11 October: I Walked with a Zombie

 

“Everything seems beautiful because you don't understand. Those flying fish, they're not leaping for joy, they're jumping in terror. Bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies. The glitter of putrescence. There's no beauty here, only death and decay...Everything good dies here. Even the stars.”

Yesterday, we took a trip to Ukraine on the back of a horse drawn cart. Today, we are sailing in style to a tiny island in the Caribbean to discuss the 1943 RKO picture I Walked with a Zombie. And you thought you were just going to stay at home this Halloween! Today’s topic for Cinematic Void’s 31 Days of Voidoween is “Val Lewton.” In 1942, Lewton was given the reins to RKO Studios’ horror unit. He was also given three simple rules by his bosses: each film had to be made for less than $150,000, each was to have a runtime under 75 minutes, and the studio would give Lewton the film titles.

Within those strictures, Lewton produced a remarkable string of pictures beginning with Cat People in 1942. Using directors like Jacques Tourneur, Robert Wise, and Mark Robson, Lewton’s pictures all have a fairy tale, dream-like quality. Shadows are deep, dark, and dangerous. Because these were low-budget affairs, the “monsters” were usually kept in the dark, which allowed the audience to fill in the blanks.

I Walked with a Zombie roughly follows the narrative of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre. Lewton’s film, written by Curt “The Wolf-Man” Siodmak and Ardel Wray (no relation to Fay), follows nurse Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) to the island of Saint Sebastian. There she is charged with the care of Jessica (Christine Gordon), wife to sugar plantation owner Paul Holland (Tom Conway). Jessica meanders around the plantation in a stupor. Some say that her condition is due to a serious illness that left her without any willpower, but a local calypso singer croons a different story: Jessica was about to run away with her husband’s brother, Wesley (James Ellison), when she was struck down. Some say voodoo is to blame. To cure her patient, Betsy takes Jessica into the sugar cane fields, past the zombie-like guard Carrefour (Darby Jones), to visit the local houngan, or voodoo priest. Horrors ensue!

I Walked with a Zombie, like all the best horror films, serves up a multi-textual treat for viewers. There are shocks and shivers aplenty. Betsy’s and Jessica’s nighttime trip through the cane fields is one of the spookiest scenes ever. Below the horrors, however, is a presentation of the history of slavery and racism in the New World. The symbol of Saint Sebastian pierced with arrows, presented in the form of the old slave ship’s figurehead Ti-Misery, speaks to the history of lynchings in America. Pretty powerful stuff for a simple, 75-minute B-picture.