White Zombie (1932)

It's another Sunday at the Classics and for this week I wanted to check out a classic film starring the one and only Bela Lugosi (Dracula). One of the first metal bands to name their group after a horror film was Black Sabbath and the trend would continue into the 1980's with the birth of White Zombie who were fronted by rocker/director Rob Zombie (House Of 1000 Corpses), but unlike Sabbath I had never seen the film for which Zombie named his band after until today. The film White Zombie was released in 1932 a year after Lugosi had starred as Dracula, but in this one Lugosi stars as witch doctor 'Murder' Legendre. A young couple is about to arrive in Haiti to get married at the home of the wealthy Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer), but little do they know that Beaumont has other plans in store for them and it involves the witch doctor who has interior motives himself. The film also stars  Madge Bellamy (Black Paradise) as Madeline Short Parker, John Harron (Below The Line) as Neil Parker, Joseph Cawthorn (The Taming Of The Shrew) as Dr. Bruner, Brandon Hurst (The Man Who Laughs) as Silver, George Burr Macannan (Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon) as Von Gelder - Zombie, Frederick Peters (Miracles Of The Jungle) as Chauvin - Zombie, and the film was directed by Victor Halperin (The Unknown Lover).

One thing you have to remember about a film like this is that it was made in 1932 and all of the special effects are practical. What I mean by practical is that they are going to have a horrible looking vulture fly around when you can definitely see the string attached to him at the time and I can appreciate the effort that went into it. The only thing I could really appreciate were the zombies and not because they looked like flesh eating dead people, but in 1932 zombies in the west indies were newly dead people who were brought back to be mindless drones. That was always the belief and it was shown in films like In The Mouth Of Madness which owes a debt to this film. One of the true highlights of the film was obviously Bela Lugosi who at times was masterful especially when he was going through his diabolical spiel as he turned you into a zombie. I definitely loved his death scene as you can so tell that it was a dummy that hits the water on the way down, but again that's due to special effects being what they were in 1932. One of the things that bothered me about the film were the transition scenes that featured every basic transition that you can get with Windows Movie Maker or iMovie, but again I forgive it for the fact that it came out in 1932, but one thing I can't forgive is that man in blackface. Dan Crimmins plays a random witch doctor who is wearing make up and the worst part about is that they had plenty of African Americans with roles in the film itself. It's a head scratcher, but there are things to like about the film as much as there are things to hate about it. That is why I am giving it an C+ for a final grade.