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White Zombie
It's a nice day for a white wedding
1932
Review: September 19, 2006
Director: Victor Halperin
Starring: Bela Legosi, Madge Bellamy, Joseph Cawthorn, Robert Frazer
If, knowing this is a slow movie from the 30’s you still want to, sure.
THE SETUP:
Bela Legosi controls everyone in this town through voodoo.
DISCUSSION:
I got this movie as part of this 50 Horror Movie collection I got a while ago, that I am only now fully coming to appreciate. This is a somewhat well-known movie, if only because it gave the name to Rob Zombie’s band, and for just being an early spooky gem as well.
We begin with Neil and Madeline taking a carriage to Mr. Beaumont’s house in the West Indies. They received an invitation to get married there [and for some reason went along with it]. The first minutes of this movie are among its best as the carriage passes over a ritualistic funeral, in which the body is being buried at a crossroads, so when it gets up and walks it won’t know which way to go. Then they get a visit from Bela Legosi, who seems to take a shine to Madeline, and gives her the ol’ Legosi eye. Then they arrive at Mr. Beaumont’s, and see what we are told are zombies creepily walking silently through the night woods. Welcome to the West Indies! Enjoy your honeymoon!
Okay, so who is this mysterious Mr. Beaumont? I’m glad you asked. However, I don’t know. He’s this guy who lives there, and invited Neil and Madeline to get married at his place. The fact is, he’s got cruel intentions. He enlists Legosi, the local creepy old voodoo wizard, to arrange for Madeline to be his. So Legosi gives him this powder to put on her rose at her wedding, and she’ll smell it and begin the zombification process. This also involves Legosi carving a figure of her out of a candle, then burning its whole head in a flame, which you would think would cause the mother of all Excedrin headaches in her, but no, she passes out and soon dies.
But… is she dead? Legosi takes her body, and next thing you know, she’s up and playing piano, although it must be admitted that that certain sparkle in her eye is gone. Well, I guess because she’s now a zombie. Not a zombie in the Dawn of the Dead sense, a zombie in the just-really-zoned-out, I Walked With a Zombie sense. So Beaumont, who apparently thought that he and his zombie wife would sit around having scintillating conversations on figure painting from the Renaissance through impressionism, is wholly bummed to find that she just plays the piano while staring straight ahead and won’t even look at the expensive jewels he bought her. So he goes to Legosi and wants to call it all off, saying “I thought that beauty would be enough for me—but the soul is gone!” And Legosi, in effect, says:
SPOILERS > > >
“Fuck you, bitch! Hows 'bouts you be my zombie, too!” and he promptly turns MR. BEAUMONT into a zombie! So we know that this Legosi fellow is not one who plays fair, and because of this, we kind of like him.
But what of Neil? He’s still a’pinin’ for his lady love, who’s been with him through all of his ups and downs, and his baddest turnarounds, so he starts sneaking into the castle to rescue her. There is a very interesting scene [for such an early movie] where superimposed images seem to express a mental connection between Neil and Madeline. It’s always interesting [see also The Lodger] to check out these early movies and how they try to capture mental states or processes of thought, back at a time when people were experimenting with how a movie could possibly do that. So Neil sneaks into the castle, there’s a bunch of hugger-mugger, but eventually Legosi is bested, and with his death, the spell he had over Madeline [and presumably all the zombies of the region] is lifted.
< < < SPOILERS END
This film is interesting as it concerns the more realistic legends of zombies that come out of voodoo beliefs, like the aforementioned I Walked With A Zombie and The Serpent and the Rainbow. And like in Serpent and Rainbow at least, the idea is that one man has captured the soul of the person who died and controls them, and all you have to do to release them is get rid of the one guy. The powder that puts one in a death-like coma is also straight from Haitian voodoo, and also seen in Serpent and Rainbow.
What this movie does have that makes it really worth watching is creepy atmosphere, particularly in the first half. With the opening funeral and the spooky image of the zombies walking through the forest, it gives you chills and inspires intrigue that the second half can’t really match, with its more conventional woman-held-at-castle narrative.
So yeah, give it a shot if you’d like to catch up on the early horror classics, like voodoo-type zombies, or just want to get into the creepy atmosphere.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
Yeah, it’s only a little bit over an hour and it’s worth seeing at least once.
RELATED MOVIES:
I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE also features death-coma type zombies, and has amazing photography, a wonderfully sinister story, and several stand-out setpieces.
THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW is one of the only movies I know of to really go into the whole Haitian voodoo thing, and contain creeps and cheese in equal measure.
