Post-Colonial Post-Life: I Walked with a Zombie (Val Lewton Pt. II)

Last week I started digging into Val Lewton’s cycle of beautifully produced, artistic B-movie horrors for RKO in the early 40s with Cat People and The Curse of the Cat People, and this week, I’d like to keep going with that exploration. I’d previously seen about half of these films and it is a treat to both revisit those I know and to finally check out the ones I’ve missed. I have a few things going on right now, so I’m only writing about one film this time, but it’s a doozy. So without further ado, let’s look at the second collaboration between Lewton and Tourneur, 1943’s I Walked with a Zombie.

Typical warning: given the prominence of atmosphere, emotion, and theme over plot in this piece, I will be discussing it in its entirety, so there will be spoilers aplenty. I feel they probably wouldn’t really ruin one’s enjoyment, but if in doubt, check it out first. It’s available for rent in all the usual places.

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

Moody, atmospheric, and chillingly bleak, this entry from the Lewton team centers around emptiness, a lack. Set on the fictional Caribbean island of St. Sebastian (which seems to stand in for Hispaniola), its eponymous “Zombie” is not your modern brain muncher, but rather a traditional folk figure growing out of Haitian Vodou. Rather than a corpse risen from the dead, it refers to a person whose life, whose spirit has been taken from them; and yet they walk. Still the “living dead,” these are not cadavers returned to life, but living people who have already died (a nuanced but significant difference). As I understand, this would traditionally be done to subjugate one to your will – to hollow them out, leaving only a shell, an uncomplaining servant.

I have cited before the old chestnut, “where there’s a monster, there’s a metaphor” (which I feel should be attributed to someone, but I don’t, for the life of me know who – if you’ve any idea, please share), and this central symbol of one who has been robbed of life, self, and personhood, one who has been made an object, one who is robbed of agency and must serve obviously references slavery, and in the case of this film, it is not merely metaphorical. The shadow of the slave trade hangs all over this picture. It is why all of the characters are here. It is what has shaped their society – even the land itself. And just as its memory is very explicitly carried by the Black characters who continue to work for a small group of rich White people (now under the guise of business and industry rather than bondage), the weight of its sins hangs heavy on those currently running the show. There is a decay at the root of their family tree and they have rotted out from within – emptied, devoid of spirit.

Early on, the owner of a sugar cane plantation explains to a new employee why they keep a statue of a Black Saint Sebastian, his body riddled with arrows in the courtyard of their home:

I assume that when he references “our people,” he means the Black population of the island who are in his employ, but it really feels like he means himself and his family – they too have come from “the misery and pain of slavery” – it’s why they’re there; it’s why they’re rich; it’s why they’re in charge. And it’s part of why they’re so very lost, why their lives feel so meaningless, why all they can do is betray and hurt each other. From a modern perspective, I can see one criticizing the film for overshadowing the suffering of the slaves by focusing our sympathies on the poor, rich, grandchildren of slave-owners, but leaving aside the obvious explanation that this was made in the early 40s (and what do you expect?) – I think the film is astute in its observations about guilt both personal and generational – some things just can’t be forgiven; some things outlast death.

It’s heavy stuff, and it is a heavy film, though the artistry on display means it is somehow consistently still a pleasure. Similarly to their first collaboration, Cat People, Lewton and Tourneur walk a line between realism and the supernatural, this sensational tale of possession, Vodou, and magic dovetailing with a thoroughly human story of guilt and jealousy under the shadow of unforgivable crimes. Once again, we are uncertain as to what is real and what is magic. Almost everything can be explained away as psychologically motivated actions, and yet the sense is that there is a cultural chauvinism, an unearned arrogance in the way the White characters discount the knowledge, experience, authority, and power of those descended from the people their grandparents had enslaved.

Also, similar to Cat People is the high style and evocative film making on display. Some of the composition is simply breathtaking. Working with a different cinematographer (J. Roy Hunt), Tourneur and Lewton maintain their ‘house style’ and Hunt really delivers. Almost the whole film was shot on a soundstage (the only exception apparently the beach and village scenes), but what Hunt does with light brings the island to life. The shadows of leaves blow in a dry, hot wind; moonlight creeps through the slats of window blinds; soft light frames a body standing among dried sugar cane stalks in such a way that he is both more and less than a man – he is a statue, or a god – both emptied-of and filled-with spirit.

