White Zombie (1932)

Good concept, poorly executed.

Fantastic!

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I wanted to like White Zombie more. After all, it is considered to be the first "zombie movie" ever made. But the pacing and acting made it seem like the longest 68-minute film ever made. I think it would have worked better as a silent film.

Released in 1932, "White Zombie" is a rather under-rated horror film.The film has atmosphere, a fairly good plot, a great performance from Bela Lugosi and good direction.The only thing I am a bit wary of, (and this is no fault of the film) is that a lot of DVD releases are of rather poor quality. It took me a while to locate a good DVD but luckily I have.

I'm sorry, but this movie about a young couple, Neil Parker (John Harron) and Madeleine Short (Madge Bellamy) arriving at the Haitian plantation of a casual acquaintance, Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer) where they plan to be married; only to be terrorized by a crazed plantation owner, Murder Legrende (Bela Lugosi) who wish to turn Madeleine into a zombie in order to join his legions of mindless slave workers, was not that good. It wasn't that entertaining. Yet, I will give the movie some credit for serving as one of the very first zombie movies ever, predating George Romero 1968's 'Night of the Living Dead' by 36 years. While zombie movies normally are portray as reanimated corpses or virally infected human beings feeding on the flesh. There was a time, where zombies meant living people under mind control, through the means of voodoo magic and drugs. Taken from spiritual Haitian culture, inspired by a Broadway play titled 'Zombie' by Kenneth Webb and influence by 'the Magic Island' by William Seabrook, director Victor Halperin and screenwriter Grant Weston hope to make 'White Zombie' into the next big horror movie, after the surprise hit of 1931's 'Dracula'. After all, it seemed the zombie film came out at a proper time in America with it paralleled the Great Depression. It highly reflect the powerlessness and misery felt by the American workforce. The American workforce felt like zombies themselves - mindless workers that are easily replaced. Yet, when the film was originally released, it only made decent money after a lukewarm response. Critics at the time, universally loathed it, and more or less people forgot that it existed. It was lost for a while, but it experienced a bit of a revival once it was found and released on television in the 1950s, and then later on video in the 80's. By that time, its film copyright claim has expired, causing the film to fall into the public domain. Now, anybody can make a DVD copy of this movie. Because of that, many of the film prints out there are in really bad shape, seeing how many of them, having been duped from second- or third-generation copies that is already in poor quality. So, don't be surprised, that the copies available on the market are either severely damage. My copy had some really bad editing cuts and a few missing scenes. Not only that, but very bad audio. I can barely hear any dialogue in this film. Obviously, this movie need a criterion collection edition. Despite that, the movie did get some cult viewers, overtime that love the film. After all, a band was named after it with the lead singer taking 'zombie' as his last name. Nevertheless, with great spooky atmosphere with shadows/silhouettes, epic Universal sets, fantastic classical music and great cinematography, I still really couldn't behind this film. First off, the pacing was bad. It really took forever for this film, to finish. Plus, it doesn't have much twist or turns, so it highly predictable. It doesn't help that the main two protagonists in the film were kinda boring. Don't get me wrong, Madge Bellamy is one of the sexiest flapper ever, but she doesn't do anything in the film, besides being a damsel in distress. John Harron is just dull. He really doesn't do much in the film, besides moan and cry. Another character, that really annoyed me, was Dr. Bruner (Joseph Cawthorn). I didn't like how the filmmakers made him into a comic relief, rather than a wise 'Abraham Van Helsing' stock character. All those scenes where he is asking for a light is annoying and repetitive. Regardless of what scholars may think about him, the idea that he's supposed to be the 'light-bearer' doesn't hold any weight. The reason for this; is why would a 'light-bearer' be the one looking for a light? Anyways, the movie delivers the ideas that he might have powers, so badly. There is scenes, where a hand, supposedly snap a person, out of Murder's control, but the film never truly establish, if it's Dr. Bruner or not. Despite that, I have to say the quality body language work from Bela Lugosi is a lot better. We know, what he's doing with his deadpan v line monobrow stare, and the gripping on his hands. It's easily noticing, that he is taking control of people. Lugosi is much more menacing with his sinister stage presence than his natural, heavily accented voice. It really adds to the intensity of the film. Yet, I do less of that screeching vulture that follow his character, around. That bird was irritating. Plus, the zombie could had been a little more scary, rather than goofy hokey buffoons. Like the mind-control gimmick, just wish, the zombies were smarter. Also, I didn't like, the fact that one of the extras that plays the zombie was in blackface. It was somewhat offensive, even for the time. Even the way, the movie portray Haitians was also kinda upsetting. I really didn't like how they were made to look like servers and lesser beings to the white race. A good example of this, is the horse sequence scene, where the rich white heroes are riding horses, while the poor black man is riding a donkey. However, that's just nitpicking. This film is from a bygone era, that I will cut it some slack on that. Yet, all of the jarring on-screen mistakes like the 'hold my nose' take and fake tombstone does weight this movie, really down. There is little excuses for those. Overall: I have to say, this movie is meh. It's sucks, because I was really dying to see this movie. I really wanted to like 'White Zombie' more, but after watching it. I just got really dead tired. Still, it is a very influential horror classic that needed to be seen, at least once. At least, it's better than its 1936's loose sequel, 'Revolt of the Zombies'. Now that was dead on, unwatchable.

Honestly I didn't really like this movie at all. I thought it was really slow and the pay off at the end sucked. I would say it is definitely worth a watch because it looks pretty cool and it is pretty eerie. If your going to watch this movie thinking the zombies are going to be shall I say walking dead looking then you will be very disappointed. Even Bela Lugosi Dracula himself I barely payed attention to in this movie. Even writing this review is hard to do because I didn't like it at all. I didn't like the main male actor in it I thought he was a strange looking guy and I just couldn't shake my dislike for him. Watch this movie if you want.