Review: "I Walked with a Zombie"

 

Tourneur, Jacques (Dir.), “I Walked with a Zombie” (1943), RKO radio Pictures

 

Paul Holland: “It's easy enough to read the thoughts of a newcomer. Everything seems beautiful because you don't understand. Those flying fish, they're not leaping for joy, they're jumping in terror. Bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies. The glitter of putrescence. There is no beauty here, only death and decay.”

Betsy Connell: “You can't really believe that.”

Paul Holland: “Everything good dies here. Even the stars.”

I know that I just reviewed a Jacques Tourneur film a few days ago, but I guess that I’m onto a good thing. I’m getting a sense of how this guy worked – this is not as good a movie as “Night of the Demon” was (ironically!), but it’s not from want of trying.

I did some research about the films that RKO Pictures was putting out around this time – specifically under the guidance of producer Val Lewton – and the restrictions that were placed upon the cast and crews were fairly draconian. For instance, this film and others by Tourneur, were derived not from finished scripts, but from titles that were tested before sample audiences:

“So, if our studio was to make a film called “Kill-crazed Were-jackelopes take New Jersey”, would you come and watch it?”

“Um, sure, I guess. Why not?”

“I’ll call that a ‘yes’ and put that straight into production...”

 

©Glen leLievre, SMH, January 19-20^th, 2013

This means that the producers would have to take a minimal concept and run with it, risking losing everything if the project bombed. And on top of this, the studio gave them wafer-thin budgets, as if the brief wasn’t tough enough to begin with.

This where Val Lewton really came into his own. A master of knowing how much you can convey without having to show every last detail, Lewton took one of these cornball, one-line concepts and no cash, and made a film so dramatic, suggestive and downright scary that it made enough box-office cash to pull RKO out of the red and defer permanent closure of the studio. That film was “Cat People”.

This particular film, however, came with a little bit extra. Thrown in with the dodgy title, was a news article about voodoo in Haiti from an eye-witness. Lewton read the material and immediately decided that it was as dull as ditch-water: he wanted something deeper; something psychological; something classic; something that wouldn’t cost a bomb. So he dragged his copy of Jane Eyre off the bookshelf and tossed it over to Tourneur.

Yes: this is Jane and Mr. Rochester, voodoo-style, with the undead. Take that, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

 

Instead of a governess, we have a nurse in this version, in the form of Betsy (played by Frances Dee) who travels from Canada to nurse the ailing wife of sugar-plantation owner Paul Holland, a man who is definitely a ‘glass is half empty’ kind of guy. Jessica, his wife is catatonic, unable to speak, eat, or move voluntarily (although she does swan about a lot in float-y evening gowns when no-one’s watching her). Betsy, falls for the brooding Holland and is determined to bring happiness back into his life by restoring to him his wife: an insulin-based shock treatment fails, so she drags the vacant invalid off to a voodoo houngan to see what he can do for her. While conceived with the best of intentions, this plan of attack in addressing Mrs Holland’s mental health falls into the category of a Bad Thing.

 

The voodoo community recognises that Jessica Holland has been zombified and they take steps to claim her as one of their own. As well, the wider social compass of the island begins to ask questions as to how Jessica got that way: the gossip bubbles over and fingers are pointed at Wesley Rand, Paul Holland’s binge-drinking half-brother, who fell in love with Jessica and who – some start to say – had her turned into one of the undead, because, if he couldn’t have her, no-one would.

 

With the Holland family’s dirty linen suddenly a community topic, a dramatic climax resolves all the issues keeping various sets of lovers from being united and sees a satisfying conclusion.

There are some very interesting character arcs in this piece: Paul Holland is presented as a thoroughly dour, domineering sour-puss, whilst his half-brother Wesley is shown as a charming, ‘Jack the lad’ type, with a cheeky smile and a sparkle in his eye. As the drama unfolds, each of them slowly move into each other’s corner: Paul steps into the light while Wesley ends up in a very dark place indeed. In between them is Betsy the nurse, who I feared was going to be a syrupy, Goody-Two-Shoes; Ms Dee, however, does a fine job of treading that thin line between selfless goodness and sickly-sweetness.

Given that this is Jane Eyre after all, it will come as no surprise to know that ‘Mrs Rochester’ dies in the end so I won’t cry ‘Spoiler Alert’; in a nice twist however, the fire is completely metaphorical and her demise is a watery one, as a nifty inversion of the source material.

There are many excellent, second-string performances from the local townsfolk and the voodoo practitioners, with many rather pointed comments on the practise of slavery and its consequences. There are the expected moments of humour from the ‘lower class’ but these are well balanced out by the voodoo scenes which are fairly stark; at least, they are as explicit as they could make them at the time - being allowed to go so far, no further - but they’re still somewhat confronting.

 

My one major issue with the movie is that it’s terribly muddy. Much of the action is at one remove towards the end and it’s hard to get a clean grip on what is going on (it doesn’t help that the soundtrack has obviously deteriorated and the dialogue cuts in and out). I had a déjà-vu moment of watching “Suddenly, Last Summer”, the Tennessee Williams’ play with Elizabeth Taylor, which falls into a hopeless mess because mention of all the issues about which the story revolves has been ruthlessly excised from the final cut and the point of the story got lost on the cutting-room floor. Fortunately, in this case, it’s not too bad (certainly not that bad!) and the resolution of the film does get to where it needs to be.

Perhaps I had too high expectations going in to this movie; once I caught the Bronte-esque overtones, I did have an ‘oh, it’s Jane Eyre’ moment, but I rallied and persisted. Unlike “Night of the Demon” where the weak elements were only surface issues - like wardrobe and casting - supported by a strong script, this film suffers from a wishy-washy architecture that lets its solid performances down.

I give it two-and-a-half tentacled horrors.