "big magic" (I'm going to ask my GP for some "big magic" the next time I see him) and Mitchum acts like an insensitive oaf over her dead husband, just because she won't immediately sleep with him. Needless to say, they can't recreate the magic of their only other teaming: the previous year's 'The Lusty Men'. In fact, this is more like a dry run for Hathaway's confusing, über-dreadful, greed-is-bad yawnfest 'Garden of Evil'. There's the odd concession to classy entertainment – a few spectacular location shots and a nice tour of a makeshift hospital, seen through a dozen veils – but that's about all. The set-up is laboured, the situations as artificial as the environment, the resolution laboured and rushed. The film's calling cards and its wildcards are wasted with startling profligacy. Cult character actor Timothy Carey has about a minute's screen-time. Even the mighty Mitchum is lacklustre, injecting just a few moments of the requisite cynicism before going back to counting the zeroes on his cheque. For Mitchum completists (like me) only.(1.5 out of 4)

I hate to disillusion all you commentators who think that SUSAN HAYWARD and ROBERT MITCHUM really went to Africa to film WHITE WITCH DOCTOR. A lot of the stock footage was filmed in Africa and used throughout, but the stars and the supporting players were all photographed on Fox's studio lot, never setting a foot outside the studio except for location scenes filmed elsewhere in California.And the story, watchable enough as it is, is not exactly worthy of comparison to either THE African QUEEN or MOGAMBO. In fact, in barren outline, it sounds more like material for a B-picture, a typical '40s jungle film that might have starred Johnny Weissmuller as the big white hunter and fake studio sets to shown tribal natives going into their frenzied dances.However, the African footage is blended so well into the studio shots that it's easy to see why some think that this was a film entirely shot on location in Africa. It wasn't.SUSAN HAYWARD and ROBERT MITCHUM do competent enough work as the dedicated nurse and the would-be treasure hunter, who uses the pretext of being Hayward's guide into Bakuba territory in order to do a hasty search for hidden treasure so that he can inform his companion, WALTER SLEZANK, of its whereabouts. Slezak plays his usual smarmy standard villain role with relish.Nothing spectacular happens and the fake gorilla is laughably obvious--but it has its moments of danger and suspense that make it passable enough as moderately interesting entertainment.

As far as I know this has never been released on home video. Not surprising! The fake gorilla is a scream, and its not a comedy. Of course Mitchum completists must see this one. I saw it on the Fox movie channel. It is entertaining, just don't expect the caliber of say, Mogambo.