Africa Screams | Abbott and Costello | Bud Abbott | Lou Costello | Shemp Howard | Hillary Brooke

You are here: Africa Screams, starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Hillary Brook, Shemp Howard, Joe Besser

Africa Screams, starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Hillary Brooke, Shemp Howard, Joe Besser

A very uneven Abbott and Costello film at best. The basic plot involves a pair of book clerks, Buzz Johnson (Bud Abbott) and Stanley Livington (Lou Costello), who con their way onto a safari organized by Diane Emerson (Hillary Brooke, who also played Lou’s girlfriend Hillary from the Abbott & Costello TV Series), by convincing her that Stanley can reproduce a map of the area from a book he had read. Complicating things is the fact that Stanley is terrified of all animals—the film begins with a funny ‘aha!’ routine of Stanley trying to tame a ‘wild beast’ - which isn’t that wild after all :)

Although the film has many good routines, it seems to take too long to get to them, and the characters of both Bud and Lou seem out of sorts. Bud’s character is mean, greedy, willing to sell his friend for an African diamond. Lou ‘jumps’ out of character to try and fool an unknown person (actually Clyde Beatty) that he is a famous big game hunter, and actually does all of the work for Clyde Beatty. This same routine is repeated later in the film with Frank Buck. Both times, this is the sort of shyster routine that Bud would typically do.

I rate it 2 clowns on a 5-clown scale.

Editorial Review of Abbott and Costello’s Africa Screams, courtesy of Amazon.com:

America’s favorite dimwitted duo hits the jungle trail in this journey into hilarity from director Charles Barton, whose nine films with Bud and Lou include the classic Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstien . Bookseller Buzz Johnson (Bud Abbott) persuades the lovely but villainous Diana Emerson (Hillary Brooke) that Stanley Livington (Lou Costello), who’s even afraid of a housecat, is a wild game hunter. Diana claims she wants to capture a rare orangutan, but she’s really searching for diamonds, and she doesn’t mind subjecting the boys to lions, hungry cannibals, and even a giant ape to get them. Featuring real-life animal experts Clyde Beatty and Frank "Bring ‘Em Back Alive" Buck as themselves, plus two of the immortal Three Stooges (Shemp Howard and Joe Besser), this is the silliest safari ever!

Trivia from Abbott and Costello’s "Africa Screams" courtesy of Amazon.com:

There is a scene where Abbott and Costello are talking in their tent and Joe Besser dashes into the tent, grabs a glass of water and dashes out again. He repeats this several times until Abbott stops him and asks why he’s so thirsty. Besser replies that he’s not thirsty, it’s that his tent is on fire. That was based on an incident in Lou Costello’s childhood, when he accidentally set some clothes in his bedroom on fire. His father was in the living room, which was between the kitchen and Lou’s bedroom. Costello, not wanting to let his father know that he had set his room on fire, dashed back and forth between the kitchen and his bedroom with glasses of water until his father finally asked what he was doing, whereupon Costello was forced to tell what he had done.