The Comedians in Africa (1967): Cast & Plot

In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Mr. Brown Alec Guinness owns a hotel he inherited from his mother. Returning from New York, where he tried to sell the floundering business, Brown discovers a small circle of hopeful guests among his shipmates: Major Jones from England and Mr. and Mrs. Smith from the United States.

Jones arrives with an arm’s-length mission to sell weapons to the government led by François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, but his contact has fallen from favor, and Jones is arrested, beaten, and jailed by Captain Concasseur. The Smiths have a different aim—promoting vegetarianism—but their connection, the Minister of Public Welfare, has tangled with the regime and ends up dead by his own hand at Brown’s hotel to avoid torture by the Tontons Macoute, Duvalier’s brutal secret police.