Kongo is a 1932 American pre-Code film directed by William J. Cowen and starring Walter Huston, Lupe Vélez, Conrad Nagel, and Virginia Bruce.

[3] "Deadlegs" Flint, an embittered paraplegic living in the Congo, controls local natives by dispensing to them small quantities of sugar and liquor (sometimes substituting the latter with kerosene).

As part of his revenge plan, he also arranged years ago to have the infant daughter of Gregg and his former wife raised by nuns to be "clean in body and mind" within the safety and seclusion of a convent in Cape Town.

By the time Ann arrives at Flint's compound, she has become a hardened alcoholic after being confined for months in a brothel in Zanzibar and forced to work as a prostitute.

To hasten his sobriety, Flint has the doctor bound with ropes, taken to the nearby swamp, and placed up to his neck in the leech-infested water so the parasites can suck the drugs or "poisons" out of his system.

Flint hopes to have the ultimate revenge against Gregg by showing him his degraded daughter, having him killed, and then having Ann sacrificed as part of the natives' funeral ritual.

Now desperate to save Ann from the natives' sacrificial fire, Flint has Fuzzy guide her, Kingsland, Tula, and Cookie through an escape tunnel to the swamp.

That footage includes, for example, the scene when the "Juju" spirit frightens the African ivory bearers so Flint's men can steal the elephant tusks they drop while fleeing.

[1][5] News updates in trade papers at the time confirm that production work on Kongo actually began several weeks ahead of another project at the studio, the romantic drama Red Dust starring Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, and Mary Astor.

[8] In its November 22 issue, the influential trade paper Variety states that Kongo "misses completely for the ace houses", adding "it was kept out of Loew's Broadway deluxer, the Capitol, and spotted into the Rialto as a stop-gap until Par's own 'Sign of the Cross'".

[8] In his overall assessment of Kongo for Variety, reviewer Abel Green describes the picture as essentially a tedious remake and a waste of good acting talent: Another of those tropical, horror films, made more so by unnecessary gruesomeness and general lack of sympathy ... Huston is shown with a Karloff makeup as the crippled tyrant who rules the natives with voodoo buncombe ...

[8]Another widely read trade paper at the time, The Film Daily, agreed with Green's general assessment of Kongo, describing it as a "far-fetched tropical melodrama" with a "disagreeable theme", one replete with "squalor" and "high-tension hokum that makes the affair hard to believe".

Among the nation's oldest movie magazines, the Chicago monthly also found Kongo a misuse of its cast's abilities and an inferior remake of West of Zanzibar.

The magazine in its review also advises adult theatergoers to keep their children away from the film:AS lurid a tale of hatred and revenge as ever Lon Chaney played in, but without his genius to bring it to life.

Walter Huston in a role unsuited to his personality; Lupe Velez with little chance to act; Virginia Bruce's prettiness sacrificed to a sordid part.