I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943)

For their second collaboration, producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur were keen to build on the overnight success of Cat People (1942) that had greatly exceeded studio and audience expectations. RKO’s punishing release schedule however gave them no time for ‘difficult second album’ musings. Val Lewton was contracted to deliver his next production less than four months later, (a total of four by the end of 1943). It would take a workaholic to manage this workload and yet still imbue each film with quality far beyond the typical cranked-out schlock – and that he was.

I Walked With a Zombie, like its predecessor, hampered Lewton with a title forced upon him that he would need to work against, while at the same time somehow fulfilling. The zombie horror film was also tarred with racist and cheapjack connotations. Since the sub-genre emerged with the dire White Zombie (1932), the only major studio picture to attempt a Caribbean voodoo-flavoured horror was Paramount’s The Ghost Breakers (see my review of 4/11/2016) and this was played for comedy as a Bob Hope vehicle. While it gave us the first example of a nightmarish, undead soul in Noble Johnson’s unsettling zombie, there was an uncomfortable imperialist racism embedded that tarnished all of the first decade’s iterations. Indigenous West Indians who believed in the undead returning to life were exploited superficially as a primitive device for shocks, rather than a culture to understand. There was no better treatment for the black western characters either that accompanied the white heroes. Whether played by Willie Best in The Ghost Breakers or Manton Moreland in Monogram’s awful King of the Zombies (1941), they were as denigrated as the natives, but more sharply-detailed as comic-relief, wide-eyed, lazy cowards.

By the early Forties, Monogram was in fact the only studio still churning out zombie pictures. This Poverty Row outfit was an ideal place for the living dead in more ways than one. Cost-wise, there was zero requirement for talent or extra outlay for costumes. All they needed were a few glassy-eyed shamblers who could be upgraded for a few dollars into monotone delivery day-players. If you’ve ever seen a Monogram film, there were plenty to choose from.

Lewton and Tourneur worked hard to distance themselves from any association with past tawdry efforts in the field. The source material was as much a hindrance as an inspiration. RKO bosses had handed them I Walked with a Zombie as the title of an American Weekly newspaper article by Inez Wallace which was basically a fabricated riip-off of Walter Seabrook’s The Magic Island, itself a questionably lurid account of his own first-hand experiences of voodoo practises in Haiti. Although the veracity of Wallace’s article could not be relied upon, in his superb history of undead cinema, Book of the Dead, Jamie Russell argues that “The finished film mimics Wallace’s uncertainty and hesitation, absorbing the inherent paradoxes between the clash of knowledge and ignorance found in the article”.

Tales of roaming zombified slave-workers and black magic ritual were far too crude and flimsy for Lewton’s refined taste when overseeing Kurt (The Wolf Man) Siodmak and Ardel Wray in their screenplay. He rejected Siodmak’s populist early drafts and asked them to ground any depiction of Haitian voodoo in genuine research (possibly inspired by the integrity that his mentor David O. Selznick instilled in him), and to use Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre as a blueprint for the emotionally engaging story.

The result had more in common with Cat People than its quality beyond the call of duty. Both films share such strength in their plot, characterisation and brooding atmosphere that if the supernatural element was removed, each would still make a gripping story of doomed love. I Walked with a Zombie is even more subtle than its predecessor. There are no murders or jump shocks, and even its single presumed figure of terror is ambiguous and sympathetic.

There are emotive echoes of the Bronte novel’s structure underpinning the film. We see events through a first person narrative by a female character (Canadian nurse Betsy Connell, played by Frances Dee) sent to work in a caring role in an unfamiliar environment, who cannot help falling in love with a tortured, reserved employer (Tom Conway). Both struggle to remain principled while haunted by his alive yet mentally-disturbed first wife that she is treating. Events will ultimately reveal dark secrets that impact on all. I Walked with a Zombie weaves in other relationship complexities and a rich, respected Caribbean culture alien to Betsy on its way to a downbeat ending open to interpretation.

From the opening scene, Tourneur immediately provides a tone designed to mystify and intrigue the viewer. Betsy’s voiceover draws us in with an almost light-hearted wistfulness, recognising the absurdity of how “I walked with a zombie. It does seem an odd thing to say” while we see her strolling along the beach in silhouette with a very tall unidentified person, presumed to be him. This scene is never referenced again. Before we can dwell on this, she is being given a cursory interview for a nursing post that would take her to exotic San Sebastian. She doesn’t leap naively at the opportunity, and when knowledge of witchcraft is vaguely asked about, she claims ignorance facetiously.

Once on the island, Betsy is gradually drip-fed its history, made up of a minority white ruling community and a happy, deferential black majority descended from the old slave trade. Straight away we see a radical and welcome difference in how Lewton and Tourneur depict their world and behaviour compared to Hollywood’s usual portrayal of anyone dark-skinned. There is as much gentle respect accorded them as shown by them. The maid Alma (Theresa Harris) is gracious and pleasant without being a servile ‘mammy’ stereotype spouting slang (much as she was allowed to be as Minnie the waitress in Cat People). Nor are the men relegated to being grotesque pantomiming dimwits with outrageous, cartoony voices. Even the musicians dress spotlessly in white suits and carry themselves with a serene dignity.

