A remake of West of Zanzibar (1928), Kongo stars Walter Huston as reprehensible, crippled ivory trader Flint Rutledge, who seeks revenge on Gregg Whitehall (C. Henry Gordon), the man who stole his wife and put him in a wheelchair; this he does by kidnapping, degrading and humiliating Whitehall's daughter Ann (Virginia Bruce).
I decided to watch Kongo based on the reviews here on IMDb, which made it sound like an unmissable piece of 'anything goes' pre-code Hollywood depravity; but while it certainly deals with some very sordid subject matters—drug addiction, alcoholism, sadism, murder, prostitution, and rape—I found the film as a whole far less exploitative than I had imagined.
The violence is suggested rather than shown, and barring a brief nip slip from Lupe Velez as jungle tramp Tula and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it flash of boob from Virginia Bruce there was no nudity. Flint's persecution of Ann is undeniably very cruel, but it isn't anything to get your knickers in a twist over: by today's standards, it's fairly tame stuff, and after what I had read, could only come as something of a disappointment.
I decided to watch Kongo based on the reviews here on IMDb, which made it sound like an unmissable piece of 'anything goes' pre-code Hollywood depravity; but while it certainly deals with some very sordid subject matters—drug addiction, alcoholism, sadism, murder, prostitution, and rape—I found the film as a whole far less exploitative than I had imagined.
The violence is suggested rather than shown, and barring a brief nip slip from Lupe Velez as jungle tramp Tula and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it flash of boob from Virginia Bruce there was no nudity. Flint's persecution of Ann is undeniably very cruel, but it isn't anything to get your knickers in a twist over: by today's standards, it's fairly tame stuff, and after what I had read, could only come as something of a disappointment.