I Walked With A Zombie (1943)

A Canadian nurse is hired to care for the wife of a sugar plantation owner, who has been acting strangely, on a Caribbean island.

I Walked with a Zombie is a 1943 horror film directed by Jacques Tourneur. It was the second horror film from producer Val Lewton for RKO Pictures.

A young Canadian nurse (Betsy) comes to the West Indies to care for Jessica, the wife of a plantation manager (Paul Holland). Jessica seems to be suffering from a kind of mental paralysis as a result of fever. When she falls in love with Paul, Betsy determines to cure Jessica even if she needs to use a voodoo ceremony, to give Paul what she thinks he wants.

I walked with a Zombie is another brilliant result of the collaborations between producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur. Released one year after the simply astonishing movie 'Cat People', this is yet another intelligently elaborated and genuinely original genre-masterpiece.  Tourneur manages to bring suspense in a subtle way. Without bloody images but with a unique photography and efficient set pieces! I walked with a Zombie contains great dialogs, intriguing characters and mind bending plot-twists.

Who said the dead don't walk?

Lewton's ideals are more focused on suggestion in a psychological way, the scares more cloaked in a shadowy unease, director Jacques Tourneur perfectly in tune with his producer to unhinge the audience by way of an approaching dread we can't see. Some of Tourneur's work here is wonderful, hauntingly elegiac sequences linger long in the memory, rustling wind blows as characters are appearing to float thru sugar cane fields, the distant rumble of ceremonial drums luring them forward with mystical powers. A voodoo zombie shuffling on a mission to fetch poor Jessica from the plantation home is not horrifying, its damn near gorgeous, soft and near silent in its execution, the whole film is simply full of memorable moments.

Written by Curt Siodmak, the concept for the piece came about by way of a number of newspaper articles that were telling of voodoo and witchcraft in Haiti, the scope for a screamathon horror movie was obviously there, but thankfully in this viewers humble opinion, we get a classy and chilling film that is dripping with ethereal beauty from first reel to last.

See it happen--right before your startled eyes...in the screen sensation that rips the mask from the darkest secrets of forbidden voodoo!

The characters are interesting and the performances are top-notch. Particularly notable is the lovely Frances Dee who plays Betsy Connell and Tom Conway who plays Paul Holland.  During their journey to the island Paul says to Betsy, "It's easy enough to read the thoughts of a newcomer. Everything seems beautiful because you don't understand. Those flying fish, they're 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. The glitter of putrescence. There is no beauty here, only death and decay. Everything good dies here, even the stars."  Okay, he might be stating fact, but chill the fuck out dude. She's not going to give you any pussy talking like that.

Fans of Fulci zombies may be disappointed by the lack of gut-munching gore here. These zombies are not cadavers returned from the grave, half-rotted horrors shambling about looking for flesh to feast upon. These are traditional, mind-erased zombies, unfeeling, unthinking and unresponsive to anything. The atmosphere is wonderful, filled with great music, strong women and natives who look like the real thing. The love triangle quickly becomes a love square and the haunting conclusion is both shocking and grimly satisfying. Fans of the brilliant Tourneur won't be disappointed - his mark is all over this beautiful film, from beginning to end. It is one of his very best.

Blonde Beauty - Doomed to be one of the walking dead!

Trivia:

Val Lewton did not like the article "I Walked With A Zombie" by Inez Wallace that had been optioned, so he adapted the story to fit the novel "Jane Eyre" because he felt the article's plot was too clichéd.

Hanging on the wall in Jessica's room is a copy of Arnold Böcklin's mysterious painting "Isle of the Dead," which would serve as the basis for another Lewton production with that title two years later.

In the script, the fictitious island is very explicitly identified as being owned by the United States. None of these items (such as a prominent American flag flying at the harbor) made it into the film, and items like the island's association with Ontario (where Betsy is from) suggest that it might instead be a current or former British colony.

Sir Lancelot wrote the song "Shame and Scandal in the Family" for this movie. In the early 1960s Lord Melody used the melody and the chorus and an old humorous story to create a new song, initially called "Wau Wau", though it became more familiarly known under its original title. The song was recorded by a variety of international artists (e.g.. The Kingston Trio, Odetta, Peter Tosh and The Wailers), even becoming a #1 hit in Australia. In the course of its life, the original writers have been ignored at times, with the authorship being attributed to a duo of Donaldson and Brown, instead of Sir Lancelot and Ardel Wray (the film's co-writer).

Sorry I sang that song about your fucked up family.

The legal disclaimer at the end of the credits, which roll at the start of the film, makes light of the film's subject. The disclaimer states: "The characters and events depicted in this photoplay are fictional. Any similarity to actual persons, living, dead, or possessed, is purely coincidental."

Edith Barrett, who played the mother, was only 3 years older than James Ellison, who played her younger son, Wesley. She actually was 2 years younger than Tom Conway, who played her older son, Paul.

Although the screenplay is credited to "Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray", the two did not work together on the film and in fact never even met each other. Wray was brought in after Siodmak left.

The role played by Frances Dee was originally filled by Anna Lee.

The two figures seen walking along the beach during the opening credits are Frances Dee and Darby Jones.

Included among the "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die", edited by Steven Schneider.

The Boomslang snake's venom causes you to bleed from all holes of your body.

See this strange, strange story of a woman whose lure set brother against brother; whose love caused hate - and whose beauty bowed to the will of an evil spell in whose power we must refuse to believe - EVEN IF IT'S TRUE!