Chloe, Love Is Calling You

Chloe, Love Is Calling You (1934)

BOMB (out of 4)

Incredibly bad film and I'm really not sure what the hell it was suppose to be about. Chloe (Olive Borden), a mixed race girl, returns to the swamp with a voodoo priestess who might be her mother. The voodoo priestess then wants to use Chloe to kill the man who lynched her father. The side plot deals with Chloe not knowing if she should be black or white or something like that. The biggest issue with the film is that it's confusing as hell and nothing ever really happens. Everything leads up to a voodoo sacrifice, which is just downright silly. This didn't ever make it into theaters back in the day. Instead the producers would go around to black neighborhoods and show it. This was apparently done because it was a "black film" but perhaps they just didn't want people seeing something this bad.

Awful, just awful story about a young white woman raised by a black voodoo woman. If the NAACP ever saw this they would throw a fit. There are white actors playing black with virtually no make-up. The actress playing Chloe is having a terrible life until she finds out she is really white.

Story is basically a rich old southern gentlemen lost his daughter when she was just a child. An old black woman lost her own daughter and kidnapped Chloe and raised her as her own. There is love interest and plotted revenge by the black voodoo woman, but in the end the father and daughter are reunited. No matter what the VHS advertisements say, this is not a lost classic nor even remotely close to a horror movie. Do not watch it.

"A young woman of mixed parentage lives in the bayou, raised by a black voodoo priestess who looks to avenge the death of her husband, lynched by an angry white mob. As the tension rises due to the evil plans of the priestess, the young woman finds herself torn between two cultures. Hoping to break free from the control of the woman who raised her, the young woman finds she must confront the priestess in order to save her own life, as well as those the priestess intends to harm," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

Voodoo… Hocus-pocus… Racist… Trash!

The most astonishing thing about "Chloe, Love Is Calling You" is that it was directed by Marshall Neilan. One of the most well-known filmmakers of the 1920s, Mr. Neilan's films were once eagerly anticipated. He was especially successful in partnership with Mary Pickford (see "Stella Maris"). Beautiful star Olive Borden ended her ten-year film career as "Chloe", unfortunately. It also offers a good look at handsome Reed Howes (as Wade) and handsome Philip Ober (as Jim), who was Vivian Vance's volatile husband (off-screen) during "I Love Lucy".

** Chloe, Love Is Calling You (1934) Marshall Neilan ~ Olive Borden, Reed Howes, Philip Ober

This was a movie that I found when looking through Letterboxd for horror from 1934 for my Foray through the Fours. On the Internet Movie Database, it isn't listed as such there. They have it as a drama. Now I found this on Tubi so that made it easier. I'm not sure if there are different cuts or if footage is lost as I think the version that I watched was several minutes shorter.

Synopsis: a black voodoo priestess comes out of the Louisans swamps to take revenge on the white plantation owner who believes killed her husband.

We start in a boat coming down the river. Rowing is Jim Strong (Philip Ober). In front of him is Chloe (Olive Borden) and her mother, Mandy (Georgette Harvey). This older woman fled the area after her husband was lynched. He was accused of a crime that she claims he didn't commit. This has her out for Col. Gordon (Francis Joyner). He's the richest man in the area, owning a plantation and a business.

It then takes us over to meet him. He is visited by his niece, Joyce Gordon (Molly O'Day), and her cousin, Wade (Reed Howes). Wade is there to help with the business. It sounds like there are missing supplies, so he wants to figure out who is stealing it or what happened to them. This leads him to butt heads with Mose (Augustus Smith) and Hill (Jess Cavin). They both work for the colonel.

I should include here that Mandy is priestess from the synopsis. She is back to get her revenge. Mandy meets with Wade and tells his fortune for money. She then uses this to send her daughter into town. It is there that she is attacked by Mose. Jim and Wade come to her rescue. The latter falls in love with Chloe, but they can't be together since she is partially black. Jim doesn't mind and wants to marry her too. This causes Mose and Mandy to work together since she doesn't want her daughter to be with Wade. Mose wants revenge on him. Col. Gordon is also a good target due to his standing in the area as well.

That is where I'll leave my recap and introduction to the characters. Where I want to start is that this is a movie of the era. There are themes we will see past this, so I'm not shocked to see them starting this early. There is the idea of race and not marrying outside of people who look like you. We also get class issues between Col. Gordon and his family as opposed to Mandy along with those that live near the swamp.

Where I want to start then would be that I'm not fully sure I consider this to be a horror film. I'll still include it since it is listed that way on Letterboxd. If this was made today, it would be a drama. I get the idea that being made in the 1930s, featuring voodoo and a ritual being done to harm characters put it here. Plus, there is a dark reveal as to why Mandy fled the area. I'm not going to spoil what it is, but it makes sense and cleared up my confusion. I was glad for that. It is still problematic.

