13 Nights of Shocktober: I Walked With a Zombie

by A.J.

This is my favorite time of year, second only to Christmas. Autumn has arrived, the weather is cooling down, and October becomes the month-long celebration of scary movies called Shocktober. So, in the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.

Night  8: Val Lewton Night

“She makes a beautiful zombie, doesn’t she?”

I Walked With a Zombie

Throughout the 1940’s, the movie studio RKO released a series of low budget horror hits that despite their exploitative titles (Cat People, Isle of the Dead, Curse of the Cat People) were films of first-rate quality and substance. These films were developed and overseen by producer Val Lewton, who has the rare distinction of being a producer seen as an auteur (or author) by modern film critics and historians. The best of Val Lewton’s RKO horror films were his collaborations with director Jacques Tourneur, including I Walked With a Zombie.

You won’t find any flesh eating ghouls in this zombie movie. Before George Romero’s landmark film Night of the Living Dead in 1968, a zombie was a dark myth of the Voodoo religion. Specifically, a zombie was a person that had been put in a deathlike trance, buried, dug up, and then continued in a trance as a slave to the Voodoo priest that performed the “resurrection.” This is the type of zombie the characters in I Walked With a Zombie are confronted with.

Betsy (Frances Dee) travels to the island of St. Sebastian in the West Indies to take a job as a private nurse. She moves in to the Holland family sugar plantation and becomes friendly with Tom Holland (Tom Conway) and his half-brother Wesley Rand (James Ellison), though the brothers are at odds. Her patient is Tom’s wife, Jessica, who is in a perpetual catatonic trance and wanders the plantation at night. As Betsy tries to understand Jessica’s illness, she uncovers dark secrets about the Holland family.

The Val Lewton RKO horror movies emphasized atmosphere over visual scares, though there are naturally a few of those in I Walked With a Zombie. The titular scene of Betsy walking with Jessica through the cane fields coming across eerie markers like a hanging dead animal and a skull in the dirt is accompanied only by the sound of wind. The possibility of the supernatural looms over the characters, but this film delves more into the psychological effects of superstition. Betsy is a in a new and exotic land with customs and beliefs strange to her; her lack of familiarity puts her on edge. Perhaps the creepiest scene is also the unlikeliest. When trying to wake Wesley at a bar patio, a street musician sings a melancholy calypso ballad of the Holland family while walking slowly towards Betsy. Then he includes her in the ballad. It’s easily the creepiest use a calypso song in a movie and also a clever way to deliver exposition. The beautiful Film Noir-like use of light and shadow further adds to the eerie atmosphere of every scene.

Slavery is at the heart of the Voodoo zombie myth. I Walked With a Zombie is aware of this and deals indirectly with the lingering effects of slavery, albeit only for the white descendants of the slaveowners. A black carriage driver tells Betsy how the Holland family brought “the long ago fathers and long ago mothers of us all” to the island, “chained to the bottom of the boat.” The figurehead of that slave ship rests in the center of the courtyard of the Holland estate, an ever present and morbid reminder of the family’s past. It’s interesting that when Tom Holland says that the slave ship brought “our people” to the island, he is referring to his family as well as the slaves.

The central theme of I Walked With a Zombie is a simple one: things are not what they seem. When Betsy is admiring the beauty of the sea, Tom tells her with a resigned melancholy: “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.” Voodoo is not dangerous; it is just a religion that can be used for good or evil. The zombie is a victim, not a monster. The harm to Holland family was done not by the natives; it was done by the Hollands themselves. From its title, I Walked With a Zombie seems like a silly exploitation film, but it is a genuine horror classic made with exquisite talent on and off screen. This Lewton/Tourneur film is not as well-known as their signature film Cat People, but is easily of the same quality. Its moody and eerie atmosphere hold up solidly, as do the performances, and will make for a great Shocktober night.