I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

Nurse Betsy arrives in the West Indies to care for Jessica, the wife of Paul Holland. Jessica was struck down with a fever that has rendered her in a permanent state of mental paralysis. As Betsy starts to fall for Holland, she resolves to cure Jessica and get to the bottom of just what is going on in this mysterious place.

Producer Val Lewton firmly carved out a reputation for having a keen eye with a number of literary horror adaptations in the 1940s, there is certainly a case for I Walked With A Zombie being one of the best of the bunch. Tho tagged as a horror film, and boasting a title to further that inkling, I Walked With A Zombie is more in keeping with the dreamy and atmospheric romanticism of Jane Eyre. Sure the voodoo core of the film is chilling in its intent, but to really sell this as an outright horror film would do it a big disservice.

Lewton's ideals are more focused on suggestion in a psychological way, the scares more cloaked in a shadowy unease, director Jacques Tourneur perfectly in tune with his producer to unhinge the audience by way of an approaching dread we can't see. Some of Tourneur's work here is wonderful, hauntingly elegiac sequences linger long in the memory, rustling wind blows as characters are appearing to float thru sugar cane fields, the distant rumble of ceremonial drums luring them forward with mystical powers. A voodoo zombie shuffling on a mission to fetch poor Jessica from the plantation home is not horrifying, its damn near gorgeous, soft and near silent in its execution, the whole film is simply full of memorable moments.

Written by Curt Siodmak, the concept for the piece came about by way of a number of newspaper articles that were telling of voodoo and witchcraft in Haiti, the scope for a screamathon horror movie was obviously there, but thankfully in this viewers humble opinion, we get a classy and chilling film that is dripping with ethereal beauty from first reel to last. 8/10

Fmovies: I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

This sounds like a creaker, and it's not. The biggest reason? My guess is the director Jacques Tourneur, who had just finished the terrific "The Cat People" and was going to soon do the near legendary "Out of the Past." For this odd and enchanting zombie movie, he takes very little and makes a lot out of it. The mood, the plot (with help from writer Curt Siodmak, brother of the famous director Robert Siodmak), and the settings are made more substantial than was likely given the budget.

Besides the Jane Eyre-ish plot, the huge role given black actors is a rare thrill (for 1943) and they have complex and reasonably convincing roles to fill out, including the voodoo religious culture. There is one great dancing and drum scene halfway through that struck me as honest and great to watch.

There is no one of any fame here, yet all the key actors (there are half a dozen with critical roles) are really strong, not hammy and not faltering. I guess I keep addressing the fear that this is a low-budget cult film, and it doesn't feel like one. It's easily as good as most of the monster and horror films Universal was cranking out a decade after "Dracula."

"I Walked With A Zombie" is a brilliant bit of film making. Based somewhat on the classic story of "Jane Eyre," "Zombie" takes us to the South Seas, where Nurse Betsy Connell arrives on a remote sugar plantation owned by the mysterious and reclusive Paul Holland. Betsy has been hired to care for Paul's wife Jessica, a catatonic beauty who wanders around in her nightgown a lot, looking (as the Sex Pistols once put it) Pretty Vacant. The locals whisper about zombies, believing that Jessica has been cursed and is now one of the living, walking dead. A calypso singer follows Nurse Betsy around a lot, providing her with clues in his catchy songs. Nurse Betsy, far from being a close-minded Westerner, becomes intrigued by the tales of zombies and is determined to learn the truth about Jessica's condition in hopes of curing the woman. She even bravely ventures into the cane fields in the dead of night, following the worlds creepiest looking native (a golf-ball eyed zombie-like man) to a voodoo ceremony with Jessica at her side.

