Horror Classic 8 of 50: WHITE ZOMBIE

This week's movie is White Zombie from 1932. Guess who stars in this film? That's right, it's Bela Lugosi! Again! (see also Black Dragons, Invisible Ghost, and One Body Too Many.) This makes disc 2 of the 50-movie horror pack a total Lugosi-palooza, and I have to assume that it was done that way on purpose.

I had actually seen this one before, some years ago, with my college buddy Sara, who may or may not be reading this blog. I really didn't remember much from it, with the notable exception of Bela Lugosi's sinister eyes. His eyes get a lot of camera time, and he probably prepared for it, spending hours staring into the mirror until he had thoroughly freaked himself out.

Synopsis

Neil and Madeline are on their way to get married at the estate of their acquaintance Mr. Beaumont. En route they encounter a group of slow-moving, hollowed-eyed folks, and the driver of their carriage explains that these are ZOMBIES. The young couple is skeptical, but the driver
high-tails it outta there to Beaumont's place.

As they anticipate the upcoming nuptials, it is revealed that Mr. Beaumont is in love with Madeline, and he tries to talk her out of marrying Neil so she can be with him. She's pretty sure she wants to marry the guy she's engaged to, so Beaumont takes desperate measures. He calls on the help of a spooky zombie master with spooky facial hair, played by Bela Lugosi. I never heard anyone mention the name of this character, but Wikipedia tells me that he's "Murder
Legendre," so I can understand why he wasn't wearing a nametag. Good ol' Murder tells Beaumont he can fix things so Madeline will be his companion... but there's a price. He gives Beaumont a vial.

And what a vile vial it is*, because it turns out to contain poison. During her first dinner as a married woman, Madeline takes a swig of wine, then looks in her glass to see the face of Bela Lugosi leering at her. Then she dies. Which is really unfortunate for Neil, especially considering
they haven't even made it to the honeymoon suite.

After Madeline's funeral, Beaumont and Lugosi drop in on her tomb to steal her body and reanimate it. Now she can be Beaumont's girlfriend! Icky. But Neil soon discovers that the body is gone, and he recruits the assistance of his voodoo expert friend Dr. Bruner to get her back.

As they make their way to Lugosi's place, Beaumont is having second thoughts about the whole zombie girlfriend thing. She never talks to him, and she wanders around the house in a soulless daze, which usually doesn't happen until around the third year of marriage. He wants to take it all back, but Bela the Zombie High School Principal is still pulling the strings of Madeline and all the other undead folks, and now he aims to zombify Beaumont as well. When Neil and Dr. Bruner finally arrive, it all comes down to a showdown for an innocent woman's humanity... and the teams are a couple of dudes vs. a castle full of zombies.

Is It Scary?

No, mostly just slow. One possible exception: Bela Lugosi's eyes. Every time he works his mojo on his remote control zombies, he squints and clasps his hands, and the camera moves uncomfortably close to his face.

Lessons I Learned

• Unrequited love is sad, but it doesn't help to have the object of your affection killed and turned into the living dead. In fact, it might make things worse.
• According to Dr. Bruner: "There's been lots of people who've been pronounced dead who've lived for years."

Comments
The quality of the film-to-video transfers of the public domain films on this DVD set has varied greatly, but this one was the worst. Dialogue was sometimes hard to understand, the film was grainy, and there seemed to be frames missing all over the place. I wonder if this is the best
version of White Zombie that exists, or if there's a nicer copy out there somewhere.

As for the content of the film itself, I guess this is something of a cult classic, considering the fact that it inspired the name of a rock band...

but it's not very good. The pacing is terrible; it's less than 90 minutes and it still seemed long. The guy playing Neil was melodramatic. The music was probably recycled from another film, as it often didn't seem to fit the scene. And I don't think those were even real zombies! I think they were actors!

One thing I did like was Joseph Cawthorn as Dr. Bruner. In his first scene, he casually reeled off his dialogue as if he had just gotten the script moments before they started shooting. I wouldn't be surprised if he had improvised some of it.

At least there's truth in advertising here: For much of the film Madeline is indeed a white zombie. I suppose Caucasian Zombie wouldn't have been as catchy a title.

Bela Lugosi's zombie master has a pet vulture, played by a stuffed bird in shots with actors and a real vulture in all other shots. The vulture never really does anything except screech.

Letter grade for White Zombie: D

Next movie in the DVD set: Attack of the Giant Leeches

*I stole this bit of wordplay from my brother's high school video project of Romeo & Juliet.