I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Jacques Tourneur
Frances Dee, Tom Conway, James Ellison,
Edith Barrett, James Bell, Christine Gordon,
Teresa Harris, Sir Lancelot, Darby Jones
Val Lewton's deal to make horror movies at RKO in the 1940s had two key provisions: No movie could cost more than $150,000 to make, and the studio provided the title. Beyond that, the creative process belonged to Lewton and his moviemaking team. Lewton's first movie under the agreement was "Cat People" in 1942. The second was this, a shadowy melodrama about a Canadian nurse who goes to Haiti to care for a woman who appears to have joined the living dead. Voodoo's involved, and a pair of brothers who were rivals for the affection of the zombified girl. The plot's lifted partly from "Jame Eyre", and the subtext is slavery and the suggestion that Africans should never have been brought to this island, and white people shouldn't be there now. It's an eerie, atmospheric 69 minutes, an inventive return on an investment of $150,000.
