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Wonderful Movie

Too much of everything

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Dated with a razor thin plot, and definitely NOT politically correct, this pre-code film initially makes one feel as if they're looking through a National Geographic magazine. Plus, one sees real animals being shot dead and hears some less than complimentary references about the "people of color". Nominated for a Best Picture Oscar and starring Harry Carey, it was directed by W. S. Van Dyke.Carey plays the title character and leads the son (Duncan Renaldo) of a dear departed friend, and fellow trader, on an African safari with his native guide & gun bearer Rencharo (Mutia Omoolu, in his only film). After a native tribe of "killers" dissuades them from a trade of salt for elephant tusks with another native tribe, they next meet a brave missionary woman (Olive Carey, Harry's real life wife, who replaced Marjorie Rambeau) along the way who's looking for the daughter she believes is still alive; her husband was killed 20 years ago, but her daughter was never found. They later find her dead by a spectacular waterfall.After then venturing (for more than half the film) deep into the jungle, with Carey introducing "us" to (what seems like) every animal known to inhabit the wilds of Africa, they are ambushed by a notorious native tribe, who takes their guns and escorts them to a hostile camp. Brought before the "leader", Carey is unable to appease him and they are imprisoned. Carey then identifies that the camp appears to be a meeting place for members from many different native tribes from across the continent. They also discover that the missing daughter (Edwina Booth, looking a lot like Fay Wray) is a White Jungle goddess, a leader respected by the other tribes, who (obviously) speaks only native language(s). As Carey et al are mounted on crosses and placed upside down in what will become an execution pyre, she is literally stared down and convinced by her fellow white people to save their lives. After much native language haranguing & protesting, she convinces the other tribe leaders to allow the four of them to leave unmolested. However, they evidently agreed only to give the whites & their bearer a head start.The rest of the film (45 minutes?) follows their journey out of the jungle, running from the pursuing tribes, battling the elements, hunger, and thirst. There's even a minor love triangle complication;-) C. Aubrey Smith appears, uncredited, at the very end of the film.

With a background spanning over twenty years in the African bush during the 60's, 70's and 80's I am amazed at the locations used for filming. In 1930 (film released in '31) the areas used were very remote and still are over eighty years later. Part of the film was shot on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika along with another in the interior of Uganda. The Pygmy (Efe) segment is from the Ituri Forest in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo and besides being very remote and hazardous was, and still is, an unhealthy area. As recent as 2003, marauding rebels were seizing Pygmy hunters and eating them according to the U.N. Uganda, Tanganyika (Tanzania) and the southern Sudan were rampant with Malaria and a number of production crew fell ill with it. The Tse Fly was the bearer of Sleeping Sickness and prevalent in these areas as well as the Kenya Colony where some filming took place.Although the plot is lacking by today's standards, the commitment to film in these areas was a major attempt to show the real Africa of its time along with footage of it's indigenous Flora and Fauna. Due to this diligence, today we have a timed photographic encapsulation of these areas available to the general public which is not readily accessible elsewhere.

This movie took six months on site(s) in Africa. That was about three times the usual for the time. Upon return to the States some of the film was deemed unusable. So a crew went to Mexico and re-shot some scenes. Edwina Booth plays Nina, lost daughter of white missionaries. She is queen of an African tribe when she is found. To me she looked scared the whole time she played the queen but I think she was suppose to be looking savage and mean. While she runs around almost nude the entire time she is on screen there is nothing that shows. This was a ground breaking role for her and it also was basically the end of her career. She contracted malaria and it took her six years to recover. By then she had been all but forgotten. Harry Carey is the experienced, older white hunter who is chaperoning the son of an old friend around. Captured by Nina's tribe, all the bearers are tortured, killed and I guess eaten. When it becomes their turn Nina saves the two whites and their gun bearer. They escape with the girl and lead all on a merry chase. Then Carey separates from the pair to lead the trackers away. The end of the movie has Carey starting out on an expedition to find the two but just as he is leaving they show up. Filmed in 1931 when animals were shot or otherwise miss treated for movie scenes there are several times when this appears to happen here. The rhinos that shot and killed, the lions and leopards that attack the other animals were reportedly starved so they would attack. I don't think a lion who was not starving would go after a warthog, they are very formidable opponents. While did not care for the needless killings and such this is not a bad movie for 1931.

I woke up in the middle of the night in my apartment in New York City, turned on Turner Classic Movies, and here is this amazing adventure in Africa captured on film that deserves a "10" for tremendous.What an effort making this movie must have been for everyone involved. The sheer magnitude of the undertaking is something that would never get produced today. Only though the magic looking glass of film can we witness fiction and nonfiction brought together on such scale.For kids who love "Star Wars" or "Lord of the Rings" or the new crop of video-game movies, imagining what it was like for the cast and crew of "Trader Horn" to accomplish what they did is something entirely different. There's nothing digital here; it's all real. You can SMELL the animals on the plains of the old (and gone) Africa, a brutal and far more primordial place than it is today, all filmed without CGI or green-screen gimmickry.The cast includes Harry Carey in the title role (who performed in more than 250 films) along with the arrestingly beautiful young actress, Edwina Booth, playing a bizarre White Goddess, and who, like many of the cast and crew, was so wiped out and sick from what must have been grindingly grueling conditions on location in Africa, in 1930, that it basically ended her acting career. Two of the crew died during filming; one consumed by crocodiles, and one native boy charged by a rhino in a scene captured and kept in the film. Duncan Renaldo (who played the Cisco Kid years later on television) adds another dimension to the ensemble of the four leading players, completed by Mutia Omoolu, a native African playing Trader Horn's gun bearer in the only role of his life, plus hundreds of extras and other African actors whose names are lost to history.Fortunately, the remarkable effort of the people who created "Trader Horn" is not lost. Today, and for generations to come, we can experience this truly amazing adventure in Africa and "miracle of pictures."