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I Walked With A Zombie
Beautiful and creepy
1943
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Starring: James Ellison, Frances Dee, Tom Conway
Yes, the movie is very dreamlike and atmospheric
THE SETUP:
A young nurse is sent to care for the wife of a plantation owner in the West Indies. She soon discovers, however, that her patient is a zombie. Driven by her newfound love for the woman’s husband, she strives to restore the woman’s soul through voodoo.
DISCUSSION:
I found this movie fascinating. This is not a zombie movie in the Dawn of the Dead mode, but in the more native voodoo forms explored in White Zombie and The Serpent and the Rainbow. That is, the zombies are essentially sleepwalkers who cannot wake, not the relentless, bloodthirsty flesh-eating machines we’ve all come to love.
This was Jacques Tourneur's next movie after Cat People, and while most viewers on the IMDb prefer Cat People, I found this one much more interesting. What remains the same is the fantastic noir-ish B&W cinematography, complete with very strong and carefully-placed shadow lines, and a dreamlike atmosphere suffused with sexuality and dread.
But while Cat People took place in the city, this one happens on this West Indian island, which opened up a lot of evocative settings a city environment doesn’t have to offer. For example, when the nurse leaves the shelter of the plantation and heads deep into the fields by moonlight, passing various skulls and hung carcasses of animals, the sense of leaving the safe, civilized and rational behind to head into the mysterious world of the supernatural is quite exciting and palpable. This sequence begins with a silhouette of a man standing still in a crop field. Fade to our nurse leading the zombie wife through the field and past the bones until she finally comes to the man. He appears dead, a body somehow positioned in the field as a marker. The nurse and zombie wife walk off, and the movie delivers a good chill when the man turns and follows after.
The movie is full of questions that it seems to have no interest in answering. There is a LOT of hugger-mugger about whether the plantation owner “made” his wife into a zombie… and if so, how? There is a question that he may be looking to make a zombie out of the nurse, whose affection for him develops rather suddenly [though she seems a bit impressionable from the start]. Then there’s his brother, whose rivalry for the love of the zombie-wife apparently led somehow to her condition, and the suggestion that a similar dynamic is developing with the nurse, again feeding on the fear that she will become a zombie like her charge. One of the unique aspects of this movie is that rather than resolve any of these questions, it just surrounds its characters with all of these possibilities and gets a lot of interest and mileage out of them without feeling the need to deliver a pat answer [or, really, any answer] at the end.
I have already mentioned the walk through the sugar fields as one of the notable sequences, but there are plenty of them. Another is the song sung by the native musicians that tells the story of the plantation owner’s family. The song is in two parts, with the second half being sung quite threateningly to the young nurse, as a warning to go away. A third notable sequence would be the voodoo ritual at the end of the aforementioned walk. In writing this it occurs to me that Cat People also broke into several entrancing sequences, and also featured a notable walk. Watching this film has definitely made me appreciate Cat People more than I had.
One other thing that occurred to be about this movie versus more contemporary thrillers is that NOTHING jumps out or makes a sudden loud noise. As you read about modern thrillers whose scares consist of nothing BUT sudden loud noises, a film that can generate suspense, horror and mystery without having to resort to that stands out as more artistically realized. On the other hand, this approach also requires that the audience have an attention span, which is something the contemporary filmmaker obviously can’t count on.
The story ends quite suddenly, but with a poetically satisfying resolution, that doesn’t answer any questions while leaving all the previously raised ones on the table. It is definitely worth watching for its photography, its wonderful sequences, and the aura of mystery that it evokes and leaves with you.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
Yes, if you don’t mind it being old and satisfying on mostly a literary and technical level. If you’re looking for something more directly scary, steer clear.
RELATED MOVIES:
CAT PEOPLE [Original] is very similar in tone and style, and was created by the same people. If you’re seeing Natasha Kinski, you accidentally got the remake.
WHITE ZOMBIE is an early zombie film very much in this vein [voodoo “sleepwalker” zombies, West Indian setting], starring Bela Legosi.
ZOMBIE combines the rampaging, flesh-eating zombies we love with the West Indian setting and voodoo myths and is directed by Lucio Fulci!
THE SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW is a modern take on the voodoo “sleepwalker” zombie thing and features fun cinematic approximations of hallucinogenic drug trips!
