So This Is Africa

I've seen most of Wheeler and Woolsey's films and must say "So This is Africa" is their weirdest and nuttiest movie. It's their only venture away from RKO and it makes you wish they'd done more films for Columbia because it's that wacky!!

The first portion of the film is rather conventional by the team's standards. The boys are stuck unable to pay their hotel bill and without jobs...and they're also stuck with five full-grown but friendly lions they won in a raffle! I am shocked Wheeler and Woolsey agreed to act with the lions as it looked very dangerous...and stupid!

After spending much of the film doing nothing in particular, a film director (Berton Churchill) catches up to them and offers them a job. He wants the boys to bring their lions to Africa for a Tarzan- type film. However, soon after arriving in the jungle, all pretense about making a movie is gone. Mostly it consist of the comely Mrs. Johnson-Martini pitching woo with Woolsey and Woolsey inexplicably playing very hard to get! During all this nonsense, Wheeler is rescued by Tarzana and this jungle heroine is really attracted to him. But before either has a chance to make whoopee, they are captured by Amazon women (in Africa?) and then the men arrive and there's a free-for- all and the strangest endings I can recall having seen which seems to be promoting gay marriage...as did the scene where Woolsey was about to marry Wheeler!! It's all VERY pre-code and very strange...and I am not sure how audiences of the day took to this and all the stronger than usual sexual innuendo as well as a bit of cursing. Strange beyond belief but also funny and much better paced than most films by the team.