Review of White Zombie (1932) by Charles P — 24 Jun 2011

By 1932 - and with the success of "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" - every tinpot studio in Tinseltown was searching for their own monster movie. This barely hour-long B-feature, directed by the here-today-gone-tomorrow Halperin, broke new ground in importing the Z-word from Haitian lore, and started a cycle that led up to RKO's genre-defining "I Walked With a Zombie".

"White Zombie" is an altogether less rarefied work - you could go so far as to call it a cash-in, even - but it has a crude power, and its better moments still possess the ability to put the willies up you.

.. Even on the tatty print currently available on UK DVD through Elstree Hill Entertainment (the name you can trust!), it's possible to make out Halperin's bold lighting effects (the whites of the bride's veil and eyes really do glow), and dynamic use of sound: the pounding drums, chirping crickets, bloodcurdling shrieks, not to mention the hideous grinding of cogs (and of the human spirit) down at the film's most carefully designed destination, an almost literally satanic mill, overseen by Lugosi's Mephistophelian sugar magnate.

What we spy is that, in importing Caribbean legend and reframing it for American audiences, the film is setting out the template for a whole strain of zombie movies more or less concerned with the business of capitalism and control, the dark arts that studio bosses would well understand.