Review of The African Queen (1952) by Stephen E — 12 Oct 2012

I saw this movie on TV when I was a kid. I think I watched it on our brand new Sears Console Color TV. Most of the movie was shot on location in Africa so the wildlife scenes are real. The story is basically Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn floating down an African River in a small steamboat.

She is an old spinster and he's an old river bum. It's set at the beginning of World War I. The Germans are rounding up African Natives who might be loyal to the English and moving them to the German colony.

Hepburn plays an English missionary. Her brother is also a missionary. He dies after being waked in the head by the native troops sent by the Germans. They're not Nazis. The Germans lost all their African colonies after World War I.

Bogart and Hepburn have to go down an unexplored river to get to the British colony. They also have to get past a German gunboat on a lake at the end of the river. During the trip they fall in love. When the get to the lake they use a shipment of dynamite to build two torpedoes to sink the gunboat.

Katharine Hepburn made a similar movie twenty years later with John Wayne called Rooster Cogburn and the Lady. That one had more gun fights.