White Zombie (USA, 1932)

"Your driver believed he saw dead men... walking."
Dr. Bruner (Joseph Cawthorn)

 

This independently produced 1932 pre-Code horror film, eight years shy of a century old at the time of the writing of this entry, is a flawed but wonderful little gem that is unarguably of greater importance historically than it is watchable for those who are not partial to films of such age. (We here at a wasted life, we admit freely, are rather partial to good or noteworthy films of the past.)

Trailer to

White Zombie:

If Night of the Living Dead (1968) is the acknowledged progenitor of the genre staple that is the flesh-eating zombie, this movie here, White Zombie, deserves acknowledgement as the progenitor of the zombie genre, as it is the earliest (known and surviving) feature-length movie to feature zombies at all.* For that, however, the movie sticks far closer to the underlying if normally overlooked truth behind traditional, non-flesheating, beast-of-burden zombies so entwined in the religious lore of Voodoo: the thing truly to be feared is less the mindless, abulic and enslaved creature shambling your way than the person who has created and controls it.

* Okay, there were the dead soldiers returning in Abel Glance's anti-war film J'accuse [1918], but technically they weren't zombies.

"It's a funeral, ma'm'selle. They're afraid of the men who steal dead bodies, so they dig the graves in the middle of the road where people pass all the time."
Coach Driver (Clarence Muse)

In White Zombie, for all the (traditional, mindless but not flesh-eating) zombies seen, the true threat of the movie is the man whose commands they follow and whose name is never uttered once throughout the movie (nor given in the credits), but whose presence dominates even when he isn't in a scene: the zombie master Murder Legendre, played by the great Bela Lugosi (20 Oct 1882 – 16 Aug 1956) in his prime. For whatever reason, and perhaps indicative of his future as an actor, Lugosi followed up his star-making turns in the financial and critical mainstream studio hits Dracula (1931 / trailer) and Murder on the Rue Morgue (1932 / trailer)* with the lead part in this decidedly low-rent independent project.** The rest of the cast, but for one exception, the then-popular comic actor Joseph Cawthorn (29 Mar 1868 – 21 Jan 1949),*** who plays the reverend Dr. Brunner, consists primarily of former silent film names whose fame and/or popularity was already waning when the film was cast. And when one considers the general thespian ineptitude most of them display, it is easy to understand why their careers dwindled with the advent of sound.

* In his later years, Lugosi was known to complain that he was seriously underpaid for the part, as he took a one-off payment instead of residuals, but documentation exists that indicate that he was paid a respectable $5,000 (approximately $115,000 in today's money) and not the measly $800 (approx. $18,500 in today's money) he tended to claim.

** The production company, Halperin Productions, consisted of the brothers Victor and Edward Halperin (12 May 1898 – 2 Mar 1981). Edward did the production duties, while Victor Halperin (24 Aug 1895 – 17 May 1983) the direction. The duo had worked together and alone as producers for other independent productions (e.g., She Goes to War [1929 / full short version]) prior to forming Halperin Productions. The company seems to have dissolved soon after White Zombie, as the firm apparently produced only two other movies thereafter, the loose sequel Revolt of the Zombies (1936 / trailer bottom of page) and Nation Aflame (1937 / full movie). Edward seems to have slowly drifted away, eventually to Rancho Mirage, while Victor, who had been a successful Broadway producer and director prior to entering the movie biz, continued making movies until 1942, when he retired to Benton, Arkansas. None of Halperin's other directorial efforts are as good as this one, though Supernatural (1933 / trailer below) comes close and both the confusing Torture Ship (1939 / film) and Revolt of the Zombies (1936) are at least watchable.

*** A now more or less forgotten name and face, Cawthorn, like Lugosi, was at the height of his fame when he made this movie. While he treats his role and the film completely serious, he nevertheless offers moments of dry comedy that indicate his comedy background.

Trailer to

Supernatural (1933):

Inspired by the popularity of Kenneth S. Webb's (16 Oct 1885 – 6 Mar 1966) current Broadway hit Zombie, the two Halperins decided to make a horror movie around the legendary Caribbean creatures — and were even later sued by the playwright for supposed plagiarism. (Webb lost the case.) Be what it may, however, like Webb the Halperin Brothers turned to cannibal William Seabrook's (22 Feb 1884 – 20 Sept 1945) once-forgotten "non-fiction" book The Magic Island for the inspiration of their story, the screenplay of which was supplied by Garnett Weston (27 Jun 1890 – 4 Oct 1980).

