Road to Zanzibar is a 1941 film directed by Victor Schertzinger, starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour. It is the second film in the Road to ... series.
Crosby and Hope play a pair of con-men, Chuck Reardon and "Fearless" Frazier, who get into a series of misadventures in Darkest Africa while trying to raise the money to buy passage back to civilization. Along the way they save a woman named Donna from a slave auction, only to discover that her and her "friend" Julia are secretly using them to deliver Donna to a millionare that she intends to marry for his money.
This film contains examples of:
- African Chant: One scene has a bit of chanting titled "African Etude".
- And I'm the Queen of Sheba: When the chief of the cannibal tribe thinks Chuck and Fearless are prophecised gods, a skeptical tribesman checks them over and declares, "If he's a god, I'M Mickey Mouse!"
- Attending Your Own Funeral: After her clothes get torn apart by leopards, Donna watches with amusement from the pond she was swimming in as Chuck and Fearless find them, come to the conclusion that she was eaten and decide to give them a proper burial. It takes a turn for the tragic, however, when the two let their anger at discovering they were being conned slip out during their attempted eulogy.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Subtle but the first sign of the series doing it is when the pair try the "patty cake" punch on a thug...who knocks them both down.Fearless: He must have seen the picture!
- Captured by Cannibals: Chuck and Fearless are captured by an African tribe, who think they are white gods... until, that is, they decide to test the duo's divinity by having Fearless get into a wrestling match with a Killer Gorilla. After he loses, Chuck and Fearless find themselves on the lunch menu.
- Darkest Africa: Road to Zanzibar uses all the standard Pulp Africa tropes and subverts the heck out of them.
- Hollywood Natives: The cannibal tribe hits all the standard notes of this trope, being a bunch of white guys wearing grass skirts and headdresses.
- Human Cannonball: One of the scams the duo run is a human-cannonball act; it turns out Fearless hides in a secret compartment in the base of the cannon and it's a dummy that gets launched out. (And catches fire, and crashes into a tent, and causes an entire carnival to burn down.)
- Invisible Backup Band: Discussed together with Mickey Mousing in a dialogue which ends with Crosby conducting the invisible orchestra to accompany his singing of the love theme:Fearless: What killed me is that from nowhere, an orchestra started. You know, violins and everything, right in the minute of a jungle. Isn't that silly?
- Killer Gorilla: Towards the end, Fearless gets tossed in a cage with a wrestling gorilla.
- Pardon My Klingon: The natives of Darkest Africa have their lines subtitled in English, but one line produces a [CENSORED] stamp instead of a subtitle.
- Saw a Woman in Half: The heroes attempt this at the end.Chuck: Are you sure you know what you're doing?
Fearless: If I don't, one of us is going back half fare. - Shout-Out: Chuck's tribal garb includes a headpiece which looks a whole lot like Mickey Mouse ears. In the same scene, his line about being "off to see the wizard" is a quote from The Wizard of Oz (1939).
- Talent Double: Hope is doubled by Olympic wrestler Peter Mehringer in the scene where he wrestles a gorilla.
- Travel Montage: The comedy version where the line starts meandering chaotically.