All right, I don’t want to draw this review out, because I’m aware that the world isn’t starving for a review of an obscure, forgotten film serial from over 70 years ago. Honestly, the only reason that Congo Bill ever made it onto my radar is because I’ve been trying to slowly see every comic-book movie adaptation that I possibly can, and Congo Bill technically falls into this category. While he’s since been mostly forgotten, Congo Bill was actually a DC Comics character, with a comic strip that ran through most of the 1940s and 50s. He’s actually made more appearances since then, but towards the end of the 50s he was actually changed into Congorilla, a half-man/half-gorilla kind of superhero. No, I’m not kidding. So, while Congorilla lives on in some guest appearances in DC, the original version of Congo Bill is a relic of the past. Still, this is one of the earliest DC adaptations, so I wanted to see what it was all about.

The premise here is that over in Africa, a woman is set to inherit a family circus worth a lot of money. Only problem is, no one knows where this woman is. Congo Bill sets out on a dangerous journey to find the queen, all while trying to be stopped by a group of men who don’t want her to be found so that they can inherit the circus themselves. And so, we see Congo Bill going throughout the Congo, coming across dangerous traps and animals.

The concept and setting is interesting enough, but this is about where Congo Bill’s good qualities end. See, the earliest comic book adaptations were film serials, which I’ve mentioned in all of my other reviews of them that I’m just not a fan of the serial format. I can recognize that we wouldn’t have the TV series format without it, but these serials just don’t work for today’s format of viewing things. The story is always stretched super thin, with no real plot happening over the course of most of the 4+ hour runtime. Instead, it’s just random little adventures, with little reason to care about what’s going on.

I bring all of this up again because before watching Congo Bill, my least favorite serial I had watched was Hop Harrigan. And it’s still the one I enjoyed the least, but I still gave Hop Harrigan and the other serials I had watched a favorable score because I recognized that most of my problems with them were just a lack of interest on my part, and the serial format just not being for me. I thought that they worked fine for what serials are, but that it just wasn’t for me. Congo Bill, on the other hand, is bad even by serial standards. While I don’t care for serials, I at least found things to appreciate in the other ones I had watched. For example, Spy Smasher had really impressive stunt work and cliffhangers. Congo Bill, on the other hand, has insanely boring action scenes, and some of the worst cliffhangers I’ve seen in serials. There are a few decent ones, but most of them are simply just “Bill needs to move two feet out of the way to avoid what’s threatening to kill him.” These just aren’t well-done at all. Also, there were only a few action scenes that were good, the most notable one being Congo Bill wrestling a lion. Most of them are unmemorable, and not well-executed.

Another way I realized how bad Congo Bill is was that it’s the opposite of something like Hop Harrigan for me. In Hop Harrigan, things were reasonably well-done, I just wasn’t interested in the plane concept at all. However, here, I actually was interested in seeing a serial set in the Congo, but there’s nothing interesting happening here to warrant its existence. I saw this movie described somewhere as “a bunch of interchangeable white guys in white suits running around the jungle” (or something to this effect), and I think that’s the perfect descriptor. I couldn’t even pick out who was who most of the time, with all of the characters being flat, generic people. The one exception to this for me was Khala, who is Congo Bill’s sidekick. His caricature could potentially be considered offensive by today’s standards, but I thought he was the only entertaining part of an otherwise snoozefest.

Anyway, I think I’ve gone on long enough here. It’s not like there aren’t redeeming qualities to Congo Bill, but for the most part this just sucks. This was the first serial I watched where I felt like the problem wasn’t just with me not enjoying the serial format…instead, it’s just a genuinely bad serial. I found myself more entertained with this one than ones like Hop Harrigan or The Vigilante, but not always for the right reasons. It’s more enjoyable if you have someone to make fun of it with, but even then it’s a hard sell getting someone to sit through this with you. I guess it’s worth checking out if you’re curious about it, but even then I know that 99% of people aren’t going to care to begin with. Check it out if you want to, but I don’t really recommend it to anyone.

2/5