Let me explain more and as a disclaimer, I'm not going to give this a low score just because of it. I did want to give the reasons though. I don't have an issue with Col. Gordon being rich. He should figure out who is stealing from him and having Wade helping is fine. The problem is that they're looking at Mandy and Mose for doing voodoo as problem. They are the villains for it. The issue there is that they're both black. There is also Ben (Richard Huey), who is a butler. He sides with his boss and they have film being a simple character. What I'll say is that the time this came out, it makes sense. I'm also glad that they hired actors of color, so there's that as well.

I think then I'll shift over to filmmaking. The cinematography is fine. The best part is just capturing where this takes place. It is out in the country, close to bayous. I do love that. It also makes sense why supplies would go missing or if they're out doing rituals. It takes time to find and you'd need to know where you are going. We don't get much in the way of effects. We did see a guy wrestle with an alligator which I wasn't expecting. A perk in its favor comes with the sound design. We get drums that we're told are calling followers of voodoo to know they're being called. This is working with a low budget so none of this was bad in my opinion.

Let's then finish with the acting performances. I thought that Borden was fine as Chloe. She isn't given a lot to work with and she's there as the catalyst for Wade to find for her. Howes was fine. O'Day is interesting in her role since she questions something that gets revealed. This did come off as racist to me. I also don't know if the reactions make full sense. Joyner is fine as the colonel. I hate that Harvey is our villain, but I also think she plays it well. Other than that, Cavin, Smith, Ober and the rest of the cast worked for what was needed.

In conclusion, this one wasn't for me. This doesn't do enough to go into horror for me. It is more of a drama. There are problematic things story wise here that felt like they were done with a lack of just knowledge of the subject. The acting though was fine across the board. No one stands out aside from Harvey for me. I'm glad they did hire actors of color. This is also made well enough with the cinematography to capture where it is set and the drums to build atmosphere. Not one that I can recommend though unless you're watching horror from the era. In that case, it has an interesting place in history.

My Rating: 4 out of 10.

A black voodoo priestess comes out of the Louisiana swamps to take revenge on the white plantation owner she believes killed her husband.

This was produced by some small independent company called Pinnacle. It's a production company that distributed a handful of these plantation movies in the 20s and 30s. Some other reviewer here who obviously has an ax to grind, claims the black actors are played by white people.

He probably thinks the Amos & Andy TV show featured white actors in blackface too. To be fair, there are two characters who are supposed to be black but are white.

The title character, Chloe is supposed to be of mixed race and she is played by a famous silent film star. This is her last picture. Her star had dimmed and she wound up first joining the army (WACS) after this film and years later was found scrubbing floors for a living. In 1947, at the age of 40, she died of a "stomach ailment" at the Sunshine Mission - a home for destitute women on Los Angeles' Skid Row.

One of her two love interests is white too, playing a black man.

If you really examine the film, the white characters are all stereotypes -- rich, sauntering around in white suits drinking frilly drinks talking about their deals. While a few others are working class with hillbilly accents. The black characters are largely silent and working plantation. Except for the voodoo priestess who has a fair amount of dialog. This women was up for the role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind.

What I'm saying is this: the film is far more complicated than just a knee jerk response of saying all the blacks are stereotypes. Everybody in this movie is a stereo type of some sort.

And casting a white actress (probably because she was a real star at one time, hence an audience draw) would make it hard back then to cast a true black man as a romantic interest. Conversely, how could they cast a black actress with a white love interest in 1934?

To a degree you can almost make the case that this movie is an allegory for the unfairness of race relations. In today's world of political correctness I suppose few are willing to look beyond a kool-aide drinking response to the content of the movie.

Chloe and white Reed fall in love because of what's inside, not because of race or wealth or anything else.

So is it a good movie? To be honest, the available prints are bad. The focus is off and the sound is poor, so it's a wee bit difficult to follow the story. At some point we find out that Chloe is actually the colonel's lost daughter who disappeared at birth. But the Colonel welcomes her with open arms, and that's likely not to happen if she was half black in those times.

The women in the film are the ones to question whether or not Chloe is really the colonel's daughter, saying "she's so dark." Again a comment on racist mindsets and small minded people.

I found the movie to be very watchable despite to poor print quality. I think it deserves a new look, perhaps with a complete print. The DVD prints have 8 minutes cut out of them and one wonders what's in those 8 minutes!

Some reviewers have said it's typical that the white man comes out on top in this movie, but the real moral of the movie is that love comes out on top.

If you have an open mind and are sick of people with an agenda, take a look at this movie. It's not a great film, but it's an interesting curio piece that probably deserves to be restored.