5/5 The Image Entertainment/Hal Roach DVD is the BEST version of this title!
  by Paul J. Mular (San Carlos, CA USA)
Many cheapie companies offer this title at a lower price. Pass up those horrible copies and buy this excellent IMAGE ENTERTAINMENT / HAL ROACH STUDIOS DVD mastered from the original 35mm NITRATE NEGATIVE!

This is the same excellent master film used by Image for their Laserdisc release. The only thing missing here is the Bloopers & Out-takes that were on the Laserdisc.

This movie is the best of the five independent films that Abbott & Costello made in my opinion. And it stands up better than most of their 1950's Universal films. Where else will you see Bud & Lou teamed up with some of the THREE STOOGES? Shemp Howerd and Joe Besser join Abbott & Costello's safari to add to the laughs!
Besser would later join Bud & Lou for their 1950's TV show as "Stinky" before becoming a Stooge!

5/5 ONE OF ABBOTT & COSTELLO'S BEST FEATURES
  by
A classic A & C film. The boys play two employees of a NY department store. Lou's claim that he can draw a map from a famous big game hunter's book, gets them involved with an unscrupoulous gang of fortune hunters who are organizing a safari to Africa, to hunt for diamonds. Two of the film's BEST highlights are the team's encounters with then famous big game hunters Clyde Beatty and Frank Buck. The film also teams them with Hillary Brook (who co-starred with them in the film "ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET CAPTAIN KIDD", and later co-starred with them in the first season of their TV series "THE ABBOTT & COSTELLO SHOW"), and Joe Besser and Shemp Howard ( of "THE THREE STOOGES". Howard co-starred with the team in their films "BUCK PRIVATES", "IN THE NAVY", and "IT AIN'T HAY". Besser co-starred with them in their TV series "THE ABBOTT & COSTELLO SHOW" playing the part of 'STINKY').

5/5 BEST VERSION OUT THERE
  by David W. Wagner
AFRICA SCREAMS has been in the public domain for years. This dusted-off version looks and sounds the best of a-n-y version I've seen. This is the first version I've seen with the Nassour Studios logo opening the film and it has closed-captioning, as well. I skip the colorized version, as I oppose that sort of thing. However, Legend Films has made this one worth the wait. The scene where the tribal chief is scared white by the giant gorilla is here intact, as well, whereas I've often seen it where his face has been blurred over with darkness. I've found this to be a fine film of the team's, as opposed to, say, MEXICAN HAYRIDE or LITTLE GIANT. If you're still hunting a fine print of AFRICA SCREAMS for your A & C collection ... well, here it is.

5/5 ONE OF THE TEAM'S BEST FILMS
  by BILLY ANTIMISIARIS (Karpathos, Greece)
AFRICA SCREAMS (1949)
Huntington Hartford Productions
Release Date: May 4, 1949 (New York City, New York)
May 27, 1949
Runtime: 79 minutes

Director:
Charles Barton

Producer:
David S. Garber
Huntington Hartford

Writing Credits:
Earl Baldwin
Martin Ragaway
Leonard B. Stern

CAST:

Bud Abbott.....Buzz Johnson
Lou Costello.....Stanley Livington
Clyde Beatty....Himself
Frank Buck....Himself
Max Baer....Grapple McCoy
Buddy Baer....Boots Wilson
Hillary Brooke....Diana Emerson
Shemp Howard....Gunner
Joe Besser....Harry
Burt Wenland....Bobo

Music by:
Walter Schumann

Cinematography by:
Charles Van Enger

Film Editing by:
Frank Gross

Art Direction:
Lewis H. Creber

Set Decoration:
Ray Robinson

Assistant Director:
Joseph E. Kenney

Special Effects:
Carl Lee

Other Crew:
Norman Abbott....dialougue director
Albert Deano....wardrobe manager
William Nassour....executive in charge

Plot Summary:

Buzz and Stanley are booksellers in a department store. Several people start asking about a map in a book about Dark Africa. Stanley claims to know the map from memory. Buzz cons a female customer, Diana Emerson, into thinking Stanley knows a great deal about the map and insists on going to Africa knowing riches await him. After encounters with lion tamers, giant apes and a wild river, Buzz returns to America. Stanley finds diamonds and buys the store they once worked for, hiring Buzz as its elevator operator.

ROUTINES & HILARIOUS MOMENTS:
Lou fears gorilla while eating
Glasses of water for tent fire
Bud in lion skin
Lou's thought dead.

Trivia (from imdb.com): There is a scene where Bud Abbott & Lou 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 Bud Abbott stops him and asks why he's so thirsty. Joe 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 Costello's bedroom. Lou 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 Lou Costello was forced to tell what he had done.

2/5 Not one of their best
  by Robert S. Gartner (Cottekill, NY)
The basic plot of the film has Hillary Brooke looking for a book about an African safari containing a map leading to a fortune in diamonds. Department store employees Bud Abbott and Lou Costello bluff their way into her confidence and then travel to Africa, along with her team of explorers, including Joe Besser, Max and Buddy Baer, Shemp Howard, Frank Buck and Clyde Beatty, eventually running into a tribe of cannibals. The film is not any where near the best work that Abbott & Costello have done; in fact, to call it one of their `lesser' efforts is an overstatement. It is a one-joke film with Abbott & Costello doing their usual, yet funny, shtick. Hillary Brooke and Shemp Howard are wasted in minor roles, as is Joe Besser, although both he and Howard are funny as always in the brief time they have on screen. The Baer brothers, Frank Buck and Clyde Beatty are there simply to show off the talents of each of them and do not add much of anything to the film, which, incidentally, feels less like a movie and more like an extended television episode for their future television show. Only for die-hard, nothing-they-do-is-bad fans.