White Zombie (Victor Halperin, 1932)

White Zombie is a creepy, unusual, complex, and visually striking Poverty Row horror film, and it's not even as racist as I was expecting it to be. I realize that's a bit like saying, "hey, there's only a little flesh-eating bacteria in this coffee," but, unlike The Mask of Fu Manchu, which made me extremely heavy-hearted upon a recent re-watch with its deliberate dehumanization of and disgust at every nonwhite character, White Zombie's few moments of racism come from ignorance and prevailing cultural attitudes and are presented alongside critiques of racism and sexism and the idea of possessing another person, whether it be through the exploitation of labor or a romantic relationship. It's a strange stew of regressive and progressive points of view, aided by a fantastic Bela Lugosi performance and much ominous weirdness. And, yeah, it's also a straight-up entertaining horror movie.

Set in Haiti, the film begins with a young engaged couple, Madeline Short Parker (Madge Bellamy) and Neil Parker (John Harron), taking a coach to the home of friendly acquaintance and plantation owner Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer). The couple will be married in a ceremony at Beaumont's plantation at his invite (way ahead of the white bougie trend of recent years). Of course Beaumont has an ulterior motive. He's in love with Madeline and attempts to get her to run away with him to Port-au-Prince. She, for whatever reason, is in love with her bland dweeb fiance Neil and refuses Charles. I would have refused both of them, but YMMV.

On the way to the plantation, the couple are momentarily slowed by a funeral in the middle of the road. The coachman explains that the locals bury their dead under well-traveled roads to prevent grave robbing. This is almost immediately followed by a creepy weirdo appearing out of the dark, coming up to the coach and grinning, saying nothing. He proceeds to stealthily steal Madeline's scarf before a procession of dazed weirdos appears behind him. The coachman tells the couple that the weirdos are not people but zombies, and they 23 skidoo. That creepy dude is Murder Legendre (Lugosi) a white voodoo master and factory owner who turns people into zombies to work as his slaves.

Of course, shitty plantation owner Charles strikes a deal with shitty factory owner/voodoo master Legendre to turn Madeline into a zombie so she can belong to Charles forever. The elaborate plan works, but Legendre is not a man to be trusted, and, anyway, Charles stupidly realizes way too late that having a soulless zombie version of the woman of your dreams is much worse than having the real woman exist in the world as her old self even if she doesn't love you back. Meanwhile, boring old Neil teams up with a missionary, Dr. Bruner (Joseph Cawthorn), to try to save Madeline and end Legendre's reign of terror.

Halperin creates a consistently unsettling vibe, with almost no scenes taking place in daylight, and despite the limited budget, his sets look vast and elaborate and are inflected with German expressionist touches. The film has a dreamlike atmosphere with its own rhythm that doesn't feel much like other, more conventional movies, and the sound design is particularly odd, with a screaming vulture appearing often and another scene underscored by the turning of a groaning wooden factory wheel.

Halperin is a bit of a mystery man. A theater director turned filmmaker, Halperin worked exclusively as a Poverty Row B-movie director from 1924 to 1942. He specialized in horror films and melodramas, though he later regretted his horror films, expressing a distaste for the genre and the negative feelings he felt he put into the world. This bums me out, because on the evidence of White Zombie, he was really good at horror. I can't find any biographical information about what the hell he did between 1942, the year of his final film (Girls' Town), and 1983, the year he died. That's almost 40 years of no film work. A Chicago native, Halperin died in Bentonville, Arkansas, the birthplace of Walmart. That's all the info I could scrounge up.

Maybe Halperin didn't appreciate White Zombie, but Lugosi appeared to be having a blast. He is so great in this movie, and the camera loves every smirk, stare, grin, and death glare Lugosi delivers, rewarding him with several close-ups and memorable entrances. Lugosi, along with the look of the film, is the best reason to see it.