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White
Zombie
(1932) |
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This masterpiece of horror still resonates seventy years on from release due to the mastery and imagination of its creators. It ranks along with Universal's finest moments as the best horror from the "classic" period with images so striking that they are burned into the memory for ever.
This beautifully shot film (camera man Arthur Martinelli) starts with a young couple, very much in love and about to be wed in the next 24 hours arriving at idyllic Haiti to celebrate the happy occasion. The local plantation owner Beaumont is infatuated by Madeline, the bride to be, and is ready to do anything in order to halt the wedding and somehow win over the lovely Maddy. Unfortunately for Beaumont, she has eyes only for her fiancé Neil and wont consider the podgy if incredibly wealthy estate owner as her partner. However Beaumont does manage to persuade the young couple to have their wedding ceremony at his fabulous sprawling estate. On their way into Haiti the young couple are initially met with some unnerving situations. Firstly their carriage is held up by a typically Haitian burial ceremony where the corpse was being buried in the middle of the road to make sure he wouldn't come back to life once again! The horseman manages to get past the burial ceremony but then he shivers in trepidation as he spots some ghostly figures lumbering across the hilltops explaining to the couple that they are zombies who are made to work as labourers in the sugar estates of the nefarious and wonderfully named Murder Legendge, played quite brilliantly by horror legend Bela Lugosi. In fact there are many who consider White Zombie to be Lugosi's finest hour far surpassing his performance of the previous year as Count Dracula for which he will forever be remembered (and for Plan 9 from Outer Space). The couple encounter Legendre on the way when they stop to ask directions. He looks at them as menacingly as only Lugosi can and as the carriage makes off, he whips the scarf off a horrified Madeline's neck and stashes it away as a precious memento. Beaumont, repelled though he is by Legendre, asks for his help in somehow stopping the marriage that is now only hours away. Murder Legendre is only too happy to help Beaumont stop the wedding but his eyes are also well focused on grabbing Madeline for himself and his plan works to perfection as she is transformed into the living dead and Beaumont is deceived into a fate worse than Death. Bela Lugosi is superb as the sinister and utterly evil Zombie master Murder Legendre with his shuffling army of undead who serve not only as slave labour but also as his personal elite protection squad. There are several aspects of the film that stay in the memory other than the incredibly sinister performance of Lugosi. The cinematography is outstanding and the sets and lighting lend the film a wonderfully sinister atmosphere of lurking evil. There are threatening shadows emerging from everywhere and the set design is bordering on the dreamlike quality that was the trademark of the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The image of Murder Legendre's ghostly fortress looming in the back ground while the waves break softly and silently below are just one of the many memorable scenes. The silhouetted shuffling figures of the zombies at work in the hills another startling image that stays in the memory. Another is Lugosi's carving up his voodoo dolls, chunk by chunk with his sharp knife, shaping a monstrous instrument of death which he then proceeds to burn over a flame…watching the figure burn into a hideous pulp of wax. Perhaps the most memorable image from a film replete with such striking imagery is one where the lurking zombies are seen at work walking the wheel that crushes the sugar cane. One of the zombies even falls into the sugarcane but that doesn't stop the rest of them from continuing on their inexorable and endless circle crushing him along with the cane…and that hideous droning sound as they creep round and round and round endlessly, a ghastly, warped operatic accompaniment at least as unearthly as the zombies themselves. Its one of the truly great scenes of horror in all cinema, chilling to the very bone - horror at its breathtaking best. The film is a genuine masterpiece of horror, superbly acted by Lugosi in particular and fabulously directed and picturized. Hammer's superb Plague of the Zombies which borrowed its entire theme from White Zombie but transferred it from Haiti to the genteel English countryside with chilling effect. It is said that Bela Lugosi couldn't bare to watch the film himself as he had been paid just a paltry $800 for his job yet the film had made millions for the Halperin brothers as it became a substantive Box Office success.
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