I Walked with a ZombieZombies are portrayed in various ways in movies. Sometimes they are depicted as flesh-eating corpses, shambling about and groaning. At other times, they are people who've lost their volition, and move as though in a waking dream. In I Walked with a Zombie, it is the latter interpretation, where the eponymous zombie is the patient of a nurse named Betsy Connell (Frances Dee), hired by sugar plantation owner Paul Holland (Tom Conway) to care for his wife, Jessica (Christine Gordon). As Betsy's feelings for Paul begin to grow, she becomes convinced that to set his soul at ease, she should find a means to cure Jessica, leading to increasingly unorthodox methods.
|
|
Betsy is not naive, but she is still a stranger to the customs and people of the West Indies island of Saint Sebastian, a far sunnier climate than her snowy home in Canada. On the boat to the island, Paul presents himself as aloof, even perhaps cruel, in his quickness to dismiss her romantic notions of the beauty of the Caribbean. What becomes clear--more so when Betsy encounters Paul's more lackadaisical half-brother, Wesley Rand (James Ellison), who is given to drowning his sorrows--is that their family home in Saint Sebastian, Fort Holland, is a broken one. The boys' mother, Mrs. Rand (Edith Barrett), still cares for her sons, but distances herself as well, spending her time tending to the other residents of the island. The familial schism was the result of a love triangle between Paul and Wesley for Paul's wife. Paul blames himself for driving Jessica mad following a falling out, and Wesley blames him for it as well. However, the diagnosis by resident clinician, Dr. Maxwell (James Bell), was that Jessica suffered a terrible virus which left her with irreparable nerve damage, in turn robbing her of her capacity for independent actions--still alive, much like the mythical zombies which make up part of the island's voodoo religion. Jessica's presence at Fort Holland, in a state of limbo between life and death, is a metaphor for the inability for the family to cope with this divide, a sorrow so profound that it has trickled into local rumor and even makes its way into the songs of local performers.
There is a pervading sense of sorrow on Saint Sebastian, as though the cancerous pain of the family is mirrored by the populous. Paul tells Betsy that the housemaid Alma (Theresa Harris) cries because the islanders weep at the birth of a child but rejoice at a funeral. The suggestion recalls the islanders' roots as slaves brought over from Africa to work the fields; they are not slaves on Saint Sebastian anymore, but their lives have not changed that much, and their traditions formed from that hard life of slavery have endured. The implication is that life is hard work, and there is freedom in death, and that the rituals surrounding the animation of the dead represent a reclamation of that power over life and death. It could also be interpreted that necromancy is an affront to the natural order, hence the efforts on Alma's part to invite Betsy to supplicate the voodoo priests to try to cure Jessica. The secretive base where the islanders practice their religion is called the "houmfort", a name which also evokes the homestead of Paul, Fort Holland. It is a place whose location is not on a map; Alma describes the path by drawing shapes in spilled sugar. The path to reach the houmfort is guarded by imposing relics of skulls and gourds carved to play eerie music when the wind blows, as well by a silent sentinel named Carre-Four (Darby Jones), who himself bears the characteristics of a zombie. The reason such a location is a secret is because it is something established by the islanders that is intrinsic to them, of cultural value--something they own. Voodoo is a syncretic religion, meaning that it is a combination of various beliefs into a system that the islanders have adopted as theirs, something which they use to feel independent from the society which had previously enslaved them--keeping it secret means it cannot be taken from them.
