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, for the days leading up Halloween I’ll be posting some horror movie recommendations to help you celebrate Shocktober.
White Zombie has the distinction of being the first Hollywood zombie movie. However, the zombies depicted are not undead flesh eaters, which would not come into existence as we know them until George Romero's landmark film Night of the Living Dead in 1968. These are the original Haitian zombies, which are people who have been drugged, buried, dug up, and hypnotized into mindlessly serving the will of a master. In this movie the zombie master is Bela Lugosi as Murder Legendre. Yes, his character name is actually “Murder.” White Zombie usually gets overlooked as a classic horror movie because it is surprisingly not a Universal horror movie but an independent production. So it doesn't get included with the likes of Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and The Mummy (1932). Nevertheless, this is an eerie, early horror movie worthy of classic status. It has managed to have a lasting influence, inspiring the name of Rob Zombie’s band and being included in later movies like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Rob Zombie’s remake of Halloween (2007).
The protagonists are Neil Parker (John Harron) and his fiancé Madeleine Short (Madge Bellamy) who travel to the West Indies to visit their wealthy friend Charles Beaumont (Robert W. Frazer). Neither knows that Beaumont is so in love with Madeline that he has recruited the sinister Murder Legendre to make her into a zombie that will belong to him. Just after Neil and Madeleine’s wedding, she falls mysteriously ill and dies and is quickly buried. When Neil visits her tomb, he finds it empty. With the help of a local missionary, Dr. Bruner (Joseph Cawthorn), who delivers a lot of exposition about Voodoo and zombies, they figure out the evil plan of Charles and Murder Legendre and the pair set out to rescue Madeleine.
Of course, the approach to the racial and historical background of Haitian zombies is dated and at times condescending. Dr. Bruner refers to Haiti as a place “full of nonsense and superstition…sometimes I don’t know what to think.” However, it is not entirely ignored either. A black carriage driver (Clarence Muse, in an uncredited performance) is the first to recognize the zombies and drives Neil and Madeline to safety. He provides the movie's first description of zombies: “Corpses taken from their graves, who are made to work at the sugar mill fields at night.” Turning Madeline into the titular white zombie to be a beautiful, silent, mindless bride is a deviation of the usual purpose of creating a zombie. The fear of zombies and of becoming a zombie is rooted in slavery and the fear that even after death a slave would still not be free and still be forced to serve a master. Legendre proudly shows off his zombie slaves, each was a rival or someone who wronged him. Now, they are under his hypnotic spell and do his bidding. “They are not worried about long hours,” Legendre says and offers to provide Beaumont with zombie workers. “You could make good use of men like mine on your plantation?” The fate of the native zombies is of no concern to the main characters.
Like many early sound era horror films, White Zombie is heavy on atmosphere. The most memorable and chilling image has to be Lugosi’s sinister, hypnotic eyes superimposed over shots of Madeline, looming over his unsuspecting victim. The island setting and references to Voodoo serve the same purpose as castles and legends in the Universal monster movies, building an eerie atmosphere and making it clear that the main characters are in an unfamiliar land. Lugosi is excellent as the zombie master. After the success of Dracula, Universal offered him the role of the creature in Frankenstein but he turned it down because the character just grunted and never spoke. This is typically viewed as a miscalculation on Lugosi’s part and, allegedly, he took the role in White Zombie to not miss out on another success. However, Lugosi likely made the right choice. His talent for delivering dialogue in a way that is both alluring and menacing is his forte and it is what makes Dracula and White Zombie so creepy and so memorable.
White Zombie is in the public domain so you can easily find it on nearly any streaming service. It is available in both colorized and original black and white versions, but the black and white version streaming on Tubi and Amazon Prime Video has the best picture quality. It will also air on TCM on Monday, October 30th at 9AM CT in quality black and white.
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