This is Carrefour, which in French means “crossroads,” the most iconic presence of the film. The young protagonist is told by a servant she will find him at a crossroads, but in that servant’s somewhat British accent, it is impossible to tell if she is to find a ‘guard’ or a ‘god. His presence accompanies moments of transition: a young woman passing from the world she knows into the alien world of another culture, possibly one of unknown power; a somnambulant ‘zombie’ guided away from the home she resides in, but does not live in, and strikingly, a climactic sequence of killing and sacrifice as perhaps one enters the world of the dead to reunite with his love, or possibly just murders her and kills himself because he can no longer stand the pain of living; Carrefour is always there, watching, witnessing, maybe guiding…

His first appearance caps the primary “horror” scene of the film as the protagonist leaves the sterile, empty safety of the rich, White space she inhabits to venture out into the dark of night and Vodou magic. Working her way through fields of sugar cane by moonlight, leading her elegant but mentally absent ward, she navigates past tableaus of animal skulls propped up on sticks, a circle of bones on the ground, odd sounds whistling in the darkness, and some kind of animal carcass hanging from a noose. Finally, she comes to Carrefour and thus finally passes out of these shadowlands, into the “other” space she seeks, hoping to find the power to heal her charge.  

Lewton is said to have played a large part in terms of the script, and the writing really is a treat. I’ve read that the original screenwriter, Curt Siodmak (who wrote, among many other things, The Wolf Man for Universal) didn’t click with Lewton, who replaced him with Ardel Wray, instructing her to do more research into the culture and beliefs of what was then referred to as The West Indies, and it shows. I can’t speak to the accuracy of how Vodou is presented, but it feels researched. It feels like a good faith effort was made to feature folk practices with respect and not to generalize. It all seems more authentically ethnographic than work done as late as the 90s wherein Vodou might still come across as racialized malevolence, a sinister relic of people dark in skin and intent (and let’s not get started on 1973’s Live and Let Die – oof). I can’t say that it doesn’t at all exoticize (I mean, Darby Jones, who plays Carrefour, is possibly the main scare of the film, and much of that just comes down to his actual physical appearance), but given the period in which it was made, I’m impressed. I imagine at the time, they could have just told extras to act crazy while banging some drums and the general audience would have accepted it.

Notably, there is one striking scene of high ritual. The music is captivating, the bass so deep and powerful, and the participants so grounded in their practice. The houngan (priest) dances with a sword, his upper body articulating the rhythms of the drums. It is an evocative movement, but it is in no way wild; rather, it is one of great control and precision. Around him are normal people. They sing the song and watch with spiritual focus, but this is no generalized fervor. Eventually, one woman catches a spirit and, in a trance, enters into the central space, coming to the houngan, before collapsing under the power. Finally, two female dancers come out and their work is beautiful and intense, but also feels utterly specific – this is the dance of a real time and place and people, and regardless of any supernatural elements, the music and the dance do have power. This scene alone is worth the price of admission.

But I haven’t even said what it’s about yet. Loosely based on Jane Eyre, we follow a Canadian nurse, Betsy Connell (Frances Dee), who takes a job on St. Sebastian to care for the wife of a sugar magnate. We come to learn there had been a love triangle between that magnate, Paul Holland, his wife, Jessica, and his half-brother, Wesley Rand. Wesley and Jessica had wanted to run off together and Holland seemingly prevented them – maybe by driving her mad, maybe by having the denizens of the island turn her to a zombie, or maybe she just contracted a tropical fever that caused permanent damage, leaving her empty, without a will of her own.

Having fallen in love with Holland (for some reason – I mean Tom Conway’s performance is charmingly cynical, but I don’t get the attraction), Betsy, the nurse, desperately wants to return his wife to health and tries taking her to a Vodou Houmfort (the above referenced ritual). There she learns that Paul and Wesley’s mother has been participating in the local rites, feigning possession by the gods to instruct the locals in better sanitary practices. Though her intentions are good, she has still been manipulating the people with dishonesty. But while the two of them are talking, the houngan performs a test on Jessica, driving a sword through her arm, and when the wound draws no blood, he determines that she is in fact a zombie. For all that Mrs. Rand rationalizes the seeming power of Vodou away in service of her own health based manipulations, the wound doesn’t bleed. Something is happening.

