White Zombie (1932)

It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Copyright 1 August 1932 by United Artists Corp. New York opening at the Rivoli: 28 July 1932. U.S. release: July 1932. Original running time: 73 minutes. Present 1998 TV prints run only 68 minutes and are missing "the one scene which seemed most gripping to Rivoli audiences, wherein zombies carry a body out of its burial grounds and return the corpse to life at the will of hypnotist Murder Legendre." (New York Daily News). SYNOPSIS: An evil hypnotist who staffs his sugar mill with zombies is contracted to exert his influence over a young married girl whom a local plantation owner covets. NOTES: Shot in only two weeks at Universal studios (though of course the many elaborate glass shots and other laboratory work, plus the dubbing of dialogue, music and sound effects, extended the film's production time considerably), White Zombie became one of the most successful independent horror films ever made. It turned its backer, Phil Goldstone, into a multi-millionaire, and won for the Halperin Brothers a contract at Paramount where they made Supernatural which was equally weird, far more polished, but less financially successful. Technically, there's quite a lot wrong with White Zombie. For modern audiences the two most important are the extremely noisy soundtrack (presumably the Halperins could only afford the outmoded sound-on-disc system which was then going cheap for independent producers) and the old-fashioned acting (particularly by once super-popular silent star Madge Bellamy, here attempting a comeback after her 100% talkie debut in the 1929 Tonight at Twelve was indifferently received. Mind you, the other players are not much better. Miss Bellamy seems so bad mainly because the script requires her to mime most of her role. Even Lugosi hams it up, but then that is what we expect of the master. Harron is as unbelievable as Bellamy, but his part is so small it doesn't really matter. Frazer is hammy too, but manages to impress nonetheless. Cawthorn is the most assured of the lot, but he is saddled with an irritating line of comedy relief). Other technical problems include jerky cutting (partly caused by hasty shooting, partly by the need to clip either picture or track when the voices get out of sync); abrupt continuity (partly disguised in TV transmission by the insertion of commercial breaks); and the use of old, full-frame cameras, which means that the image is awkwardly truncated unless printed between bars (which fortunately the 1998 TV prints are). On the positive side, the film is such a genuine weirdie, most audiences will overlook most of the shortcomings. Superlatively atmospheric photography, imaginative direction, staggeringly impressive sets (achieved by almost faultless glass shots), and above all, some of the most bizarre sound effects (including music - note the credit to Xavier Cugat, of all people) ever assembled for a motion picture combine with Lugosi, Frazer and the zombies (brilliantly made up by Universal's legendary master, Jack Pierce) to create a movie experience of absolutely chilling intensity.

This is a very scary movie. 6.4 is underrating. It has a great story line. It also has great acting. It also has great special effects. I give a 9. It is very scary. This is scarier then The Shinning and that is not easy to do. This is of the best horror films of all time. It is better then A Nightmare on elm street and that is not easy to do. This is scarier then the 2009 reboot of Friday the 13th ever could be. This scarier the Bride of Chucky could ever be. This is a very scary. This is scarier then Hellbound Hellrasier II and that is not easy to do. This is scarier then Halloween resurrection could ever be. This is a very scary movie. And if you good horror movie then you need to see this movie.

