A White ivory trader and âhunterâ known as Trader Horn (Harry Carey) heads down the river with his oblivious friend Peru (Duncan Renaldo) and his loyal Black âgun bearerâ to trade with the savages in the deepest part of that mysterious continent of Africa. Along the way they run into Edith Trent (Olive Careyâthe star’s wife and mother of the better known Harry Carey Jr.), a White missionary whoâs spent years looking for her baby that was taken by some evil tribe. When Trent is killed, Horn continues the quest and finds the beautiful woman (Edwina Booth), who is treated as a goddess by the locals.
Itâs a bit silly of me to claim that Iâm correcting Trader Hornâs incorrectly lofty status as almost no one remembers it now, and unless you are lucky with TCM or hang out on Russian streaming sites, you havenât seen it. But it once upon a time was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, so it deserves some comment.
Trader Horn is the type of movie that the fictional Carl Denham made in King Kong. It is built around documentary footage (and staged âdocumentaryâ footage) of a dangerous and exotic local, at least as 1930s Americans viewed the world. The place was Africa, and moving pictures of leopards, rhinos, lions were pretty new and exciting. The film’s plot is slight and exists to have a reason to show Africa, thus leading to some of the worst editing in film history. The story often stops so that Carey can point to animals and give brief and not always accurate descriptions. Peruâs job for the first half of the film is to be incredibly stupid so Careyâs Horn can explain everything to him.
And more than ninety years later, a good deal of that footage is impressive. Yes, Animal planet (thatâs a TV channel if times have changed by the time you read this) will give you better, but itâs still pretty good and was amazing in its time. Of course Animal Planet is less likely to torture animals, and thatâs an aspect that makes this film morally repugnant while reducing its artistic and informational worth. You see, bunches of lions donât hang out to attack animals on cue, and then attack each other. To get that, they had to fake it (sometimes in Mexico), starving and torturing the animals in enclosed spaces so theyâd be desperate enough to rip at each other in ways that wouldnât happen in nature. And yes, they really did shoot and kill the âbig gameâ you see dying in the movie.
Well, you canât say karma isnât a bitch. Two crewmembers died while filming (though at least one was an African) and almost everyone got sick, in some cases seriously. Edwina Booth ended up bedridden for years.
The acting is weak and what serves for character development is ludicrous even by African adventure film standards, but then director, âOne-shot Woodyâ Van Dyke, wasnât going for art and didnât care how his actors looked or what they did. Those ânatureâ shots were what counted. After all, the draw of this film wasnât supposed to being seeing if Trader Horn could summon up a second emotion, but to see those animals, though I suspect the topless African women was the bigger draw. It sure beats the old National Geographic. I canât think of another mainstream film with this kind of nudity for thirty years. But you know, âsavagesâ donât count as people, so you can show them naked.
The African footage, both of tribes and animals, was re-used (or used for the first time as a lot hadnât made it into the film) in adventure movies for years to come, most famously in Van Dykeâs Tarzan the Ape Man a year later. It is odd that this film has such abhorrent views on the treatment of animals while Tarzan has nearly the reverseâivory trading is the great evil of the Tarzan series, and White hunters are never a good thing.
So, Trader Horn has terrible animal welfare views for its time and racist views that are about on par with its time (“Youâre mistaken about these people. Theyâre not savages; theyâre just happy, ignorant children.â), but the film is bad mainly because it is boring. Documentary footage just tossed on screen is not enough. A story worth the time would have helped (note: no Oscar nomination for script), and some kind of deeper connection to the characters could have saved it all (note: no Oscar nomination for acting). It would be a less drab viewing experience if it all was more attractive to look at, but âOne-shot Woodyâ was not known for the beauty of his cinematography (note: no Oscar nomination for cinematography or art direction). If it didnât drag so much it might be a guilty pleasure (note: no Oscar nomination for editing). This is one of those very rare pictures that was nominated for Best Picture without a single other nomination. People at the time were simply astounded by that African footage and wanted to reward its existence. Thereâs worse films out there, but this âbest pictureâ simply offers nothing to the modern viewer. You want to see those shots of Africa (minus the nipples), watch the far superior Tarzan the Ape Man.