I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

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I Walked with a Zombie (1943) – J. Tourneur

From the famed production stable of Val Lewton and directed by Jacques Tourneur comes this haunting tale of voodoo in the Caribbean. Although apparently drawn from a non-fiction report, screenwriters Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray tack on elements of Jane Eyre to give the film more dramatic tension and mystery. Frances Dee stars as a Betsy Connell, a Canadian nurse hired to look after a mentally ill patient on the island of San Sebastian (probably Haiti) by her husband Paul Holland (Tom Conway). Mrs Holland is completely zombified but can walk around in a trance.  Upon arrival, Betsy meets Paul’s younger half-brother Wes Rand (James Ellison) and soon learns that he was having an affair with Mrs Holland which was discovered by Paul. The shock apparently led to Jessica Holland’s illness and Wes’s subsequent alcoholism.  After Betsy’s attempts to revive Jessica with an insulin shock fail, she is convinced by her maid (Theresa Harris) to try voodoo.  This leads to the most spooky scenes in the picture, as Betsy walks with zombie Jessica to the crossroads and beyond to voodoo headquarters (the houmfort) – along the way they see creepy Darby Jones, the zombie who guards the crossroads. Little does she know that Paul and Wes’s mother, Mrs. Rand (Edith Barrett), has been masquerading as the voice of the voodoo spirits at the Houmfort (in order to convince the locals to adopt modern medicine). Yet what seems to throw cold water on the possibility that voodoo is real is quickly undone by the script, which proceeds to a tragic ending in which characters act by ambiguous compulsions. Mysterious and beautiful.