White Zombie (1932): The Evil Eye

Let me start out by saying that I’m happy we seem to be living in the Age of the Zombie. It’s nice to see zombies get their due share of attention.

I mean, once upon a time they couldn’t sit at the cool monsters’ table with Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and Imhotep the Mummy. I’m glad for them. Really.

But… I guess I have some issues with what passes for a zombie lately.

Today’s representations of zombies tend to focus on the relatively new premise of a zombie apocalypse, on zombie-ism as a modern plague. Such a concept totally spaces out on the occult origins of this most exotic of horror creatures. Lately, the emphasis on zombies as horrific, contagious beings has led us to neglect the notion of the walking dead as victims of external control—a kind of interpersonal imperialism or supernatural bondage, if you will. I long for the days where one didn’t merely become a zombie, but was turned into one.

I miss that key figure, the bokor, the wicked Voodoo necromancer capable of raising an army of cadavers from their graves and forcing them to do his wicked bidding. The concept of a sorcerer willing to enslave his fellow humans scares me much more than all the gross-out zombies in the world. Perhaps the bokor has gone out of fashion along with the idea of the soul.

In place of the alienation or contamination metaphors that we get in post-Romero zombie films, the original celluloid zombies played out morbid variations on the theme of domination. Reaping the heritage of the Gothic, White Zombie traces a twisted story of sexual obsession, like most films of the original talkie horror cycle. The poster definitely plays up the kink angle with taglines like, “She was neither alive nor dead… Just a white zombie, performing his every desire!”

The story centers on a perky, sweet couple—exquisite Madeleine and her affable fiancé Neil come to Haiti to celebrate their wedding at a friend’s plantation. Unfortunately, that friend, wealthy Monsieur Beaumont, carries a torch for Madeleine, so he asks the diabolical sorcerer ‘Murder’ Legendre to help him win the damsel to his will. Of course, that doesn’t work out so well for Neil—or indeed for Beaumont, because Legendre changes Madeleine into a white zombie (…and we have a title!) that he plans to keep for his own pleasure.

Apart from its important status as the first zombie movie, White Zombie also deserves recognition as a landmark indie horror film. Brothers Victor and Edward Halperin, the film’s director and producer, were pioneers who borrowed sets from Universal horror flicks to shoot their movie in 11 days. Even without the infrastructure of the studio system, the Halperins delivered a classic that stands up to—and in some ways surpasses—the more high-profile horror monuments of the time.

In particular, the soundtrack paints a rich, full sense of place, in contrast to an era of relative silence in cinema, ironically brought on by the talkies. The use of Caribbean-sounding music provides appropriate emotional cues. Better yet, a range of authentic diegetic sounds, from shrill cricket chirps to Voodoo drums to the wince-inducing creak of a sugar mill, make us squirm.

White Zombie also excels at exploring psychological states through unusual trick effects, especially skillful double exposures. For instance, after Madeleine’s burial, Neil tries to drink away his sorrows in a dive bar, but sees his beloved’s face in every fleeing shadow. The contrast between the white veil of her apparition and the dark silhouettes on the wall imbue the scene with a phantasmagoric ambiance worthy of high German Expressionism.

The Halperins also cannily showcase Bela Lugosi by featuring his hypnotic eyes even more prominently than Dracula did. His eyes mesmerize as they appear floating through the landscape, sparkling in a glass of champagne, or headed straight towards the camera, as he walks into a harrowing extreme close-up.

His gleaming peepers, ever-present, seem to survey everything, omniscient and menacing. In fact, those disembodied eyes are the first we see of ‘Murder’ Legendre, superimposed over the Haitian landscape, until they shrink to little pinpoints on either side of his silhouette. We understand that this dark stranger can see you, whether he’s looking at you or not. Having viewed a nice print of White Zombie only on the small screen of my laptop, I can barely begin to imagine how looming and oppressive those glowing eyes must be when they flash on a movie theater screen. It must feel like the film is not being watched, but rather is watching you.