As Betsy’s suave English gent employer, Conway is well cast as Paul Holland. He has the air of languid privilege reminiscent of the British Raj and an impassive coolness of manner that conceals passion and torment. His half-brother and mostly-functioning alcoholic employee Wesley Rand (James Ellison) is another who masks private pain. Before we peer into his sozzled soul, Betsy is distracted that night by plaintive weeping and goes to find the cause. The scene pulls back the discreet veil that the household dissembles in front of; Tourneur builds tension with a staircase tantalisingly lit by J. Roy Hunt, the top of which is hidden in shadow. Betsy is pursued by an ethereal woman in white who heads straight for her with a chilling, silent directness. It’s a claustrophobic moment and shows what an unsettling effect can be achieved on camera with simple, deliberate intent devoid of any tricksiness. Fortunately Betsy is saved by the appearance of Paul. This is an unforgettable way to introduce her to Jessica Holland, the woman she has been hired to look after.

Betsy is told that Jessica’s trance state is the result of a fever that damaged her spinal cord into a ruinous helplessness. She learns even more when drinking al fresco with Wesley. His aw-shucks folksiness beguiles her until the unwitting calypso singer (the marvellously-named Sir Lancelot) sings a lilting tune whose lyrics lay out Wesley’s thwarted elopement with Jessica by Paul. Suddenly Wesley turns from mushy to venomous, rounding on him for resurrecting the heartache Wesley medicates daily with booze.

Betsy meets Mrs Rand, a doctor and mother to the men who is also not as straight-forward as her friendly bedside manner. Playing the piano one evening, Paul reveals to Betsy a tenderness and self-critical fear that he feels responsible for his wife’s state. Betsy was already falling for him; his confessional intensifies her anguish to the point where she sublimates it by promising to cure Jessica.

From here onwards, Betsy becomes more than just a white colonial spectator as she ventures into the secluded world of voodoo ritual. Alma gives her and Jessica directions through the corn fields, and cloth brooches that function as all-access passes when they encounter the film’s single yet fascinating zombie guardian. Our first sight of the towering Carre-Four (Darby Jones), shot from below and lit by moonlight, is an unforgettably potent sight. His glazed-eyed guardian symbolises the gateway for Betsy into the supernatural – if she dares. Despite his size, he offers no active threat, but neither can his calm stance be taken for granted either. Coupled with the sighing wind amid the high corn rows dwarfing Betsy and Jessica, this no-going-back sequence staged by Tourneur is thick with atmospheric foreboding.

The arcane practises choreographed at the houmfort worshipping site are mesmerising and utterly credible. The sabreur wielding a sword’s ceremonial power, the two dancers’ jagged thrusts before meeting their foreheads over the drummer, not to mention the insistent earworm incantations driven by the beating heart of drumming, images like these have a fierce, eerie commitment far removed from the dodgy Hollywood musical moves typically passed off as exotic rites in horror movies. What follows though reveals that actually even the preserved mystery of the locals has been devious claimed by the white colonial settlers, masked as being for their betterment. Mrs Rand has been posing as a voodoo priestess to dispense modern medicine under the guise of serving the gods. She tells Betsy that Jessica is beyond salvation. Meanwhile, the Sabreur is conducting his own occult tests. He pierces her arm with the sword, convincing the attending folk that she is a zombie. This prompts the ancient world to impact on the sanctity of the present in return when Carre-Four is sent to collect Jessica for their further examination. The formidable Mrs Rand denies him, and then fuels further ambiguous mystery by springing on Betsy that she believes she was a possessed conduit for a voodoo god who cursed Jessica into zombification.

To further muddy the swirling dark waters, Wesley and the Sabreur both duel over the soul of Jessica, the latter enacting the piercing of a voodoo doll effigy of her as the still-lovestruck Wesley stabs her with the symbolic arrow of Ti-Misery (Saint Sebastian). With Carre-Four striding silently after him, Wesley sacrifices himself and Jessica in the sea. Wading out with her in his arms suggests a religious, almost baptismal ceremony to the sad reuniting of their ill-fated love.

This mournful, poetic ending adds to the lingering enigma of unanswered questions in the film that have aided its longevity. And let’s not forget that opening which now seemingly identifies Carre-Four as Betsy’s companion on the shore - but why? When? Where were they going? Such musings haunt the viewer as though we’ve just awoken from an evocative yet unexplained fever dream. At a time when most horror pictures followed a routine plot often wrapped up with unimaginative haste, I Walked with a Zombie resonates for its daring bid to obscure easy answers. I remember vividly the aftermath of seeing The Blair Witch Project (1999) with friends at the cinema, and how the passionate debates about its own ending was a lively and wondrous antidote to forgettability. Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur had taken audiences to that delightfully maddening place decades before…