White Zombie

Stranger things are happening than you ever dreamed of!

67 Mins
1932
en

star5.9/ 10

In Haiti, a wealthy landowner convinces a sorcerer to lure the American woman he has fallen for away from her fiance, only to have the madman decide to keep the woman for himself, as a zombie.

Cast & Crew

Bela Lugosi

Legendre

Madge Bellamy

Madeleine Short Parker

John Harron

Neil Parker

Robert Frazer

Charles Beaumont

Joseph Cawthorn

Dr. Bruner

Frederick Peters

Chauvin- Zombie

Review

CinemaSerf

This is quite a decent little Zombie mystery with a wonderfully evocative opening few scenes as the couple drive to the eerie plantation home of "Beaumont" (Robert Frazer). Now I'm sure Haiti would be a beautiful place to marry in 2020, but back in the 1930s it was an island awash with voodoo and coffin lids that go bump in the night, so when "Beaumont" takes a shine to Madge Bellamy "Madeline" he turns to the local witch doctor "Legendre" (Lugosi) to help him lure her away from her dashing fiancée "Neil" (John Harron). It's got all the usual flaws: (really) poor writing; Bellamy is as theatrical as she can possibly be, but Lugosi is much less like a dodgy Austrian Archduke and the paucity of lighting actually helps to create a suspenseful atmosphere. It's certainly at the better end of the scale for these cheap and cheerful horror stories and well worth an hour of your time, late at night, after a wee cognac or three...

hand2a

The first on-screen use of the word 'zombie'! A must watch if you are interested in the history of the horror genre, and although it is interesting, it's not the most entertaining. Robert Frazer was good as Beaumont and Lugosi was great as always, also has some nice matte painting work, but other than the historical significance, it's a pretty bog-standard early B-movie. 2/5

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