Fans of Fulci zombies may be disappointed by the lack of gut-munching gore here. These zombies are not cadavers returned from the grave, half-rotted horrors shambling about looking for flesh to feast upon. These are traditional, mind-erased zombies, unfeeling, unthinking and unresponsive to anything. The atmosphere is wonderful, filled with great music, strong women and natives who look like the real thing. The love triangle quickly becomes a love square and the haunting conclusion is both shocking and grimly satisfying. Fans of the brilliant Tourneur won't be disappointed - his mark is all over this beautiful film, from beginning to end. It is one of his very best.

I Walked with a Zombie fmovies. The basic plot: A Canadian nurse arrives at the isle of St. Sebastian to take care of a plantation owners mentally entranced and disturbed wife, but once she get's there, she learns more than she should about the family secrets, voodoo , and zombie fever......

The praise: A truly poetic, hypnotizing, and creepy film experience. The poetry of the island traditions, the family mysteries and everything else about the movie is truly evocative and sensitive. There are smatterings of spooky moments throughout, all frightening suggestively, using sound , imagery and implied chills. All classically and romantically constructed and written, a flagon of longing, taste, and character in every little detail. Well-shot, especially the impressive voodoo ceremony. Very atmospheric, with black& white used to enhance the mood, as in all Lewton movies. Watch for calypso singer Sir Lancelot, who Lewton also used in " Curse of the Cat People", an equally poetic movie, which I also have reviewed. A masterpiece of the horror film, it has many scenes which take together the essential elements of suspense and atmosphere , sound and imagery , such as Dee traveling to the voodoo ceremony. A must-see. Very hard-to-find. The only way I could find it was to order a copy of an unauthorized copy of it from Canada.Truly great.

First of all: PLEASE don't let the misleading, rather silly sounding title discourage you! I walked with a Zombie is another brilliant result of the collaborations between producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur. Released one year after the simply astonishing movie 'Cat People', this is yet another intelligently elaborated and genuinely original genre-masterpiece. The solid screenplay contains a rarely seen before amount of eeriness and handles about a young ambitious nurse who goes to San Antonio in order to take care of Jessica. Jessica is the wife of plantation-owner Paul Holland and she suffers from a bizarre mental paralysis, supposedly caused by a tropical fever. She is – in fact – a zombie only not the type of walking corpse you usually expect in horror movies. Betsy, the nurse, is somehow convinced that Jessica may still be cured and turns to the Voodoo-community that is living on the island as well. Just like he pulled it off in Cat People, Tourneur manages to bring suspense in a subtle way. Without bloody images but with a unique photography and efficient set pieces! I walked with a Zombie contains great dialogs, intriguing characters and mind bending plot-twists. This is an intelligent and demanding film, especially made for people who take this genre serious! It ranks slightly under 'Cat People' but light-years above most other horror films. Check it out!

A nurse (Frances Dee) is assigned to the West Indies to care for the semi-comatose wife of a plantation owner (Tom Conway). Over there she becomes involved with a very dysfunctional family and the realization that her patient may be a zombie--one of the living dead.

Eerie, poetic horror film--one of the great ones producer Val Lewton made for RKO on no budget. There are many creepy sequences--the crying and first meeting of Dee with her patient; the constant pounding of the voodoo drums in the distance at night; Dee being awakened by shadows outside her bedroom window; the walk through the sugar cane field to the voodoo ritual and the guard they must pass. There's also a man with a guitar who pops up from time to time acting as a Greek chorus--always commenting on the action. The script is very good and literate and the acting is actually not bad--except for Conway (who's lousy). But Ellison and Dee are good.

I almost gave this a 10--but one thing kept me from doing that. The silly love story between Conway and Dee. It's not needed and is a great distraction from the plot. Also Conway's acting is so bad that it makes the scenes play even worse. Those aside though, it's a truly great horror film. A must see.

Cute little trivia note: Look closely for the "Any characters and events depicted in this photoplay..." etc. etc. under the opening credits. Especially note this line: "Any similarity to actual persons living, dead, OR POSSESSED is purely coincidental." Cute joke...wonder how many people caught it.