So it goes. There's always going to be that inevitable time when a person just runs out of ideas, and this film seems to be that moment for Abbott & Costello. The whole of this film seems to me, just a bunch of their old routines and gags run together in order to fill up the running time of a feature film. This is why it's so very difficult, even for veterans like A&C, to keep a film moving, especially at feature length. Difficult for the writers first of all, to keep a story together and include comedic bits without it all seeming to be just a patch quilt of non-related ideas. They all went through this at one time or another, i.e. Chaplin, Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, etc. That isn't to say that this is a totally bad film, just parts of it. The giant "kong like" ape that's being searched for, for instance, is just too much. Good comedy exaggerates the realistic but never should it traverse into the "Twilight Zone" just for effect. Something that's interesting about this film is that there appears a current "Stooge" with a future "stooge", namely Shemp Howard and Joe Besser. Joe Besser was not, in my opinion "stooge material" but here with A&C and Shemp, he's an actual riot. Ironic. This is certainly not one of the better A&C films but worth watching, maybe as a double feature with "A&C Meet Frankenstein".
Review of Africa Screams
