Category: Zombies

      There are some movies that bring out a wide range of opinions.  Lots of people really like them.  Lots really hate them.  Plenty of people are scattered in-between.

   White Zombie is one of those movies. There are plenty of reasons.  Not all the acting is good. Some is plain bad, especially that of the hero and heroine.  White Zombie was made just after the silent-film era ended.  Like many early talkies, some of its acting feels awkward, dated.  In addition, this movie was made on a low budget, and this hurts it at certain points.  (One major flub was accidentally left in; look closely when Silver, Beaumont’s servant is thrown into the water near the end.)  You also find humor, possibly too much humor, especially one running gag that wears out pretty fast.

Then why do other people like it so much? First, its atmosphere  is often genuinely creepy.  Again and again, you get a feeling that characters are in way over their heads, trying to deal with forces
they are ignorant of.  Forces they are unable to fight, even if they understood them better.

Beaumont, the sleazy rich man may remind you a little of Mickey Mouse in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.  He has played with magic and now the magic is pulling him under, drowning him.

Bela Lugosi’s character, Murder Legendre is the zombie-maker that Beaumont has paid to turn the woman he loves into a zombie.  Legendre is more than idle talk, way more.  He has the powers he claims to have.  Soon Beaumont is realizing the terrible price of dealing with Legendre.

Lugosi’s best known character, Count Dracula was pure evil, with no redeeming features.  But for many years now, he has become a rather clichéd character. He has some of the vampire’s traditional powers, but you don’t  see him use these powers much.

Legendre is also pure evil, but more than Dracula, he is someone capable of doing real damage.  Along with Beaumont, you get to see his evil potential.  Legendre and the Sayer of the Law in The Island of Lost Souls are probably Lugosi’s all-time best roles.

Murder Legendre–perhaps Lugosi’s best role

The story seems pretty straight-forward…at first.  The beautiful Madeline has come to Haiti to marry Neil, after a long engagement.  Beaumont, the rich. man Madeline meets on her way there, has fallen wildly in love with her.  To turn Madeline into a zombie and keep her his captive, Beaumont has made a deal with Murder Legendre.  Beaumont hopes that he can make the zombie-Madeline fall in love with him.

It is up to Neil along with an old missionary, Bruner to get Madeline away from Beaumont.  Bruner is the only character who knows enough about voodoo to match Legendre’s powers.

Why else does White Zombie work?  It deals for example with this frightening question:

What might it feel like to experience your human qualities, the capabilities you take for granted, begin to  slip away from you?  To turn powerless, or into a zombie, unable to think?  Except for some of David Cronenberg’s imaginative films (for example,
The Fly, The Brood, Videodrome, Naked Lunch),   It’s a question that not enough horror movies ever deal with. The Thing (1982) which probably included the best special effects to that point, never really goes there.

     White Zombie is able to open this frightening door a little.  This is a scene with Legendre and Beaumont and you don’t want to be in Beaumont’s place. Legendre is reminding Beaumont of the day they made the deal for Madeline’s soul.  At that moment Beaumont had refused to shake Legendre’s hand. (Beaumont is the kind of arrogant aristocrat who hires others to do his dirty work.) Now, Beaumont’s hand has turned useless.  You see him
vainly trying to prod or twist or flex some life back into it.

Nothing works.  Beaumont can no longer speak, but he is still able to hear.  Legendre reminds him of his past insult.  He tells Beaumont that he, Legendre, has turned men into zombies before, but Beaumont is the first to know what was happening to them.   Then he adds, “We understand each other better… now.”

Beaumont makes a small, pathetic try at touching Legendre’s hand with his own.  Legendre pats the useless hand, then walks away while Beaumont continues to struggle. And like him, you sit there letting your imagination do its worst.

In addition, a lot of White Zombie’s power comes from its taking place in a Third-World country in which an ancient folk tradition, voodoo, is as strong as organized religion.  Of the American and European characters, only Bruner has the knowledge to deal with voodoo.  He tells Neil straight out that the authorities in this country are too intimidated by magic to come to their aid.

And here is where the movie gets into questions of political correctness and racism.  It can’t avoid them, when you think about it.

You can say “Well… this is the 1930’s and these characters are typical of that (pre-Civil Rights Era) time. They are probably scared as hell to be the minority race—White.”   One of Neil’s comments is particularly racist; “Alive…in the hands of Natives?  Better dead than that.”

But I think if we are honest with ourselves, some of that feeling still exists in white people now.  For example, you feel a big relief when Neil, Madeline, and the coach driver are finally off the road and safe on Mr. Beaumont’s property.  (Keep in mind, the driver who is Afro-American, is more afraid than they are.)

