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      I Walked With a Zombie

      Released Apr 8, 1943 1h 9m Horror List
      85% 41 Reviews Tomatometer 73% 5,000+ Ratings Audience Score Canadian nurse Betsey Connell (Frances Dee) is hired to care for Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon), a woman on a Caribbean sugar plantation, who has a bizarre condition. The mysterious affliction baffles Betsy but when she falls for Jessica's husband, Paul (Tom Conway), she is determined to make him happy by curing his wife. However, in her quest, Betsey is drawn into the island's dark culture of voodoo and zombies and begins to uncover the Holland family's sinister secrets. Read More Read Less Watch on Fandango at Home Premiered Aug 15 Buy Now

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      I Walked With a Zombie

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      Critics Consensus

      Evocative direction by Jacques Tourneur collides with the low-rent production values of exploitateer Val Lewton in I Walked with a Zombie, a sultry sleeper that's simultaneously smarmy, eloquent and fascinating.

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      Audience Reviews

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      Dave C … and then there is this example of 1940's ‘horror'! Typical visuals and scriptwriting, most definitely of its era. However, the story and presentation of anything relating to horror is sleep-inducing (I fell asleep twice!) Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars 10/31/23 Full Review William N This really is one of my favorite flicks. Val Lewton's RKO stuff is classic psychological horror. Tom Conway has an excellent part in it, Sir Lancelot does a pretty good turn as the singer doing a version of "Shame & Scandal." Rated 5 out of 5 stars 10/10/23 Full Review Matthew B I Walked with a Zombie firmly belongs to the category of suggestive horror, although there is an argument for saying that it is not a horror movie at all. It deals in voodoo, and it is about a zombie, both familiar elements in horror movies. However the story is more about supernatural than horrific events. The film does have the look of a horror movie however, with its use of shadows and disconcerting effects. The film was one of many produced by Val Lewton, a man who took a great interest in making understated horror movies that traded in ambiguity rather than outright scares. Made on a very low budget, Lewton's films have come to be seen as some of the best horror movies of the 1940s, and a few of them deserve to be remembered among the greatest horror movies ever made. The best of Lewton's movies were made by Jacques Tourneur, a talented French film director, I once heard described as a ‘dime store Hitchcock'. Tourneur did not get the same opportunities as Hitchcock, but he had a knack for transforming potentially poor movies into adequate ones, and potentially adequate movies into good ones. Some of the elements in I Walked with a Zombie threaten to be the ingredients of a poor movie. The acting is only adequate, and sometimes bland. The story is recycled from elements of Jane Eyre with perhaps a hint of East of Eden. The short running time results in a script that is somewhat underwritten. However, in Tourneur's hands these ingredients are turned into something surprisingly effective. The director builds up an atmospheric tale. Remembering the movie afterwards, I think of the shadows, the sound of the wind in the grasses, the blowing of the conch, and the incessant drumbeat. Most of all I think about the flowing white dress of the zombie, and her face without expression, looking like somebody who is uninterested in her surroundings or thinking about something else. When she and her nurse pay a visit to the Hounfour (the Voodoo temple), my eyes are drawn to her lifeless immobile face rather than to that of her curious and nervous nurse whose eyes dart anxiously around as she watches the rituals. One important theme in I Walked with a Zombie is the conflict between scientific rationalism and old-fashioned superstition, and the film offers only an equivocal answer as to which is correct. Is Jessica Holland a zombie or a mental patient? What is the correct way to cure her? Tom Holland is a rationalist who dismissively regards voodoo as a childish fantasy. Wesley Rand and the black population of San Sebastian preserve their belief in the supernatural. The movie is about one who should be dead yet is somehow living, but the movie is even more about those who should be living but who are dead within their lives. The characters are trapped by their past, and this is preventing them from moving on with their lives. This even applies to the plantation workers who are descendants of slaves who were brought to San Sebastian against their will to work on the Holland sugar plantation. The natives weep when a child is born because they have not forgotten the ‘miserable burden of slavery' as Paul calls it. In little more than an hour, I Walked with a Zombie has managed to condense into its running time a number of themes. We have seen how rational scientific beliefs are still being challenged by the superstitious beliefs of old, and how the living are still held in the clutches of those who have died. These themes are underwritten due to the movie's short running time, but this is not necessarily a weakness. The viewer is left to fill in the gaps, and to consider these issues at their own leisure. Even setting these themes aside the film works well as a creepy and mysterious tale of the supernatural, and Jacques Tourneur makes good use of a small budget to deliver a visually memorable film. I wrote a longer appreciation of I Walked with a Zombie (with spoilers) on my blog page if you are interested in reading more: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2017/11/12/i-walked-with-a-zombie-1943/ Rated 5 out of 5 stars 08/25/23 Full Review Leaburn O Quite a decent horror type film from the 40s. A lot to digest and a quick moving plot help keep you interested. Not great but not bad for an hour. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 05/18/23 Full Review martin f For the title alone I was expecting a B-movie but I was all wrong! This movie is an elegant horror movie that built slowly its story, even if the final twist felt a little predictable. Some scene gives you genius thrill, as the director seems to love slow apparition in the dead of the night. For a 40's movie, there is a surprising respect for the voodoo culture here even if we can find some outdated culture commentary toward the African people. It's a zombie movie before The Night of the Living Dead and you can feel that with its more ghostly approach to the genre. The zombies are cold automatons wandering like specters. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review joel h Much like the titular character, I Walk with a Zombie sleepwalks through its story, not really making sense at times. Even with its short 69-minute runtime, this movie drags. And while there are a few creepy moments, it never really feels scary. It also hasn't aged very well, as there are some lines of dialogue and moments that made me wince a little. Zombie movies hadn't hit their stride yet, it seems. Rated 2 out of 5 stars 03/30/23 Full Review Read all reviews Post a rating

