Being Film #17 for Hooptober 2025
Sometimes a movie is so good, it doesn’t matter the condition you see it. In a world of 4K, Dolby Vision, IMAX, and other buzzwords for the highest of definitions, a picture ultimately rests on its construction and execution. That being said, I wish some of that visual pizzazz could have been used in the tired, washed out low-budget schlock that is White Zombie. Alas, I watched this dismal Bela Lugosi vehicle in a terrible colorized transfer, so alarming in its greenish, vomit-like hues I was scrambling to find my original TV remote so I could at least turn the color off and have a measure of relief. Would a better viewing experience have made the film better in my eyes? Maybe in the literal fashion, but I think that would be it.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Young Madeleine travels to Haiti to marry her true love, Neil. The nuptials are to be held at the plantation of Charles Beaumont, who is in love with Madeleine and willing to go to any lengths to have her…including resorting to the voodoo magic of the evil “Dr”Murder” Legendre, who runs his own sugarcane mills using zombies as labor. Soon Madeleine falls under Lengedre’s spell, and Charles has his love…except Lengedre wants her, too. Soon the zombies are running amok, guns are drawn, and Neil, together with Dr. Brunner (I can’t even remember when he came into the film) has to ride to Legendre’s dilapidated fortress to rescue his love and stop the madness…
Even at a brief 67 minutes, White Zombie is a slog to get through. The performances across the board are both broad and campy in a way that feels amateur as opposed to heightened. Lugosi, coming off of Dracula seems to be sleepwalking through his role, although he has moments – mainly during the working of his voodoo magic – where he brings a small piece of believability to his performance.
But everyone else fairs terribly. Madge Bellamy as Madeleine is especially terrible, though she’s not given a whole lot to work with in the script by Garnett Weston, based off the 1929 novel The Magic Island by William Seabrook. Yes, this is the first representation of zombies on film, and I guess some credit should be given to this, but when you consider how beautiful similar concepts would be executed a decade later in Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked With A Zombie, being first isn’t the thrill it should be.
But maybe I’m being unfair, considering that superior film came a full ten years after White Zombie. I could accept that, except that my streaming service turned on another film right after White Zombie ended, and this horror film came out the previous year and looks ten times better, has a tighter script, better performances, and genuine chills.
But I’m not here to talk about the genius that is Frankenstein, or James Whale, or Colin Clive or the masterful Boris Karloff. Nope, I’m stuck with White Zombie, a sleepwalking Lugosi, and a vulture that screams so much I wanted to shit the sound off as much as the color on my television.
Oh, well…
Cinema Dual 