I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

In line of previous Jacques Tourneur's Cat People this one is a follow up in same direction,bringing the spooky atmosphere at West Indians island where slavery takes place at this period of time,the black people took their mysticism with them as voodoo,the epic night scene through cane field under the moonlight is quite fantastic when they meet the black man Carrefour,stunning story which has a minor fail,is too short,could be more developed to expand the whole thing,even so deserves a look to all moviefan who likes this genre!!Resume:First watch: 2018 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 7.5

I have always been attracted to the Caribbean region and have found it to be a very mysterious corner of the world. For me, a remote Caribbean island not yet corrupted by large-scale, commercial tourism and floating high rise hotels serves as the perfect setting for a strange and unsettling film such as this. While one reviewer identified the island as Haiti, no one speaks French or even has a French accent, so it shouldn't be Haiti. Curiously, the "filming location" section on IMDb is blank, and I have yet to find the actual locale.As was the case with "Cat People", produced only one year earlier, Director Tourneur and Producer Lewton worked diligently to create an ominous atmosphere with much success. Deep within the unseen jungle, the haunting beat of drums constantly unnerves both the characters and the audience as they persist through the rustling cane fields while the hot, debilitating winds hypnotize the island and all of its inhabitants. We never know when the menacing image of Carrefour, a towering zombie with bulging, catatonic eyes, appears in search of some lost soul physically inhabiting this world but claimed by another. Whether authentic or not, the voodoo ceremony here is captivating and very creepy.While the whites on the island, specifically the Hollands and the Rands, hold economic power, they are spiritually dominated by a much more influential, intangible power of the local, black culture. While the past misery of the island's black enslavement is very clear, none of the local folks seem to be as unhappy as the white planter family. For example, Alma, the maid (Theresa Harris), may cry when her niece is born, she is among the few characters who maintain an overall bright and sunny outlook on island life, which has become a foreboding prison for most of the white folks. From start to finish, this is a very intriguing and entertaining movie on many different levels. For me, the biggest, unresolved mysteries were (1) the mostly unrevealed full story behind the mother, Mrs. Rand (Edith Barrett), and (2) the physical attraction of a dish like nurse Betsy to such a gloomy wretch like Paul Holland (Tom Conway), other than the scarcity of other options available to her. Holland needed an attractive young nurse from Ottawa even more than his zombie wife did. Lucky guy.

After watching I Walked With A Zombie I was shaken a bit, a little unnerved as it were. But when I started to analyze the film I was wondering just what did I see?Frances Dee has been hired to look after Tom Conway's wife Christine Gordon who is in a coma, but this is the sleepwalking type of coma and the natives have identified here as a zombie. Here illness whatever it is has cast a pall on the household. Conway and his mother apparently make a nice income which is half brother James Ellison drinks a lot of it away.One thing that was interesting and highly unusual. The natives are the descendants of escaped slaves and the heritage there is one of reverting back to their tribal beliefs as an act of defiance. Slavery with few exceptions is rarely dealt with from the slave or former slave point of view.Edith Barrett plays Conway and Ellison's mother. She likes Dee and views here as an ideal daughter-in-law for one of her kids. She also has another role on the island, one I can't reveal here. Val Lewton produced and Jacques Tourneur directed I Walked With A Zombie. It's not great, I think it was butchered in the editing department. But the mood that is created will linger with you. And the ending is decades ahead of its time, something you might see in a Stephen King work.

Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) is a Canadian nurse hired to come to the Caribbean island of St. Sebastian, to work at Fort Holland. There she will attend to the needs of the mute, unresponsive, yet seemingly alive Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon). Jessica is wife to a plantation owner named Paul Holland (Tom Conway), with whom Betsy falls in love. Betsy becomes determined to do the right thing by Paul by trying to cure her, if she can. That includes immersing herself in the local voodoo culture.There may be modern horror fans who bemoan the lack of what one might consider horror in "I Walked with a Zombie". It starts to go for more of a traditional creep factor in its second half, using the imposing Darby Jones as the mysterious, zombified Carrefour to great effect. Everything is handled with a great deal of sensitivity and authenticity by screenwriters Curt Siodmak & Ardel Wray, producer Val Lewton, and director Jacques Tourneur. Unlike some of the horror product of the time, it actually treats its black characters with a great deal of dignity and respect, and also gives the actors a chance to shine, such as Theresa Harris as Alma the maid.As was always the case with these Lewton productions, the story (based to some degree on Jane Eyre, with factual articles on voodoo in the West Endies also used as a basis) is pretty tight, and the running time is typically short. (69 minutes all told.) We don't get to know the characters all that well, but we do still like them, and in a refreshing touch, there are no clear cut villains or explanations for the strange events. The actors each do a solid job: Dee as the heroine, Conway as the husband, James Ellison as his half brother, Edith Barrett (in old age make-up) as their mother, James Bell as the doctor, and Sir Lancelot as the calypso singer. As one can see, some of the cast were regulars in these Lewton films.Overall, there's a real feeling of sadness to the atmosphere, helping to make this one of the best of Lewtons' filmography. One wouldn't know from the end result how quickly and cheaply these productions were made, as they have the power to grip their viewers 70 plus years later.Eight out of 10.