| I Walked with a Zombie | |
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theatrical poster |
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| Directed by | Jacques Tourneur |
| Produced by | Val Lewton |
| Written by | Inez Wallace (story) Curt Siodmak Ardel Wray |
| Narrated by | Frances Dee |
| Starring | James Ellison Frances Dee Tom Conway |
| Music by | Roy Webb |
| Cinematography | J. Roy Hunt |
| Editing by | Mark Robson |
| Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
| Release date(s) | March 17, 1943 |
| Running time | 69 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
I Walked with a Zombie is a 1943 horror film directed by Jacques Tourneur. It was the second horror film from producer Val Lewton for RKO Pictures; the first was the very successful Cat People, also directed by Tourneur.
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Betsy Connell (Frances Dee), a Canadian nurse, relates in a voiceover narration how she once "walked with a zombie."
Betsy is hired to care for the wife of Paul Holland (Tom Conway), a sugar plantation owner on the Caribbean island of Saint Sebastian. Saint Sebastian is inhabited by a small white community and descendants of African slaves. Betsy is brought to Fort Holland, where she is told the story of how the Hollands brought the slaves to the island, and that the statue of "Ti-Misery" (Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows) in the courtyard is the figurehead from a slave ship.
That night at dinner, Betsy meets Paul's half-brother Wesley Rand (James Ellison), who works for him. While getting ready for bed, Betsy hears a woman crying. When she investigates, she is cornered by her patient, Jessica Holland, whom she had not yet met. Jessica walks towards her in a white robe, her eyes staring. Betsy screams, waking the rest of the household. Paul takes charge of Jessica.
The next morning, Betsy meets Jessica's physician, Dr. Maxwell, who explains that his patient's strange condition was caused by a severe tropical fever. It irreparably damaged Jessica's spinal cord, leaving her totally without the willpower to do anything for herself.
On her day off, Betsy encounters Wesley in town. While he drinks himself into a stupor, a calypso singer (Sir Lancelot) sings about how Jessica was going to run away with Wesley, but Paul would not let them go. Then she was struck down by the fever. Betsy meets Mrs Rand (Edith Barrett), Paul and Wesley's doctor mother.
That night, Paul and Wesley argue during dinner. Paul tries to cut down on Wesley's drinking (at Betsy's suggestion), but his half-brother accuses him of trying to impress Betsy and of driving Jessica insane in the first place.
Later, Betsy is drawn to the sound of Paul playing the piano. Paul apologizes for bringing her to the island and admits that he may have been the cause of his wife's condition. Over time, Betsy has been falling in love with her moody employer. She determines to make him happy by curing Jessica.
Betsy gets Paul to agree to try a potentially fatal treatment of insulin shock on Jessica, but it has no effect. Alma (Theresa Harris), a housemaid, then tells her of how a Voodoo priest cured a woman of a similar condition. Betsy takes her patient without permission to the houmfort (a place where voodoo worshipers gather). The two women set off through billowing cane fields to a crossroads guarded by the towering figure of the eerie Carre-Four (a reference to the loa Maitre Carrefours). At the Houmfort, they watch a man (the Sabreur) wield a saber during a ritual. People are given advice through a shack door by another Voodoo priest. Betsy however is summoned inside, where she is shocked to find that the priest is none other than Mrs Rand.
Mrs Rand explains that she uses Voodoo to convince the natives to accept conventional medical practices and tells Betsy that Jessica can never be cured. Outside, the locals stab Jessica in the arm with the sword as a test. When she does not bleed, they are convinced she is a zombie. Betsy takes her back to the house.
The natives demand that Jessica be returned to them for "ritual tests". Later, Carre-Four approaches the residence, but Mrs Rand orders him to leave.
Paul suggests that Betsy return to Canada, as he is fearful of demeaning and abusing her as he did Jessica. She is convinced that he is not really like that.
The next day, Doctor Maxwell reports that the unrest has sparked an official inquiry into Jessica's illness. Mrs Rand shocks everyone by claiming that Jessica is a zombie, one of the living dead. Although she had never taken Voodoo seriously, Mrs Rand reveals that when she discovered that Jessica was planning to run away with Wesley and break up her family, she felt herself possessed by a Voodoo god. She then put a curse on Jessica.
Paul, Maxwell and Betsy are disbelieving, pointing out that Jessica's heart is still beating — which would rule out her being a zombie. Wesley, on the other hand, becomes obsessed with freeing Jessica from her zombie state. He asks Betsy if she would consider euthanasia, but she refuses.
Using a doll made to look like Jessica, the Sabreur takes control of her and tries to draw her to him. Paul and Betsy stop her the first time, but they are not around when he tries again. Wesley opens the gate, letting Jessica out. Then he pulls an arrow out of the statue of Ti-Misery and follows. As the Sabreur stabs the doll with a pin, Wesley thrusts the arrow into Jessica. He then carries her body into the sea, pursued slowly by Carre-Four. Later, the natives discover the bodies of Jessica and Wesley floating in the surf and carry them back to Fort Holland, where Paul comforts Betsy.
Producer Val Lewton was forced to use the film's title by RKO executives. Officially, the film was based on an article written by Inez Wallace for American Weekly Magazine. Lewton asked his writers to use Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre for giving the story a narrative structure and to do research on Haitian voodoo practices.[1][2]
While I Walked with a Zombie was declared to be "a dull, disgusting exaggeration of an unhealthy, abnormal concept of life" by The New York Times in 1943[3], critics later called it "intelligent" (William K. Everson)[4], "exceptional" (Leonard Maltin)[5] and "the most elegant" in Lewton's RKO horror series (Tom Milne)[6].
The film's treatment of the supernatural element repeatedly attracted interest among reviewers:
In 2007, Stylus Magazine named it the fifth best Zombie movie of all time.[9]
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