Movie Review: White Zombie (1932)

DIRECTOR: Victor Halperin. CAST: Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy, Joseph Cawthorn, Robert W. Frazer, John Harron, Brandon Hurst, George Burr Macannan, Clarence Muse, Frederick Peters, Annette Stone, John Printz, Dan Crimmins, Claude Morgan, John Fergusson, Velma Gresham.
Although it obviously does not live up to modern horror standards, this is possibly the first zombie movie ever made and that alone makes it worth seeing. Supposedly based on a “nonfiction” account of Haitian voodoo published in 1929, we begin our tale with a young couple planning to get married on the island. However, the lonely rich guy they are staying with wants the bride himself and works out quite the underhanded scheme with a nearby plantation owner to kidnap her from her fiancé. Bela Lugosi is fresh off the Dracula set to play the devious plantation owner who uses black magic to resurrect dead natives for slave labor. Oh, the racial implications! Oh, the awful attempts at blackface! Viewers might be disappointed that the zombies are not exactly of the flesh-eating variety, although it is probably unrealistic to expect that from an old movie like this. White Zombie does not retain whatever impact it might have once had, but Bela Lugosi’s piercing eyes and sinister facial expressions are enough to carry the load. Shot in eleven days for fifty grand with sets left over from both Dracula and Frankenstein.