"Just a pinpoint monsieur. In a flower. Or perhaps in a glass of wine."
Legendre (Bela Lugosi)

The narrative that Weston came up with has some truly odd aspects and leaves many things unexplained, like why the young couple, blonde Betty Boop clone Madeline Parker (Madge Bellamy [30 Jun 1899 – 24 Jan 1990]*) and bank employee Neil Parker (John Harron [31 Mar 1904 – 24 Nov 1939]), even come to Haiti to marry. Once Madeline reaches Haiti, however, she and her fiancée take up the invitation to conduct the marriage at the home of the rich plantation owner Charles Beaument (Robert Frazer [29 Jun 1891 – 17 Aug 1944]), whom she met on the boat over, because he has promised her to find employment for Neil in New York. But despite the boat trip together, she is apparently ignorant of the fact that Charles is in love with her (vociferations of which he later exclaims as he plays best man at the wedding). Charles, in turn, is more than willing to make a bargain with the devil to get her in his hands — including making her zombie.

* Bellamy, born Margret Derden Philpott in Hillsboro, Planet Texas, received a star on the Walk of Stars (at 6517 Hollywood Blvd) in 1960, long after her career ended and she was more or less forgotten. An extremely popular star of the silent screen, she worked with names as illustrious as Thomas Ince, King Vidor, John Ford and Maurice Tourneur — by 1924's The White Sin (film), she was enough of a name draw to be the biggest name on the poster. Fox even chose her to be the star of their first-ever (and now lost) talkie, Mother Knows Best (1928). She was also famously difficult and demanding and ill-tempered — her 1928 marriage to stockbroker Logan Metcalf, for example, survived less than three days — and with the advent of sound her career nose-dived. She was forced to go independent and, with White Zombie, the only horror movie she ever made, she entered the realm of Poverty Row productions. Her performance, justifiably, was panned and by 1935 she was doing uncredited parts. The scandal that arose as of 20 January 1943, when she fired three .32 calibre revolver shots at her former lover, the married lumber executive Albert Stanwood Murphy (13 Jul 1892 – 9 Apr 1963), on an open street in San Francisco, put the final nail in the coffin of her already dead career. Her autobiography, A Darling of the Twenties, came out a month after she died, at the age of 90, of heart failure on 24 January 1990. (Trivia: Regarding Logan Metcalf, if he is remembered today at all for anything other than his short marriage to Madge, then it is for being the subsequently caught hit-and-run driver that almost killed Basil Rathbone (of Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet [1965], Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror [1942], Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon [1942], The Spider Woman [1943/44], The Scarlet Claw [1924] and so much more) on 15 January 1937 and did kill the actor John Milton (13 Jul 1870 – 15 Jan 1937).

"I kissed her as she lay there in the coffin; and her lips were cold."
Neil Parker (John Harron*)

 

* John Harron, whose performance in White Zombie is as equally inept as that of Ms. Bellamy, was a busy actor as of his second film, Through the Back Door (1921 / full film), up until he died of spinal meningitis in 1940. His roles substantially diminished in size with the advent of sound, many not even being credited. Some claim that the start of his career had less to do with thespian talent than the publicity of the "mysterious" shooting death of his then far more famous and successful brother Robert "Bobby" Harron (12 Apr 1893 – 5 Sep 1920). While some claim it suicide, Harron's death may have simply been bad luck (re: stupidity): unpacking in a hotel, his loaded gun dropped from his suitcase and shot him in the chest. Look hard and you might see John Harron in The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938 / trailer), They Made Me a Criminal (1939 / trailer) and The Return of Dr X (1939 / trailer).