For me, the Black-White issues are definitely part of the ominous quality you feel.  But if you are not White, you can still find things to be scared about.  The zombies who stay with Legendre, ready at any time to do his bidding are all White men.  But they are slaves.  Their power to function, think, and feel has been torn out, obliterated out of them by Legendre. They are no better off than the zombies at Legendre’s mill, whose entire existence comes down to turning the creaking wheel in that same endless circle, hour after hour after hour. In an understated way this is one of the creepiest moments in the movie.

The mill

Keep in mind too, that White Zombie was made during the worst of the Great Depression.  In those.days, mandatory overtime was a lot more than a temporary inconvenience.  Nobody knew yet if the Depression had bottomed out or how much longer it could go on.  Conditions today are not as tough.  But most of us (whatever our race and ethnic background) know, or at least know of, someone older, unable to retire, forced to work at Wal-Mart, or some supermarket or mega-pharmacy. White Zombie taps into those fears too.  For many people in the early 1930’s, jobs not much better than in Legendre’s sugar mill were all that stood between them and homeless life.  Those were the only choices left.

Before the Depression hit, supernatural themes in American movies were rare.  In those movies, characters would stay in haunted houses and see ghosts, for example. But almost without
exception the magic and the ghosts turned out to be fakery at
the end.  Explanations turned out to be rational and realistic.

Here, things feel bleak and out of control.  Legendre’s hands hold a candle wrapped in Madeline’s scarf, and he squeezes the candle into the shape he wants.  At the same moment Madeline starts to
give a corny, conventional wedding toast, then suddenly looks into her glass and says “I see…Death.”  She collapses and appears to die.  Intense stuff for a mainstream American movie.

Madeline

Some of the music is effective too.  The funeral chant as the
movie opens is another reminder that you are now in an alien
land.   Much later Neil finally reaches the castle where Madeline is a prisoner.

You sense their souls reaching out, trying somehow to contact the other.  The hymn Listen to the Lambs, hummed, with no musical accompaniment, is eerie and dramatic at this moment.

Pick a night when you’re feeling patient and open to. suggestion, the darker and quieter the better.

Forget about some of the bad acting and dialogue, and concentrate on the atmosphere.  White Zombie may very well
surprise you.

      “You have to accept this one on its own
terms.” 

      This definitely applies to
I Walked With a Zombie.  But doing it may
not be easy.  My advice; give this one a chance.   Be
patient. Stay with it, see it more than once.  (The first
time I watched it was a major disappointment.)

     If you’re a big fan of cannibal-zombie movies,
for example, Night of the Living Dead, you will
feel like you’re in another Universe when you watch this.
 Hardly any blood, no cannibalism for sure.  The pace
tends to be slow.  

     It may feel as much of a domestic drama as a
horror movie at first.   A love triangle between husband,
wife and husband’s brother. The highly regarded director Jacques
Tourneur and producer Val Lewton were people with no interest in
cheap shocks.  No doubt they were after something more
subtle.  But they succeeded in creating a mood, an atmosphere
that is sinister….but poetic.  You may find yourself struck
by its beauty, at the same time you are feeling the suspense.

     In addition, you feel a sadness running
through this movie.  Reminiscent of other Lewton productions
such as Cat People and
The Seventh Victim.
 Near its opening, the heroine Betsy believes she is alone,
on a ship’s deck; she is entranced with viewing the ocean at
night: the flying fish and mysterious lights.  A man walks
by, stops near her. “It’s not beautiful,” are his first words.
 

     The Caribbean has an unmistakable enchantment,
but a dark side too.  Betsy’s first conversation on arriving
at the island of San Sebastian has to do with the slave trade, the
tragic legacy of the slave ships and the Middle Passage.

     She is a nurse, hired by Paul, a rich planter,
to care of his wife, Jessica.  Right away, you feel that
Betsy is a good person, someone having great faith in the goodness
of other people.  That intuition is absolutely right, but
Betsy’s faith will be tested again and again by the sad, bitter
family situation she has taken on.

     Betsy’s first scene is in Canada; snow falls
outside. This is one sign of how far from home she has travelled
when she arrives in the Caribbean.  Life at the Rand family
home is a bitter, festering situation.  The family members
are deadlocked, stalemated.   No one knows why Jessica is in
her present state.  She is conscious but silent.  She
appears to recognize no one, react to no one.  Is she insane?
 Are her symptoms the permanent effects of a high fever she
once suffered?  Or can she be a zombie?

     Whatever the truth is, no one: Paul, his
half-brother Wesley, their mother Mrs. Rand, the Doctor, the
servant Alma; none can aid her.  They have no power.
 Each of them is a sympathetic character in their own way.
 Well-meaning…but powerless.  

