Tonight's Movie: Road to Zanzibar (1941) - A Kino Lorber Blu-ray Review

ROAD TO ZANZIBAR (1941) is the second of the seven films in the On the Road with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Blu-ray collection from Kino Lorber.

ROAD TO ZANZIBAR follows the previous year's ROAD TO SINGAPORE (1940). Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour play completely different characters in an equally giddy comedy.

This time around Chuck (Crosby) and Fearless (Hope) are carnival performers in Africa, of all places. They have all sorts of misadventures and end up on safari with a pair of con artists, Donna (Lamour) and Julia (Una Merkel).

That's really about the extent of the plot, which essentially strings together a series of comedy sketches, but the movie is fairly amusing, enlivened by the additional presence of Merkel and character actor Eric Blore.

A scene where Chuck and Fearless believe Donna has died is out-and-out funny, and there are also some good gags involving subtitles for African natives' discussions when they imprison Chuck and Fearless. (At one point it just says "CENSORED!")

Some jokes, a couple of pleasant songs, gorgeous Lamour, and a sparkling Blu-ray print make this a pleasant diversion. It's by no means a great film, but it's perfect company to relax with on a lazy afternoon.

ROAD TO ZANZIBAR was directed by Victor Scherzinger, who also directed ROAD TO SINGAPORE. Unlike SINGAPORE, Scherzinger did not also cowrite the songs for this film with Johnny Burke; this time around Burke teamed with Jimmy Van Heusen.

Scherzinger sadly died the same year ROAD TO ZANZIBAR was released, only 53 years old.

The movie runs 91 minutes and was written by Frank Butler and Don Hartman based on a story by Hartman and Sy Bartlett. The black and white cinematography was by Ted Tetzlaff, who filmed a number of favorite films and later became a director (THE WINDOW).

This is one of five films in the set which has English-language captions. Only ROAD TO RIO (1947) and ROAD TO BALI (1952) do not have captions.

Extras consist of the trailer; three additional trailers for other "Road" movies; a 15-minute featurette, "Bob Hope and the Road to Success"; and a short, COMMAND PERFORMANCE 1944: STRICTLY G.I.

Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray collection.

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