[23] TV Guide awarded the film their highest rating of 5/5 stars, calling it "an unqualified horror masterpiece". Young Canadian nurse Betsy comes to the West Indies to care for Jessica, the wife of a plantation manager Paul Holland. For many viewers, it is their favorite of the three. A young man turns to a witch doctor to lure the woman he loves away from her fiancé, but instead turns her into a zombie slave. A nurse in the Caribbean turns to voodoo in hopes of curing her patient, an unusual woman whose husband she's fallen in love with. I’m flad to see many reviews of I Walked with a Zombie, probably my favorite Lewton movie! On the way to the plantation, the black driver tells Betsy that the Hollands brought 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. It's ancillary material with the function of helping to solve a very different kind of mystery. While getting ready for bed, Betsy hears crying. "New, Old Films Vie For Orlando Interest This Week", "DVD Savant Review: The Val Lewton Collection", "I Walked with a Zombie (1943) - Rotten Tomatoes", "I Walked With A Zombie - Movie Reviews and Movie Ratings", Stylus Magazine’s Top 10 Zombie Films of All Time - Movie Review - Stylus Magazine, Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=I_Walked_with_a_Zombie&oldid=1011248977, Films based on newspaper and magazine articles, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2011, Articles to be expanded from November 2018, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat-VIAF identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 9 March 2021, at 21:05. I Walked with a Zombie is a 1943 film directed by Jacques Tourneur, produced by the master of 1940s horror, Val Lewton. Saint Sebastian is home to a small white community and descendants of African slaves. Betsy is shocked to find that the priest is Mrs. Rand. Paul, Maxwell and Betsy dismiss her story, but Wesley becomes obsessed with freeing Jessica. American professor John Holden arrives in London for a parapsychology conference, only to find himself investigating the mysterious actions of Devil-worshiper Julian Karswell. Nell Bowen, the protégé of Lord Mortimer, wants to help change the conditions of notorious St. Mary's of Bethlehem Asylum (Bedlam). It is a loose adaptation of Jane Eyre. Producer Val Lewton was obligated to use the film's title by RKO executives,[2] which they had culled from an article of the same name written by Inez Wallace for American Weekly Magazine. Betsy gets Paul to agree to try a potentially fatal insulin shock treatment on Jessica, but it has no effect. 57 of 73 people found this review helpful. An American man marries a Serbian immigrant who fears that she will turn into the cat person of her homeland's fables if they are intimate together. Although he went on to make much better films, Jacques Tourner's I Walked With a Zombie is not anywhere near a waste of time. For the first time, I recently watched the film I Walked With a Zombie, an oft-discussed 1943 “B-movie” directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced by Val Lewton for RKO Pictures. The next morning, Dr. Maxwell tells Betsy that Jessica's spinal cord was irreparably damaged by a serious illness, leaving her totally without the willpower to do anything for herself. He apologizes for bringing her to the island and admits that he may have been the cause of his wife's condition. As the Sabreur stabs the doll with a pin, Wesley thrusts the arrow into Jessica. [11] It continued to screen in North American theaters throughout the year, with screenings beginning as late as December 19, 1943 in Casper, Wyoming. They're really present only as a kind of personification of the results of complicated romantic and familial relationships. A scene where a local "minstrel" sings part of the backstory while Connell and Rand are having a drink is exquisite, for example. He asks Betsy if she would consider euthanasia, but she refuses. The zombie mentioned in the title is not a ghoul but rather an accessible supernatural region between spiritual states which serves as a zone of repentance for wrongdoers on a sugar plantation located in the Caribbean. "[6] Screenwriters Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray were appointed to write the script; Siodmak's original draft revolved around the wife of a plantation owner who is made into a zombie to prevent her from leaving to Paris, but the screenplay underwent significant revisions by Wray and Lewton. That night at dinner, Paul tries to persuade Wesley to reduce his drinking (at Betsy's suggestion), but he accuses Paul of trying to impress Betsy and of driving Jessica insane in the first place. Publication date 1943 Usage Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Topics Horror, Val Lewton, Tom Conway Language English. Along the … Yes, there is an admirable "haunted house"-styled scene involving a spooky stairway and creepy, distant sounds, and yes, the trek to the voodoo "home fort" is well done, but this kind of material doesn't work as well for me here as it did in Cat People, because here it's not really the focus of the story. The mystery remains, and the moralizing bookends of the film do not help, either.Still, I Walked With A Zombie is definitely worth a watch, and based on the extravagant praise that many viewers utter towards the film, you might like it much better than I do. Tells her that a voodoo priest cured a woman of a similar.. 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