On a thematic level, a number of ceremonies—and inversions of ceremonies—structure this chilling fairy tale. The film begins with a funeral, transitions to a wedding, then modulates back to a funeral, after Madeleine, the maiden bride, is poisoned and laid to rest in her crypt. However, the implicit fear of these ceremonies being undone adds a layer of complexity and dread to each ritual. The native burial that opens the film takes place in the middle of a road, in order to assure that the grave won’t be robbed and that its occupant won’t be compelled to live eternally as an undead slave.

As the traditional wedding takes place at Beaumont’s plantation, Legendre performs another ritual in the garden below, carving a wax candle into a Voodoo doll of the bride. Whereas the Christian ceremony of marriage emphasizes purity, Legendre makes a mockery of this, whittling an anatomically correct nude figure. Even seen in a long shot, the gleeful obscenity of the sculpture reminds us that we’re dealing with pre-Code horror.

Lugosi’s dancing hands and surreptitious smile leave no doubt that this kind of remote-control violation both echoes and undermines the simultaneous wedding vows. Even Madeleine’s solemn burial is shortly reversed when Legendre and his zombie henchmen break into her tomb and make off with her cadaver.

Yet, for all this subversion of Christian ritual, White Zombie suggests that love goes a whole lot further than ’til death do us part. As Neil sleeps outside the castle where Madeleine lingers as a catatonic prisoner, a lyrical series of split screens and unusual wipes telepathically connects the pair.

At one point, an image lifts like a curtain, recalling how a groom lifts the veil to kiss his bride. In contrast to the static wedding scene, this distinctly filmic visual poem, accompanied by angelic, soulful native choirs, represents a mystical wedding of souls. Love, the thing that justifies all of our rituals, has is own secrets, stronger than death or black magic.

You can watch White Zombie for free, either on YouTube or at the Internet Archive. I strongly recommend the HD YouTube version, because it’s the best quality I’ve seen online.

Daughter of Horror (1955): In the Shadows

“It stirred my blood and cleansed my libido.” —Preston Sturges on Daughter of Horror

As I sit down to write this, I want you to know that I’m rubbing my hands together gleefully and cackling like a mad scientist about to unleash some freakish terror upon the world. Because today I’m going to introduce you to one of the weirdest, most disturbing films I’ve ever seen. And I watch Dwain Esper movies for kicks.

Reader, meet Daughter of Horror. She’s the bastard child of Salvador Dali and Ed Wood. Or maybe H. P. Lovecraft and Mickey Spillane. This 1955 avant-garde independent film drags us through the nightmares and misadventures of an androgynous delinquent chick, “the Gamin,” as she ventures from her hotel bedroom to prowl down mazelike streets. Over the course of one night, she’s nearly assaulted by a drunken bum, gets pimped out to a fat man, commits a crime, and slips in and out of many hallucinations. But where can we draw the line between madness and the squalid horrors of reality?

Directed by the obscure John Parker and written by Z-grade producer/director Bruno Ve Sota (although there’s some debate as to who really deserves artistic credit), this oily, shoestring-cheap horror-noir contains not one line of dialogue. Yep, we’re dealing with a strangely contradictory silent film with a soundtrack. Apart from a few diegetic sounds—essentials like sobs, screams, laughter, and gunshots—you mostly hear a ghoulish atonal score by modernist composer George Antheil, filled with foreboding jazz and the occasional soprano wail.

And—here’s the real boon—there’s the occasional passage of voice-over narration by none other than Ed McMahon, who intones a menacing, ironic commentary over the violence of the action and the Gamin’s psychotic breaks. From what I understand, the original cut of the film, called Dementia, didn’t have that voice-over, but I like it. Most critics have argued that the narration detracts from the integrity of the film.

I would differ—it’s like a parody of Hollywood’s typically ethereal depiction of schizophrenia or characters who start “hearing voices.” Instead of the ghostly whispers of poetic insanity, the Gamin is haunted by an out-of-control melodramatic TV narration. The voice peppers the film with choice remarks like, “Yes, I am here. The demon that possesses your soul. Wait a bit. I have so much to show you. So much that you are afraid to see.” If I ever start hearing an unseen game show host announcer chiming in to narrate my unconscious, I will know that I’ve finally descended into madness. (I’m expecting that voice any day now.)

