I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

User Rating:

7.4/10   

Director:

Jacques Tourneur

Writers:

Inez Wallace (story)
Curt Siodmak (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

30 April 1943 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Horror | Romance | Thriller

Tagline:

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!

Plot:

A young Canadian nurse (Betsy) comes to the West Indies to care for Jessica, the wife of a plantation manager (Paul Holland)...

Plot Keywords:

Love | Nurse | Canadian | Voodoo | West Indies

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

James Ellison	...	Wesley Rand
Frances Dee	...	Betsy Connell
Tom Conway	...	Paul Holland
Edith Barrett	...	Mrs. Rand
James Bell	...	Dr. Maxwell
Christine Gordon	...	Jessica Holland
Theresa Harris	...	Alma - Maid (as Teresa Harris)
Sir Lancelot	...	Calypso Singer
Darby Jones	...	Carrefour
Jeni Le Gon	...	Dancer (as Jeni LeGon)

Runtime:

69 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Colour:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

USA:PG (TV rating) | Iceland:L | Argentina:13 | Australia:PG | Sweden:15 | UK:A (original rating) | UK:PG (video rating) (1998) | USA:Approved (PCA #8949)

Company:

RKO Radio Pictures

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.

Quotes:

Paul Holland: 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.
Betsy Connell: You can't really believe that.
Paul Holland: Everything good dies here. Even the stars.

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in Zombies on Broadway (1945)

Soundtrack:

The British Grenadiers

Good, but flawed in my view

The film opens with Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) being interviewed for a home-care nursing position. Oddly, she's asked during the interview if she believes in witchcraft. She gets the position, working for Paul Holland (Tom Conway), who is a wealthy plantation owner on the Caribbean island of St. Sebastian. Holland has hired her to take care of his wife, Jessica (Christine Gordon), who is in a perpetual state that resembles somnambulance. As Betsy spends more time on the island, she learns that most of the population believes in and practices voodoo, and she learns that Jessica had a relatively tumultuous past with Holland's family.

This was director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton's second horror/thriller collaboration (the first being Cat People (1942) and the third The Leopard Man (1943)). For many viewers, it is their favorite of the three. While I like the film, I don't like it quite that much--I prefer Cat People. But still, I Walked With A Zombie ends up with a 7 out of 10 from me.

The horror aspects of I Walked With A Zombie are really very minor. They're really present only as a kind of personification of the results of complicated romantic and familial relationships. Yes, there is an admirable "haunted house"-styled scene involving a spooky stairway and creepy, distant sounds, and yes, the trek to the voodoo "home fort" is well done, but this kind of material doesn't work as well for me here as it did in Cat People, because here it's not really the focus of the story. It's ancillary material with the function of helping to solve a very different kind of mystery. Also, much of the voodoo material (such as the actual ceremony) tends to be overrated in my opinion, although the final sequence related to the voodoo theme is appropriately eerie.

But what works best for me in I Walked With A Zombie are the many dialogue-heavy scenes where the three main characters--Connell, Holland and Wesley Rand (James Ellison)--gradually learn more about one another, and where the "mystery" is gradually uncovered. A scene where a local "minstrel" sings part of the backstory while Connell and Rand are having a drink is exquisite, for example. Yet, even with this positive aspect, I never felt that the backstory was sufficiently explained. The mystery remains, and the moralizing bookends of the film do not help, either.

Still, I Walked With A Zombie is definitely worth a watch, and based on the extravagant praise that many viewers utter towards the film, you might like it much better than I do.