To those who, while young, were dragged kicking and screaming past the Monkey House, and now spend their moments of adult leisure in front of Abercromble and Fitch show-cases, we recommend "Trader Horn", now showing at the Majestic Theater, as an effective tonic. The latest Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer "miracle picture", filmed in the heart of Darkest Africa at the risk of life and bank account, includes superb sound studies of savage men and beasts, who have entered into the spirit of the thing with a gusto which must at times have embarrassed the camera-men.

Raging lions snuff at prostrate heroines, or are driven from their kill by a famine-stricken cast. Serpents lazily uncoil from a most tropical-looking tree, and plop down a scant foot or so behind the ragged hero. Horn and his gun-bearer, Renchero, swing deftly over a pool alive with crocodiles, on a dangling vine. "And through this mighty drama of a primitive world runs the beautiful love romance of a boy and girl that grips the heart"--so runs the come-hither phraseology of the advertising manager.

Fortunately the "beautiful love romance" brings in its train a series of excellent "shots" of native villages in a frenzy of "juju" madness, fleeting glimpses of horrible tortures, and medicine-men dancing madly to the original Jungle Band. Otherwise the erotic element is not as hot as its geographic position would indicate. The abstraction of the lovely white goddess, Nina (played by Miss Booth) from her Tanganyikan homestead, in the teeth of the united tribes of Africa, is a bit unconvincing. Even the faultless characterization of Trader Horn by Harry Carey, played up by the juvenile lead, fails to bring power to a mediocre plot.

Skillful photography, and phenomenal condescension on the part of the African fauna, however, make "Trader Horn" the super-show that it claims to be.