     Looking back, Paul knows he was not a good
husband to Jessica.  Betsy slowly begins to understand him.
Beneath his harsh surface, he is a man who wants the best for his
wife; he appreciates Betsy’s kindness. 

     Wesley needs alcohol to get him through his
days, no mistaking this.  But he  has his reasons—he
loves Jessica too; he truly thought he could make her happier than
Paul did.  Wesley describes Paul, then is interrupted before
he is finished.  But what you do hear is overwhelmingly
negative.  Wesley feels that Paul hurt her with his words as
much as hitting her would have.  He feels cheated of his
chance to make Jessica’s life better.  His situation has
become as bleak as Ethan’s story in the great novel
Ethan Frome.  

     Their mother Mrs. Rand has worked hard to help
the island people. She has tried to find some sort of effective
mix of modern medicine with an understanding of their folk
remedies. But all her effort has brought her no answers for
Jessica’s condition.  

     Some of the plot will remind you of the novel
Jane Eyre: the insane wife, the bitter husband
who turns out to be a good man, the naïve but brave, idealistic
woman he hires, the love they feel for one another.  

     But there are differences too: Betsy knows
about Jessica from the beginning, and she is willing to take a
terrifying journey to help her.  Traditional Western medicine
has done Jessica no good.  Betsy decides to take Alma’s
advice; to bring Jessica to a voodoo doctor as a last resort.
 Night falls.  The two women leave the plantation house
and walk through a strange world of windblown cane fields.
 These moments have been praised by one critic after another;
praise well deserved.  You probably will never experience
atmosphere that is so eerie yet so poetically beautiful. One book
printed some stills and wrote that the photos might possibly give
an idea of the power in the filmed images.

 

Betsy (holding flashlight) walks with Jessica

Betsy shows her courage in bringing Jessica
to the ceremony

These scenes are effective on an emotional level too.  It
takes true courage for Jessica to walk through this eerie
landscape with no more protection than Alma’s words.
 Jessica’s unchanging face reminds you again and again how
helpless she is.  Betsy is on her own.  Yet she is able
to find the strength inside herself to continue.

    At first, it feels as though the frightening journey
changes nothing. But this outsider, Betsy, in bringing Jessica to
the voodoo ceremony, sets events into motion.  It feels as
though this encounter has has tapped into older, traditional
forces.   Forces that now can no longer be stopped.

     Her first day in San Sebastian, a driver told
Betsy about a figurehead, once part of a slave ship.  Now it
sits in the gardens, on Rand property.  Many local people
still believe this figurehead has magic powers. What happens later
will change Betsy and Paul forever…events bound up with the arrows
buried in this figurehead.   Looking back on it, you feel it
was only a matter of time.  The powers of magic, the agony of
the slave ship legacy, combine into a force that is stronger than
Western medicine.   Possibly even stronger than Western
civilization.

     The plot in
I Walked with a Zombie is not its strong suit.
 But so many other elements work in this movie.  You
feel the feminist theme—Betsy is no doubt the strongest character
among the white people.  Her goodness and faith more than
compensate for her lack of knowledge.  She is able to start
the process that finally brings healing to the family.

     In addition, this movie shows an insightful
attitude to colonial environments, white characters and Third
World characters, especially for its time, the pre-Civil Rights
Era.  You feel as though the magic practitioners can control
the forces of Nature.  That they always possessed the powers,
but only waited for the right moment to use them.

     And in a quiet way, the Afro-American
characters are not afraid to speak the truth.  The driver
tells Betsy straight out about the slave trade and about the
figurehead from the slave ship.  And the singer, Sir
Lancelot, singing his sad, almost angry song, on the streets of
the town.  He apologizes to Wesley (he had not known Wesley
was there) but makes sure that he finishes the song for Betsy
later on.  You get several clear indications that Alma
understands much more of Jessica’s state of mind than she admits
to. 

  Voices that won’t be silenced

    The filmmakers leave it to you to decide why one
character does what he does, bringing the conflict to a
resolution.  My own feeling—it is the will of the old magic;
the powers Mrs. Rand wanted to learn for her own, well-meaning
purposes.  

     But the gaping canyon between cultures makes
this impossible.  Only those brought here on the slave slips,
who have lived on the island for generations have these powers.

     Don’t focus too much on the characters, or
especially, on the plot.  Don’t try to read too much into the
dialogue. Concentrate on the understated moods and the feelings
they bring out.  

     Stay with the images, the subtle changes in
sound.  As much as this movie may lack in some areas, it is a
unique experience.  Go in without expectations and I think
you will see what I’m talking about.