34. WHITE ZOMBIE

34. WHITE ZOMBIE
(1932)
Directed by Victor Halperin

Bela, Bela... There are five Bela Lugosi films on this list and this reveals my weakness for the tragic Hungarian actor. Doomed to eke out a living by making a series of truly awful movies through the 1940's and 50's and never fully escaping the role of Dracula that he became inexorably identified with, it's easy for folks to forget that Bela played more than the caped Count. His role as zombie master Murder Legendre in "White Zombie" is easily one of his best non-vampire turns. Made on what can fairly be called a meager budget in less than two weeks, it's the first zombie movie ever and a markedly atmospheric tale that unfolds in a morose and misty dreamsville. Do not expect anything approaching reality in this one. And you certainly shouldn't expect some authentic anthropological study of Vodoun. This is a slow and eerie spellcaster that exists in it's own fabricated realm filled with graveyard scenes, shuffling living dead, squawking vultures, waxy voodoo dolls and sinister villainy. Lugosi's character lives in a very European looking castle on a jagged shoreline in what is supposed to be Haiti where his new plaything is a freshly zombified woman (Madge Bellamy) whom he has cruelly called away on her wedding night. My favorite scene finds the distraught husband drowning his sorrows in a Haitian tavern where he hallucinates the image of his buried wife beckoning from beyond the clammy grave. Acting out this scene while imbibing in local redneck bars has done little to help me make new friends.