Tag: tribesmen
The Vampire's Ghost is a vintage horror movie from Republic Pictures that, like most horror movies from Republic Pictures, has slipped through the cracks of public consciousness, overshadowed by Universal's classic monsters. That doesn't mean they aren't quality films, though. Take The Vampire's Ghost, for instance. Not only is it...
The Leech Woman isn't exactly the creative zenith of Universal horror -- coming six years after the studio's last great monster movie of its golden era, Creature from the Black Lagoon -- but it might be its zenith of racial representation…not that that's exactly high praise. It basically means...
A rushed, inferior (and pretty darn goofy) sequel in all respects, Son of Kong clocks in at barely 70 minutes, leaving little room for the menacing natives of the original. Although the movie posters show a rain of spears threatening our heroes, the Skull Islanders here are allotted all...
Mighty Joe Young is basically "King Kong lite", from its tone (decidedly lighter) to the size of its gorilla (decidedly smaller) to the role of its black cast (decidedly less important). Like King Kong, the role of the black people in Mighty Joe Young is peripheral -- natives sharing...
It's not really horror, but The Last Wave has horrific elements that invoke the ever popular "mystical darkie," this time in Australia with aborigines. A white lawyer (Richard Chamberlain) defends a group of aborigines accused of murdering one of their own. He discovers that they are "tribal" (i.e., they...
The prototypical "wilds of Africa" horror film (although Skull Island isn't supposed to be in Africa), King Kong features wild, black natives (led by chief Noble Johnson) jumping around and going "ooga booga," kidnapping white women, worshiping Kong and proceeding to get stepped on by the monster from aforementioned...
The latest addition to the black killer doll army is, um, this guy:
Although he'd receive his own film, Ooga Booga, in 2013, in Doll Graveyard, he doesn’t seem to have a name or any real back story other than he belonged to a girl in 1911 and was buried with her when...
I don't know much about Papua New Guinea (except that it's apparently crawling with zombies and cannibals), but I don't think that the racial makeup of the populace is quite as black as Hell of the Living Dead implies. Here, it looks more like Africa or the Caribbean than...
Cain vs. Abel. Kobe vs. Shaq. O.J. vs. The Man. There have been many epic rivalries in history, but few matched the clusterfuck that was the fourth Exorcist film. That respected director Paul Schrader's original film (Dominion) was shelved in favor of a nearly complete re-shoot (The Beginning) by the...
Representations of Africa in Horror Movies
When Toto sang about Africa back in the day, it sounded so much more inviting than what we see coming out of Hollywood. Horror movies in particular have been guilty of perpetuating the image of “darkest Africa”, filled with ravenous animals and wild-eyed natives...
