Africa Screams (1949)

One of the worst movies I've ever seen

Good start, but then it gets ruined

From my favorite movies..

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

The vaudeville humor as seen in the '40s comedies, the banter, Costello or Mantan Moreland, is naturally of varying charm, 'Africa Screams' has more vaudeville showcased, than slapstick, the almost nonexistent storyline, the slightly suggested plot, and so there are several good scenes: those with the crocodiles (near the boat, etc.), the lions, the cannibals, but a better plot would of helped immeasurably, anyway enjoy the movie for what it is, and for what is was meant: humble, unpretentious divertimento, where none dreamed of subtlety, a sequence of gags, less than what the opportunity for it would of afforded.Which is to state that this isn't the ultimate jungle comedy, but the likable divertimento for an evening; the opening scenes, set out of Africa, Costello at his desk in the bookshop, were better than the rest of the movie, and the map was a nice gag. Hillary Brooke, very charming in a leading role, always enjoyable on screen, is exquisite, Abbott, the insatiable coveter of diamonds, is 'Buzz'. Why such unassuming silliness gave so much pleasure to audiences 60 yrs ago is a quiz for the sociology of culture, or why has this type of innocent silliness been out-fashioned; decades later, a wholly other brand of silliness has been invented, either gross or stupid or frankly deluded.

May be the best Abbott and Costello movie. At least in my opinion. It is so funny. The whole film is funny from beginning to end. Lou is the cowardly foil to Bud's scheme to extort money from the people who want to find diamonds in Africa. Jack Buck and Clyde Beatty, both very famous big game hunters and trappers in their time, have small roles in this movie. After trekking through the jungle for a while they come to the diamond fields. Here there are diamonds laying all over the ground, Haha. Lou is wanted by the local cannibals but manages to not get eaten. He also comes across Bud's hidden bag of diamonds and takes them. In the end Bud leaves Lou to fend for himself. They both make it back to NYC but in a switch Bud is the flunky elevator operator and Lou owns a huge sky scraper along with his partner, a gorilla.

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello search for diamonds in Africa, along the way meeting a visually-impaired gunner, a hungry lion, and a tribe of cannibals...I love the baby lion and the grown lion later on. Maybe they were not treated well by the studio (that seems to be common) but it made this all the better. Sure, the gorilla suit and snapping crocodiles are nice, but it is hard to beat a living animal -- lions! This is slightly less witty than their other work, the films with Universal. Some of the cracks are amusing, but it does not seem to be on the same level as "meet Frankenstein" or "meet the Killer". Is this because of the studio or the writing? I have no idea. Fans should still see it... besides, it has Shemp Howard!

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!"