Vaudou

The Canadian nurse Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) is hired to travel to St. Sebastian, in West Indies, to work at Fort Holland nursing Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon), the wife of the sugar plantation owner Paul Holland (Tom Conway). Betsy meets Paul in the ship and is welcomed by Paul's estranged half-brother Wesley "Wes" Rand (James Ellison) in the farmhouse. During the night, she overhears a woman crying and she believes that might be Jessica and goes to her room. She finds a creepy mute woman and she learns that Jessica had a mental paralysis after a severe tropical fever and is a hopeless case, unable to speak or have power. Soon Betsy falls in love with Paul and she decides to help Jessica to be cured to make Paul happier. She suggests an experimental treatment with shock to Dr. Maxwell (James Bell) but it fails. While talking to the maid Alma (Theresa Harris), she discovers that another woman was cured in a voodoo ceremony by a voodoo priest and she decides to use witchcraft to cure Jessica. However the natives believe that Jessica is a zombie that cannot be cured. When Betsy meets Paul and Wesley's mother Mrs. Rand (Edith Barrett), she finds that Jessica was the pivot of a fight between Paul and Wes and she believes that her daughter-in-law is a zombie.

"I Walked with a Zombie" is an ambiguous zombie movie directed by Jacques Tourneur. The plot is a family drama and the zombies in this movie are not like in George Romero's trilogy or "The Walking Dead", but related to voodoo in a Caribbean Island. There is a creepy atmosphere with a beautiful cinematography, the non-stop voodoo drums and the native Carrefour, but no gore, violent death or scream. The conclusion is ambiguous after the revelation of Mrs. Rand. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "A Morta-Viva" ("The Living Dead")

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.

Present day viewers watching this wonderful movie after reading the label "horror" and seeing the word "zombie" in the title, might be in for a shock if they think they're going to be in for a Romero/Fulci gorefest. This is a completely different kind of zombie movie! In fact, calling it horror is quite misleading, mystery is the more appropriate description. Anyone who has seen 'Cat People', the earlier collaboration between director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton, will know what to expect. A haunting and subtle yet suspenseful, and yes, at times quite scary, thriller. 'I Walked With A Zombie' (a classic title! Later lifted by Roky Erikson for a classic song) follows 'Cat People's ambiguous format quite closely with a series of events which may or may not have a supernatural explanation. Add a dash of 'Jane Eyre' to it and a West Indies setting and there you have it. Tourneur was a master of atmosphere and there are moments in this movie which are truly unforgettable. The two leads Tom Conway and Frances Dee are both very good, and Dee is cute to boot. I don't think 'I Walked With A Zombie' is quite as brilliant as 'Cat People', which I still think ties with the film noir classic 'Out Of The Past' as Tourneur's greatest film, but it comes very close, and I highly recommend it. If you've never seen this one before, turn off all the lights and watch with someone special. You are in for a real treat!

Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) is a Canadian nurse hired to come to the Caribbean island of St. Sebastian, to work at Fort Holland. There she will attend to the needs of the mute, unresponsive, yet seemingly alive Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon). Jessica is wife to a plantation owner named Paul Holland (Tom Conway), with whom Betsy falls in love. Betsy becomes determined to do the right thing by Paul by trying to cure her, if she can. That includes immersing herself in the local voodoo culture.

There may be modern horror fans who bemoan the lack of what one might consider horror in "I Walked with a Zombie". It starts to go for more of a traditional creep factor in its second half, using the imposing Darby Jones as the mysterious, zombified Carrefour to great effect. Everything is handled with a great deal of sensitivity and authenticity by screenwriters Curt Siodmak & Ardel Wray, producer Val Lewton, and director Jacques Tourneur. Unlike some of the horror product of the time, it actually treats its black characters with a great deal of dignity and respect, and also gives the actors a chance to shine, such as Theresa Harris as Alma the maid.

As was always the case with these Lewton productions, the story (based to some degree on Jane Eyre, with factual articles on voodoo in the West Endies also used as a basis) is pretty tight, and the running time is typically short. (69 minutes all told.) We don't get to know the characters all that well, but we do still like them, and in a refreshing touch, there are no clear cut villains or explanations for the strange events. The actors each do a solid job: Dee as the heroine, Conway as the husband, James Ellison as his half brother, Edith Barrett (in old age make-up) as their mother, James Bell as the doctor, and Sir Lancelot as the calypso singer. As one can see, some of the cast were regulars in these Lewton films.

Overall, there's a real feeling of sadness to the atmosphere, helping to make this one of the best of Lewtons' filmography. One wouldn't know from the end result how quickly and cheaply these productions were made, as they have the power to grip their viewers 70 plus years later.

Eight out of 10.

The film opens with Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) being interviewed for a home-care nursing position. Oddly, she's asked during the interview if she believes in witchcraft. She gets the position, working for Paul Holland (Tom Conway), who is a wealthy plantation owner on the Caribbean island of St. Sebastian. Holland has hired her to take care of his wife, Jessica (Christine Gordon), who is in a perpetual state that resembles somnambulance. As Betsy spends more time on the island, she learns that most of the population believes in and practices voodoo, and she learns that Jessica had a relatively tumultuous past with Holland's family.

This was director Jacques Tourneur and producer Val Lewton's second horror/thriller collaboration (the first being Cat People (1942) and the third The Leopard Man (1943)). For many viewers, it is their favorite of the three. While I like the film, I don't like it quite that much--I prefer Cat People. But still, I Walked With A Zombie ends up with a 7 out of 10 from me.

The horror aspects of I Walked With A Zombie are really very minor. They're really present only as a kind of personification of the results of complicated romantic and familial relationships. Yes, there is an admirable "haunted house"-styled scene involving a spooky stairway and creepy, distant sounds, and yes, the trek to the voodoo "home fort" is well done, but this kind of material doesn't work as well for me here as it did in Cat People, because here it's not really the focus of the story. It's ancillary material with the function of helping to solve a very different kind of mystery. Also, much of the voodoo material (such as the actual ceremony) tends to be overrated in my opinion, although the final sequence related to the voodoo theme is appropriately eerie.

But what works best for me in I Walked With A Zombie are the many dialogue-heavy scenes where the three main characters--Connell, Holland and Wesley Rand (James Ellison)--gradually learn more about one another, and where the "mystery" is gradually uncovered. A scene where a local "minstrel" sings part of the backstory while Connell and Rand are having a drink is exquisite, for example. Yet, even with this positive aspect, I never felt that the backstory was sufficiently explained. The mystery remains, and the moralizing bookends of the film do not help, either.

Still, I Walked With A Zombie is definitely worth a watch, and based on the extravagant praise that many viewers utter towards the film, you might like it much better than I do.