MONSTER SERIAL: I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943)

I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, 1943
Starring: James Ellison, Frances Dee, Tom Conway
Directed by: Jacques Tourneur

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT, ALFIE? A Canadian nurse is hired to care for the wife of a sugar plantation owner on the Caribbean island of Saint Sebastian, but there's more to the patient's illness than meets the eye. The nurse is slowly drawn into gothic intrigue, family secrets and a community where science and voodoo have become indistinguishable.

WHAT'S IT REALLY ABOUT? Euthanasia. Oh, and Jane Eyre.

The tragedy at the heart of the story is the unresolved illness of Jessica Holland, who was struck down years earlier by a mysterious "tropical fever" that robbed her of her mind. Suffering from brain damage (well, spinal cord damage, but whatever) she's otherwise healthy, but mentally vacant.

Jessican's family was already fragmented before the illness. Her husband and his half-brother are divided by blood, while their mother spends her days operating a medical clinic while dabbling at night in voodoo. There's not an abundance of truth in this family, mostly because they're at odds over what to do about Jessica, who is technically dead and gone but still haunting their home.

To its credit, the movie doesn't offer any solutions to this problem. Screenwriters Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray (it's unclear who is responsible for the lion's share of the story that made it to screen) deal with the subject with grace and maturity, even shrouding the film's resolution in ambiguity. There is no pat solution to the problem and there is no happy ending for anyone involved. We're warned of this at the start, as Jessica's husband/widow Paul warns nurse Betsy (as well as the audience) that the beauty we're about to witness on the Caribbean island is the product of death and decay. He's a profoundly screwed up individual.

ZOMBIE is a gothic romance masquerading as a horror film, a not-so-thinly veiled pastiche of JANE EYRE that I've come to think of as "horror noir." While Charlotte Bronte's anti-hero keeps his nightmarish marriage a secret, Paul Rand wears his tragedy like a badge of honor. He's become a ghost, himself, shackled to a dead woman by duty and honor. Even when he learns later that his mother might have been responsible for Jessica's condition, and that his wife had been planning to run off with his brother, he still refuses to let go of the past. There's nothing in the movie to suggest this bondage will ever be broken, even when wife and brother are both dead by the movie's end.

WHY ARE WE STILL TALKING ABOUT THIS MOVIE? I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE is a lush, atmospheric movie that has both style and substance. While Universal's horror films experienced a slow decline in quality, eventually letting the make-up and costumes do the work the screenwriters could not, ZOMBIE is a clever, nuanced film that manages to work despite the meager number of actual zombies seen on screen. I doubt anyone is going into this movie expecting a George Romero orgy of gore, but fans of modern horror might be a little put off by its atypical style. Even the "ZOMBIE" of the movie's title refers to Jessica's ailment, and not a voodoo spirit.

Still, it's a surprisingly spooky movie that often shames its contemporaries, which is pretty much true for producer Val Lewton's output during the 1940s. Lewton was make the head of RKO's "horror" division the year before ZOMBIE was released, and cranked out low-budget pictures under some surprisingly stringent conditions. In a case of putting the cart before the horse, RKO gave Lewton the titles for the movies he was to make, their running times (each film was to be less than 75 minutes long; Zombie is not quite 70 minutes) and to be made on budgets of $150,000 each.

This kind of corporate film making rarely produces a good product, but Lewton turned these disadvantages to his favor and generated  numerous impressive, original horror films in a short period of time. 

IS IT TIME TO STOP TALKING ABOUT IT? Hell, no. While the idea of a white privileged class ruling over an island of "magical negroes" is rife with racism, there's something surprisingly genteel about the film. Race is less of an issue on the island than class, and nurse Betsy clearly identifies with the islands black servants more than she does her white employers. You have to prepare yourself for ignorant, sometimes flat-out evil cultural tropes when watching classic movies, but ZOMBIE thankfully pulls its punches.

It also works in ways that modern horror movies no longer do. Horror, like comedy, is difficult to do, which is why so many directors tend to cut corners. You don't know if your joke is funny until after you tell it, and directors don't know if their movie is scary until after they screen it. I think this is why so many horror movies (and comedies) set the bar so low. The SAW movies have more in common with the POLICE ACADEMY series than not, engineered for audiences who expect a very specific, pasteurized product. When used injudiciously, gore is the fart joke of horror movies. It's safe. Despite the element's tenancy to push MPAA ratings boundaries you might even say gore is creatively timid.

Depending on your tastes, I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE might look a little quaint. But that also makes its creepier moments that much more creepy. It's also a beautifully shot movie, especially when it's making with the spooky. RKO certainly didn't spend the money on a horror picture that they spent on the Carey Grant movie, Mr. Lucky, that same year, but you'd never know it.

Val Lewton: Horror movies a distraction from war (1942)

Director Jacques Tourneur, left, and Simone Simon on the set of  CAT PEOPLE.

Get Set For Horror Pictures;
RKO Is Going To Turn 'Em Out
Big Spring Herald, Oct. 9, 1942

By ROBBIN COONS
HOLLYWOOD—Mr. Val Lewton, gentleman with a sense of humor, has the horrors.


They were wished on him by Mr. Charles Koerner, a gentleman with a cense of- business and movie titles, and Mr. Lewton is having a wonderful time. Mr. Koerner is the latest in the long line of production chiefs at
RKO. Mr. Koerner, a showman with an eye for. a showman's dollar, is out to do a job of moneymaking for the movie lot where, bearing out the old saying, nothing has been permanent except change.

Mr. Koerner picked on.Val Lewton, who used to be story editor for David O. Selznick, to make some money via the horrors. That made Val Lewton a producer. "A producer," as the Great Selinick told Val, "is the only one in pictures who has any fun."

Charlie Koerner thought people were in the mood for horror picture now. Charlie Koerner thought up some titles: "The Cat People," "Seventh Victim," "The Leopard Man," "I Walked With a Zombie.'

All Val Lewton has to do is turn out pictures to fit the titles. He has finished one. "The Cat People" is all  about a lovely girl (Simone Simon) who goes through life expecting momentarily to turn into a cat, because
her mother did. And—what do you know?—she does. She's going along peaceful as you please, minding her knitting, but the minute love (Kent Smith) hits her, she can't be sure any more, because that's when cat people turn into cats. So it's a fine, spooky how-do-you-do before the non-cat girl (Jane Randolph) lands her non-cat man.

This, of course, is based on an old Serbian legend—concocted by Val Lewton and writer DeWitt Boodeen.
Horror has led Vel Lewton and Bodeen into a picnic of research. They've been reading hundreds of books on the occult, the mysterious, the satanical—and they've learned things. Val can rattle off dozens of odd items about cats, but we'll save those for cat-lovers and another day.

He, too, seriously, is sold on horror, and here's why: "People are worried. There's a war, and whether they know it or not, they're scared. It's a very real fright—and a horror picture can be the antidote. They can sit in a theatre and look at a story that's fantastic, with no connection to reality whatever, and shudder and groan,
and tremble just as if it were real."

Horror scenes are taken for granted. Like, the 2 a.m. when the black leopard got loose on the sound stage. Setting? Dark and shadowy, an old beach scene on one side, the "Cat People" set on the other, and the leopard wandering around loose, escaped from his keeper. Death and fury stalking, and the set crowded with extras.

"That was horror," says Val Lewton. "You know how they took it? Calmly. People said, "The cat's loose—look out' and went on with their gin rummy.!"