About White Zombie (1932)
The story behind the film
White Zombie is generally considered the first feature-length zombie film. In the early 1930s, American readers were fascinated by Haiti and Vodou after William Seabrook's 1929 travel book The Magic Island, which described stories of the dead being raised to work in the fields. Brothers Victor and Edward Halperin, independent producers with little track record, built a horror film around the idea and persuaded Bela Lugosi, fresh from the success of Dracula, to star.
Set in Haiti, the film follows a young couple, Madeleine and Neil, who come to the island to marry at the plantation of Charles Beaumont, a wealthy man who has met Madeleine only briefly. Beaumont is obsessed with her and turns to the sinister mill owner "Murder" Legendre — whose sugar mill is worked by silent, shuffling zombies — for a drug that will make her his.
The film was shot in about eleven days in March 1932 on a budget of roughly $50,000, mostly at night, borrowing sets and props on the Universal lot.
Cast & crew
- Directed by Victor Halperin; produced by Edward Halperin; screenplay by Garnett Weston
- Bela Lugosi as "Murder" Legendre
- Madge Bellamy as Madeleine Short
- John Harron as Neil Parker
- Robert W. Frazer as Charles Beaumont
- Joseph Cawthorn as Dr. Bruner, a missionary
- Brandon Hurst as Silver, Beaumont's butler
Why it's worth watching
Lugosi is the main event. With his forked beard and burning stare — the camera often isolates his eyes in close-up — Legendre is one of his most menacing roles. The film's dreamy, eerie atmosphere has drawn comparisons to the moody RKO horror films Val Lewton produced in the 1940s: long silences, moaning mill machinery, and blank-eyed zombies drifting across the landscape.
It was not well reviewed at the time, but it turned a solid profit and has since gained a large cult following. It's also a fascinating early version of the zombie, very different from the flesh-eating ghouls of Night of the Living Dead: here zombies are enslaved, controlled people, closer to the Haitian folklore that inspired the story.
Fun facts
- Accounts of Lugosi's pay for the film vary widely, with sources claiming between about $500 and $900 for his work.
- A loose follow-up, Revolt of the Zombies, was released in 1936.
- The heavy-metal band White Zombie, fronted by Rob Zombie, took its name from the film.
Public-domain status
White Zombie is listed among US public-domain films (its copyright was not renewed). See "Rights & source" below.