The muffled, doom-impregnated ambiance of Daughter of Horror truly escapes words. It digs up a seedy universe that’s at once utterly unreal and much more gritty and recognizable than the sanitized sordidness of most films noirs. Grotesques populate its dark corridors, mutant people who scuttle around in the night, like bedbugs on a cheap mattress.

The usual mechanisms of character identification grind to a halt. We struggle to form an attachment to the Gamin, since she’s all we have, but she’s inscrutable at best and monstrous at worse. We’re estranged from the Gamin just as she’s estranged from herself. This sense of alienation and neediness, of not being able to relate to the movie in a usual manner, plunges the viewer into a state of ambivalent confusion and unease.

Indeed, whereas film noir tends to lure us in with its smoke-ring glamour, Daughter of Horror keeps us perpetually at an arms length, disgusted but transfixed. It compels us to keep watching out of a balance of sheer unease and shock—from the very beginning, we know, as we do in nightmares, that something bad is going to happen. We’re only partially right. Lots of bad things are going to happen.

To classify this film as one of Caligari’s children would be to state the obvious; what’s fascinating is how the Gamin fuses the somnambulistic monster, the vile murderer, and the heroine in distress all into one disturbed personality. Freudian overtones also crowd into this dark night of the soul. For instance, the Gamin’s flashback to her ugly childhood with a brutish father and a trampy, self-absorbed mother takes place in a graveyard, no less, which the characters inhabit as though it were their living room.

Although the Gamin’s father died a long time ago, he returns from the grave as a sort of guilt complex incarnate—he appears as a leering patron at a sleazy restaurant and later takes the form of the policeman hunting the Gamin down. Heavy-handed? No doubt, but still powerful and frightening.

Whereas standard Hollywood flicks incorporated psychoanalysis as a means of explaining away complexes, as a kind of tool to decipher the world and make it safer, Daughter of Horror plunges us into a forest of smirking symbols. In this twisted cosmos, a cigar is never just a cigar.

Though drawn in broad, blown-up strokes, this movie still surprises you with subtle allusions and amusing touches. The generally transfixing cinematography shows what veteran director of photography William C. Thompson (Plan 9 From Outer Space, Glen or Glenda) could do when not saddled with Ed Wood’s trashy, inept vision. The film begins with a shot of a city at night with a flashing sign that reminds me very much of the flashing sign skyline opening of Hitchcock’s The Lodger. After that, we cut to a track-in camera movement that creeps past a flashing HOTEL sign into the cheap rented room of our sleeping heroine, where she clutches the bedclothes in the throes of a bad dream. The movie ends with a parallel camera movement, drifting away from the room, before cutting back to that chasm of starry sky. What fearful symmetry!

Leer Cam! The camera slips inside of the room where the Gamin is dreaming… then right into her consciousness.

If the lecherous fat man who picks up the Gamin resembles Orson Welles, as some have noted, the film also references Welles’ style with shots of striking depth, presenting multiple points of interest. In one of my favorite, the fat man gnaws away at a chicken leg while, in the background, the Gamin displays her own shapely legs as a temptation, then sneers when the corpulent creature keeps on chowing down.

This bizarro gem of a movie not only borrowed bits and pieces from great filmmakers, but also foreshadowed future masterpieces. Those track-ins on the hotel recall the probing high angle shots that you see at the start of Psycho. And you’ll definitely recognize the whole smoky, grungy atmosphere of Daughter of Horror in Touch of Evil—they were both films at Venice Beach, California.

So, today I’d like to invite you into this forbidding terrain of vast, cavernous spaces and hole-in-the-wall bars, of predatory men and even more predatory women. I offer you a superb, if sometimes clunky, wide-awake nightmare.

This film is in the Public Domain, which means you can watch and download it at the Internet Archive, as well.

When you’re done, please leave a comment and tell me what you think of the movie!