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      Critics Reviews

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      John L. Scott Los Angeles Times Tourneur apparently has that art of generating the "mystic atmosphere," which is so important in these eerie film plays. Sep 28, 2022 Full Review Wanda Hale New York Daily News It's good "escape" stuff, this RKO Radio production... A most dramatic beginning is offset by the confusion in the ending, but it will still give you the creeps, pretty nearly all the way through. Rated: 2.5/4 Sep 28, 2022 Full Review Marjory Adams Boston Globe I Walked with a Zombie is a new horror picture, but it gets nowhere in the telling and finishes its overdone melodramatics with a most unconvincing climax. Sep 28, 2022 Full Review Anton Bitel BFI Jacques Tourneur’s gothic romance (produced by Val Lewton) is shadowy and poetic, haunted by the abstract evil of historic slavery... This is where the cinematic zombie becomes an allegorical figure. Oct 22, 2022 Full Review Ed Kowalewski Buffalo News As a pure shocker, I Walked with a Zombie has its moments. Weird lighting effects and the Calypso music and singing of Sir Lancelot heighten the eerie illusion. Sep 28, 2022 Full Review Vance King Motion Picture Herald (Exhibitors Herald) Its many ingredients, most of them calculated to tingle the spine, are woven by producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourner in such fashion as to make them agreeable to the fans seeking thrills. Sep 28, 2022 Full Review Read all reviews

      Movie Info

      Synopsis Canadian nurse Betsey Connell (Frances Dee) is hired to care for Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon), a woman on a Caribbean sugar plantation, who has a bizarre condition. The mysterious affliction baffles Betsy but when she falls for Jessica's husband, Paul (Tom Conway), she is determined to make him happy by curing his wife. However, in her quest, Betsey is drawn into the island's dark culture of voodoo and zombies and begins to uncover the Holland family's sinister secrets.
      Director
      Jacques Tourneur
      Screenwriter
      Charlotte Brontë, Inez Wallace, Curt Siodmak, Ardel Wray
      Production Co
      RKO Pictures
      Genre
      Horror
      Original Language
      English
      Release Date (Theaters)
      Apr 8, 1943, Limited
      Release Date (Streaming)
      Jan 1, 2009
      Runtime
      1h 9m
      Sound Mix
      Mono
      Aspect Ratio
      35mm
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