Africa Shrieks, released early in 1931, was the first of a number of films that directly parodied the popular jungle travelogue Africa Speaks (1930). Indeed the director of Africa Shrieks, Roy Mack, and screenwriter Burnet Hershey were also responsible for Africa Speaks – English, a 1933 Vitaphone short, featuring ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Other comic reworkings of Africa Speaks include two cartoons entitled Africa Squeaks – one from 1932 and a Looney Tunes production from 1940 – and a further cartoon, Africa Squawks from 1939. The setting and colonial narrative of Africa Speaks were again reworked in the Wheeler and Woolsey comedy, So This is Africa (1933), and the Abbott and Costello feature, Africa Screams (1949).

The Vitaphone shorts represent some of the earliest examples of sound films. Warner Bros. had acquired Vitaphone in 1925 and between 1926 and 1930 Warners and First National adopted Vitaphone’s pioneering process of sound-on-disk recording. By 1928 Vitaphone, as a subsidiary of Warners, was releasing four pictures a week, some of which (Vitaphone Presentations) recorded and presented opera and jazz stars, while others (Vitaphone Playlets) provided all-talking adaptations of theatrical pieces and original comedies. The third category, Vitaphone Varieties, were produced at two studios – in Hollywood and in Brooklyn – and thus offered both talking film stars and Broadway performers. In particular, the Vitaphone Varieties brought vaudeville performers such as Hugh Cameron to the screen, prompting Roy Liebman to argue that ‘Vitaphone was the place vaudeville went to “die”’ (Liebman, 2003, 5). However, Vitaphone’s productions of vaudeville acts also helped the smaller movie theatres to provide popular, diverse and affordable entertainment programmes, with Africa Shrieksappearing predominantly at regional theatres in, for example, Charleston, West Virginia; Madison, Wisconsin; Portsmouth, Ohio; and Reno, Nevada.

Africa Shrieks arrived in England in May 1931. Kinematograph Weekly dismissed the film as ‘a poor attempt at burlesque travelogue’ and stated that the film would play to ‘unsophisticated audiences only’ (KW, 28 May 1931, 34). Yet in America Variety suggested that the film ‘will hit on any program’, noting that ‘audiences that have seen the jungle pictures previously will recall the clips and satire enjoyably’ (Variety, 1 April 1931, 16). Africa Shrieks directly responded to the popularity of Africa Speaks and this would have been particularly significant in areas, such as Oleon, New York, where in January 1931 Africa Shrieks played in theatres while Africa Speaks was also playing on neighbouring screens (Oleon Herald, 24 January 1931, 7).