I Walked With a Zombie

(1943) ***1/2

JPX reviewed this film back in the oh -five and not a single person commented on it. Shame on all y'all!

1933 gave birth to the zombie film. White Zombie succeeded in raising mass awareness of walking dead guys and it inspired some impressive follow-ups. By 1940 however, public interest in horror movies waned. The “classic” monster movies struggled to stay relevant by injecting comedy into the formula. Bob Hope made zombies laughable in The Ghost Breakers (1940). The undead shed more dignity when they appeared on Broadway in Zombies on Broadway (1945). I haven’t seen that one yet and I'm not looking forward to it but... *shudder*. Perhaps the most depressing side effect of The Great Depression was Hollywood's reluctance to finance zombie films in the 1940's. I Walked With a Zombie emerged as the best (and only good) zombie flick of the decade.

Directed by Jacques Tourneur (Cat People), the story is told from the perspective of Betsy Connell, a nurse who travels to the West Indies to care for the catatonic wife of plantation owner Paul Holland. Aside from the relatively small white community on the plantation, the island is primarily inhabited by descendants of African slaves. Paul's wife Jessica walks around vacantly, and is said to be suffering from an incurable tropical fever (though the name of the movie suggests otherwise). Betsy develops a strong bond with Paul and also becomes acquainted with his alcoholic brother Wesley. As the brothers' actions that led to Jessica’s “condition” are slowly revealed, Betsy turns to local Voodoo practitioners in search of a cure.

I Walk With a Zombie shines partly because Tourneur's strict attention to shadows and lighting injects each scene with a sense of dread. The most striking few minutes involves Betsy's nightmarish walk through a sugar cane field on her way to the voodoo ceremony where she comes head to head with a this really awesome looking dude:


The ceremonial scenes are mesmerizing and the sensitive depiction of Caribbean culture has been praised for its (relative) accuracy.

But the true appeal lies more in the vibe than the scares. I was captivated in the very first scene. As Betsy gazes wistfully towards the ocean from the boat, Paul shatters her sense of awe and introduces himself to her (and us) by stating “It is not beautiful Those flying fish - they are not leaping for joy. They're jumping in terror. Bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water -- it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies. It's the glitter of putrescence. There's no beauty here -- it's death and decay.” This speech sets the “not fucking around” tone of the movie.

I'm not going to tell you that you must see this - oldie B-movies are an acquired taste - but I had no problem getting sucked in. The plot may be simplistic but the characters are multidimensional. Their evident strengths mask their weaknesses, and vice versa. The ending is open to interpretation, but in a thought provoking, rather than unsatisfying way.