As appropriate to the times it was made, White Zombie is one of those films that involves an almost totally white cast despite being set in an Afro-Caribbean country — the only Black cast member to have any dialogue is the coachman played by Clarence Muse (14 Oct 1889 – 13 Oct 1979),* while the only other "Black" character of note, the witch doctor Piere, is played by a black-faced Dan Crimmins ([18 May 1863 – 12 Jul 1945] of Seven Footprints to Satan [1929 / reconstruction]). In theory, a few of Legendre's zombies could be of mixed or Afro-Caribbean blood — for example, Ledot (John T. Prince [11 Sept 1871 – 23 Dec 1937]), the zombiefied former witch doctor that was once Legendre's master, or Chauvin (Frederick Peters [30 Jun 1884 – 23 Apr 1963]), the former high executioner — but none truly look it. But when they and their like stumble forwards, unfeeling and unthinking and unstoppable, they do (usually) manage to make an unpleasantly dire and dreadful appearance. (Although, actually, Chauvin might have been far more effective had he not been played with such a ridiculous facial expression.) Black or white or race undetermined, Bela Lugosi excels as the suave voodoo master Legendre, at times dripping contempt, superciliousness, fury, resentment, power, evilness and narcissism.As florid as his performance sometimes is, it never devolves into caricature.

* Muse was the first African American to appear in a starring role in a talkie, 1929's Hearts in Dixie, which is also considered the first all-Black sound film. ("Hearts in Dixie unfolds as a series of sketches of life among American blacks. Although the characters are not slaves they are nevertheless racial stereotypes in terms of the contemporary white images of the period.") Steadily employed till his death, he can be found (if often briefly) in movies as diverse as Sternberg's Blonde Venus (1932 / trailer), Roy William Neill's underappreciated Black Moon (1934 / full film) and far-less-interesting Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943 / full movie), Invisible Ghost (1941 / trailer), Lang's Scarlet Street (1945 / trailer), Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943 / trailer), Buck and the Preacher (1972 / trailer) and Car Wash (1976 / trailer).

Roy William Neill's Black Moon:

 

"I thought that beauty alone would satisfy. But the soul is gone. I can't bear those empty, staring eyes."
Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer*)

* Like John Harron, Robert Frazer died of unlucky and unpredictable bad health: at the age of 53, he died of leukaemia in Los Angeles, California. The first person known to have played Robin Hood on screen (in Robin Hood [1912]) and, possibly, Jesus Christ (in the lost 1912 short, The Holy City), he was never a major player at the majors but, until he became ill, he was busy throughout his career, if usually in supporting parts and as "the bad guy" after the advent of sound. His movies include Black Dragons (1942), the classic Vampire Bat (1933), Condemned to Live (1935 / full movie), the exploiter Gambling with Souls (1936 / full movie), and Found Alive (1933 / scene). A somewhat stoic actor, he fares better in White Zombie than either Harron or Bellamy.

Halperin's direction is oddly inconsistent but often notably experimental and moody. If he initially resorts (and occasionally returns) to some dull unmoving camera shots, he also uses some pretty wild wipes and split screen shots, not to mention some inspired placement of the camera (none so effective as those in the crypt and in Legendre's mill). The scene in which Neil is drowning his widowed sorrows in a bar populated only by music and shadows is a visual treat that works well at overcoming the obvious budget limitations that probably inspired it. Halperin often achieves a notable eerie moodiness and sense of dread and/or despair, particularly during Beaumont's initial visit to Legendre's sugar mill manned only by zombies and after Madeline has been zombified. If Halperin is obviously lacking in the ability of directing actors, he must be given credit for his ability to create atmosphere. (Aside from Lugosi and Cawthorn, the only other actor to give a halfway nuanced and/or professional performance is Brandon Hurst [30 Nov 1866 – 15 Jul 1947], who plays Silver, Beaumont's loyal butler whose loyalty is rewarded with an unpleasant death.) It is initially a bit odd, of course, when the setting turns to a European-looking castle set high on a cliff (in Haiti?), but the gothic setting and interior work well with the overall otherworldliness of the film.

"Surely you don't think she's alive, in the hands of natives. Oh no! Better dead than that."
Neil Parker (John Harron)

Basically, White Zombie is a good movie despite itself. More creepy and atmospheric than truly scary, occasional flashes of visual brilliance give the often static movie some memorable scenes. Still, White Zombie is noticeably creaky and a bit slow moving, while the acting is mostly wanting and the script woozy, but despite all its obvious limitations the historically important movie remains highly watchable despite itself and ultimately offers a fun ride, especially in the restored form currently available. (The copy we saw was screened as part of the exhibition "Zombies: Death Is Not the End?" at the Musee du Quai Brany in Paris in October of 2024.) We give the movie four out of five voodoo dolls, and not just because of the for-the-time racy (and subsequently often cut) but now rather tame scene of Madeline walking around her bedroom in her white knickers.

Trailer to the loose sequel,

Revolt of the Zombies (1936):