We later learn that Mrs. Rand had more faith in the local powers than she had initially let on, and it seems revealed that Jessica has indeed been irrevocably cursed (or again, she just had a fever, went into a coma, and came out having suffered mental damage). Regardless, Wesley can’t bear to see her this way any longer, stabs her to death and carries her into the sea, where he drowns as well while Carrefour watches from the shore. Concurrently, we see that the houngan has made a doll of Jessica and everything we see happen could conceivably be under his control. It rather feels, as with much of Lewton’s work, that both explanations are simultaneously true: the psychological and the supernatural overlaid.

In the end, the zombie has been freed from her liminal state of undeath, but the survivors persist in a state of grief, of suffering, the final shot being that of the statue of St. Sebastian, an image of pain, a symbol of past crimes that can never be forgotten.

This was quite a piece of work: poetic, deeply sad, and visually striking, with lingering images of mystery and exotic power. I must admit that it took me a while to get around to it because I’d felt a film from the 40s about this subject would probably be uncomfortable when it comes to issues of race and representation and that this might sour my enjoyment of an otherwise interesting piece. I am happy to say how mistaken I was. Sure – it does exoticize its Vodou practicing local population in ways that wouldn’t get a pass these days, but at the same time, I feel that population is given honest respect. The Black characters feel like real people, neither infantilized nor animalistic. Though none are granted a protagonist’s agency, they are shown as self-aware, intellectually critical individuals with a clear view of the ugly history that has brought them here, and while they may put on a friendly face for their employers, the film itself sees the ironic distance between that mask and their lived experience and knowledge.

One of the most striking moments comes early on, when the young nurse is being driven to the estate where she is to work. Giving her the island’s history, her coachman describes how the Holland family, by whom she is now employed, had brought his ancestors to the island on a ship with the figurehead of Saint Sebastian:

The simple, straightforward way that he takes in her thoughtless response and answers with a friendly shrug is heartbreaking. This is the world he lives in, and there is no reason for him to expect otherwise. I think it is significant that the film sees him and is on his side. The film is aware of history and understands how it continues to weigh down all involved – how its echoes continue in the present dynamic of who is wealthy and who serves (no one tell Ron DeSantis about this movie).

However, for all of my praise, one element did fall flat for me, but I even wonder if that could be intentional. It just feels like we don’t have much of a protagonist. We follow Betsy’s story, but the moment she falls in love with Paul Holland, so in love that she would venture into the darkness to save his cursed wife, I just disconnect from her. I don’t buy the romance, nor do I particularly care about it, and while she does take one important step in driving the narrative, she mostly just witnesses the dysfunction and misery of the family. In fact, the whole cast of central characters feels detached. There’s a heightened scene with Mrs. Holland, the mother, late in the film, but she is so listless and resigned throughout her whole emotional confession. Both Paul and Wesley are wracked by guilt, but they mostly submerge their feelings beneath a removed veneer of either alcoholism or snide pessimism. And of course the wife, Jessica, is just a silent cypher, an image of loss. But again, I wonder if this sense that the film misses a true central character could be an artistic choice – one more emptiness – one more case of a body missing its soul. The film moves forward with an evenness not unlike Jessica’s, echoing her haunting lack of inner compulsion, contributing to the overall mood of hopeless loss and debilitating guilt.

Finally, let’s talk about horror. So far, my favorite of the Lewton pictures is still Cat People – I just love how it balances its thrilling story with some honest scares and its rich psychological study that can be approached through multiple lenses. I Walked with a Zombie, it must be said, is not ‘scary’ (at least not for me). It is beautiful. It is haunting. It is intelligent and atmospheric and meaningful, and maybe supernatural, but it is not scary. Which brings us to that eternal question of the genre – does horror actually have to be?

This film takes us into another world of sorts, implying powers beyond our ken. It takes a deep, endless sadness and guilt and builds from them a physical space. It maintains a mystery around what is real and what is supernatural, around borders between life and death, around the obliteration of will, the erasure of self. And in its lyrical, guilt-ridden, poetic way, it is horrific if not scary, and I’m happy to include it in the genre (not to mention the myriad ways it has probably influenced later works). Plus, more horror with such artistic inclinations should follow its example of essentialized narrative and theme. For all of the feeling, mystery, atmosphere, and technical prowess it packs, it squeaks by at sixty nine minutes long – it can do so much without feeling self-indulgent, without dragging. In this era of four hour comic book movies, this discipline is refreshing.