An early independent horror movie, which stands as the first ever movie to feature zombies, or at least creatures that can be called zombies. Don't be put off by the typical plot, or the fact that these zombies are not of the modern flesh-eating variety seen in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, rather the old-fashioned mute slaves. WHITE ZOMBIE features some nice (if low budgeted) atmospheric scenes in graveyards, where bodies are ripped from their graves under the cover of the night and used in sinister black magic rituals where they are reanimated and set to work. You see, zombies are the perfect workers; they don't talk, they don't need paying, they don't even have a union! We just know we're back in familiar horror territory when the film opens with two young lovers fleeing into an unknown world (in this case, Haiti) in a carriage, little realising the terrible situations they will find themselves in. Unfortunately a lot of potential impact is ruined when the actors begin acting - and we realise that they're hopelessly trapped in the past, their over-acting carefully built up in the silent movies and unable to let go, only a few years after the silent films had actually ended.At fault the most? Probably the actor playing the couple's host, who permanently has manic hair, gleaming eyes, and a larger-than-life persona. The dashing hero is not in the least bit dashing, instead he keeps on fainting instead of battling the hordes of evil, and it is up to an old man to save the day in the final reel! What a wimp. The actress playing his wife isn't much better, it's difficult to distinguish her transformation from human into zombie seeing as she's just about catatonic for the entire film. Still, her woeful/soulless demeanour is a good one and scenes of her under Legendre's control are genuinely unsettling.Thankfully, though, we have old Bela Lugosi hanging around the sets, giving us an actor to watch and recognise in all this madness. Lugosi was already typecast after making the fantastic Dracula, and it shows here, with maximum emphasis on Lugosi's evil appearance (complete with goatee beard). The film also employs the trick of having Lugosi's staring, wild eyes displayed in close-up, a technique Hammer relied on in their Dracula films with Lee substituted for Lugosi. You can really believe that Legendre is capable of hypnotising people with the smallest effort, and of course, being the baddie he gets all the best lines. The best line in the film is where the hero asks who the zombies are, Lugosi replies "For you, my friend, they are the Angels of Death!".Okay, so much of the film is slow and static, but this is to be expected. To break up the dialogue we have some weird shots of zombies at work in the sugar mills, ignoring a fellow worker who collapses into the mill and is ground up in the wheels. They just keep working, willed on by Legendre's powers, single-minded and single-purposed, with no thought of their own. To accentuate the fact that these people are supposedly dead, some crude black makeup is used to make fingers seem thin and skeletal, also in eye sockets to make the actors look like cadavers. While this might not be frightening to a modern audience, it is effective in a simplistic way.WHITE ZOMBIE is perhaps a little too low key for it's own good, but there is some genuine suspense built up at the finale, where Lugosi clutches his hands together in a battle of wills with the hero and heroine, and the zombies are forced to walk off a cliff after good wins out in the end (and you just knew it would). This exciting climax compliments an atmospheric film which wrings maximum haunting impact from the zombies themselves.

This film was introduced to me as being low-budget, and while it made sense upon watching it, the White Zombie certainly exceeded my expectations. To begin with, the light/"color" effects were aesthetically pleasing. I say "color" because of how hard they drove it home that Madge Bellamy's Madeline would indeed be the "white zombie" the title referred to. This could be considered a cheesy or ham-fisted entity, but Bellamy was truly an entity with power on screen, though only in appearance.The acting itself (and often the writing) is actually quite bad pretty consistently. That can have its merits though, especially in this genre. For instance, much of that acting contributes well to the horror/zombie aspect of the film; what would be considered a "classic" element of it today. Bela Lugosi takes it over the top, with his signature presence. While I have trouble getting genuinely invested in films of this nature, Lugosi is truly some sort of force of amusement. The cast is thoroughly entertaining, if nothing else.On top of being a good "classic" horror/zombie movie, White Zombie had several independent merits, both creative and social. For instance, one scene when Neil (played by John Harron) is having something of an emotional breakdown after losing Madeline, and the use of shadows on the wall and noise itself are excellent. It's a visually engaging scene, and one that stuck with me, though White Zombie uses light and shadow extremely well throughout. Sound is a great tool in the film as well, such as the too-quiet scene in the sugar mill when Charles Beaumont, something of an antagonist, pays a visit to Lugosi's Murder Legendre. The grinding noise is striking, and builds to the tone of at least Lugosi's sinister character quite well.Socially, White Zombie implies a lot about the colonialism that affected at the time through its treatment of setting, lore, and the actual people by Beaumont at his manor/plantation. This, however, has far more relevance than being simply a setting today than it would have when it was released, as nothing is explicitly said about these things in the film. But with a modern view, there's certainly something to be seen there.All in all, White Zombie is simply enjoyable and at several points, artful. This is more than can be said for what we would generally think of as a "low-budget" horror movie.