Congo Free State
Joseph Conrad’s novel "Heart of Darkness", originally published in 1899 as a three-part series in "Blackwood's Magazine", inspired by his service as a captain on a steamer on the Congo 12 years before, sparked an organized international opposition to Leopold's exploitational activities. In 1900, Edmund Dene Morel, a part-time journalist and head of trade with Congo for the Liverpool shipping firm Elder Dempster, noticed that ships that brought vast loads of rubber from the Congo only ever returned there loaded with guns and ammunition for the "Force Publique". Morel became a journalist and then a publisher, attempting to discredit Leopold's regime. In 1902, Morel retired from his position at Elder Dempster to focus on campaigning. He founded his own magazine, "The West African Mail", and conducted speaking tours in Britain.
Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death
The film ends happily for the trio of main characters: Bunny and Jim are to be married, and Jean-Pierre has enrolled at Dr. Hunt's university as a feminist studies major, becoming in the process the ideal companion for Hunt.The film's plot loosely parallels that of novel "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, as well as "Apocalypse Now", which was also partly based on "Heart of Darkness". Both "Heart of Darkness" and "Apocalypse Now" feature a character named Kurtz who has gone deep into the jungle to become the deranged leader of a group of "savages"; these peoples engage in barbaric rites as an alternative to the rigid and restrictive values of the outside world. The name of the character Ford Maddox, one of the men who recruits Margo to enter the jungle, refers to author Ford Madox Ford, who collaborated on three novels with Conrad (though not on "Heart of Darkness"). When Kurtz and Hunt battle with fencing swords, Kurtz is stabbed, and her dying words are: "You don't know what it's like, trying to face David Letterman with a book on male insensitivity ... All right, I was exploiting the Piranha women. You don't know what it was like. David Letterman, God, the horror ... the horror of that show ... the horror." In "Heart of Darkness", Kurtz's dying words are: "The horror! The horror!"