White Zombie was shot in 11 days for about $50,000 in 1932. Bela Lugosi always regretted not getting more money for it as White Zombie was a comparatively big hit.
At a trim 68 minutes or so (about five minutes have been lost, depending on what print you see), White Zombie is an engaging, creepy movie regardless of its shoestring budget. Lugosi is used well as Haitian voodoo master Legendre, allowed to underplay rather than play to the cheap seats. The acting from the other principals is mediocre at best.
Highlights include the appearances of the zombies, who stagger around wide-eyed. They're not the resurrected dead of contemporary popular culture. No, they're living people made subject to Lugosi's will by a combination of drugs and mesmerism.
The director Victor Halperin (also the producer) manages an effective use of shadows and murk throughout, along with a lot of shots of Lugosi looking hypnotic. There's a weird bit of business in which Lugosi clasps his hands together in order to control the zombies, a bit of business that seems funnier as the movie goes along. Is this the Zombie Grip?
Other than a lame bit of recurring comic business involving missionary Dr. Bruner's repeated attempts to get a light for his pipe, the movie moves efficiently along to its curiously affecting and tense climax. Those goggle-eyed zombies may not be dead, but their appearance and their movements would recur for the next 85 years in a host of zombie and zombie-esque movies and TV shows. And of course Rob Zombie would take both last name and band name from the movie. Recommended.
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