I Walked with a Zombie has been described as "Jane Eyre in the West Indies", largely because of the romance between the good-natured protagonist and the haunted--even cold--employer, who conceals his afflicted wife in a tower. With such a provocative title like I Walked with a Zombie, and a lurid poster suggesting chills and thrills, one would expect the film to be a ghastly production of special effects and shrieks. (There is but one shriek, and the story goes the title was the brainchild of the RKO studio executives.) I Walked with a Zombie is more of a drama, where the presence of the supernatural is implied, but never verified. Scenes at the houmfort following Betsy and Jessica's visit suggest that the practitioners of voodoo have some control over Jessica, even over spans of distance, but the ambiguity is meant to deter the audience from over-analyzing the possibilities of the supernatural, and focus instead on the strained relations between the family. I Walked with a Zombie also resembles Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. Aside from the relationship dynamic, there is a sense that Jessica was a vibrant personality which we will never fully witness, and that she was responsible--or is at least blamed by Mrs. Rand--in tearing their family apart, as it was with the late Mrs. de Winter was in Rebecca. Like many of the classic films made by director Jacques Tourneur and produced by Val Lewton, I Walked with a Zombie defies the very definition of a horror film, save that it is capable of instilling a great unease and anxiety in the viewer with its deep shadows and expressive sets, emphasizing a complex plot with equally complex characters over cheap thrills and pointless shock value, a genuine thriller ahead of its time.
Recommended for: Fans of an intelligent and engaging story about the ruins of a family and the young nurse caught up in the swell of jealousy and bitterness over a love given to decay. It is also a story which probes into the enigma of voodoo as seen from an outsider's perspective, and the myth of the zombie.
There is a pervading sense of sorrow on Saint Sebastian, as though the cancerous pain of the family is mirrored by the populous. Paul tells Betsy that the housemaid Alma (Theresa Harris) cries because the islanders weep at the birth of a child but rejoice at a funeral. The suggestion recalls the islanders' roots as slaves brought over from Africa to work the fields; they are not slaves on Saint Sebastian anymore, but their lives have not changed that much, and their traditions formed from that hard life of slavery have endured. The implication is that life is hard work, and there is freedom in death, and that the rituals surrounding the animation of the dead represent a reclamation of that power over life and death. It could also be interpreted that necromancy is an affront to the natural order, hence the efforts on Alma's part to invite Betsy to supplicate the voodoo priests to try to cure Jessica. The secretive base where the islanders practice their religion is called the "houmfort", a name which also evokes the homestead of Paul, Fort Holland. It is a place whose location is not on a map; Alma describes the path by drawing shapes in spilled sugar. The path to reach the houmfort is guarded by imposing relics of skulls and gourds carved to play eerie music when the wind blows, as well by a silent sentinel named Carre-Four (Darby Jones), who himself bears the characteristics of a zombie. The reason such a location is a secret is because it is something established by the islanders that is intrinsic to them, of cultural value--something they own. Voodoo is a syncretic religion, meaning that it is a combination of various beliefs into a system that the islanders have adopted as theirs, something which they use to feel independent from the society which had previously enslaved them--keeping it secret means it cannot be taken from them.
I Walked with a Zombie has been described as "Jane Eyre in the West Indies", largely because of the romance between the good-natured protagonist and the haunted--even cold--employer, who conceals his afflicted wife in a tower. With such a provocative title like I Walked with a Zombie, and a lurid poster suggesting chills and thrills, one would expect the film to be a ghastly production of special effects and shrieks. (There is but one shriek, and the story goes the title was the brainchild of the RKO studio executives.) I Walked with a Zombie is more of a drama, where the presence of the supernatural is implied, but never verified. Scenes at the houmfort following Betsy and Jessica's visit suggest that the practitioners of voodoo have some control over Jessica, even over spans of distance, but the ambiguity is meant to deter the audience from over-analyzing the possibilities of the supernatural, and focus instead on the strained relations between the family. I Walked with a Zombie also resembles Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. Aside from the relationship dynamic, there is a sense that Jessica was a vibrant personality which we will never fully witness, and that she was responsible--or is at least blamed by Mrs. Rand--in tearing their family apart, as it was with the late Mrs. de Winter was in Rebecca. Like many of the classic films made by director Jacques Tourneur and produced by Val Lewton, I Walked with a Zombie defies the very definition of a horror film, save that it is capable of instilling a great unease and anxiety in the viewer with its deep shadows and expressive sets, emphasizing a complex plot with equally complex characters over cheap thrills and pointless shock value, a genuine thriller ahead of its time.
Recommended for: Fans of an intelligent and engaging story about the ruins of a family and the young nurse caught up in the swell of jealousy and bitterness over a love given to decay. It is also a story which probes into the enigma of voodoo as seen from an outsider's perspective, and the myth of the zombie.