White Zombie (1932)
Victor Halperin's early talky non-studio horror film is the first feature length zombie movie. Filmed in a mere 11 days on Universal's sets this is far better than it has any right to be. Bela Lugosi is at his best, even if he is in need of a little restraint, and stalks the screen in a far more sinister way than he did the previous year in Universal's Dracula. Halperin adds lots of atmosphere thanks to the use of unconventional photography and an almost fairy tale trance like ambiance swathes the viewer, helped by some truly outstanding sound design. The scene showing Legendre's sugar cane mill being worked by the living dead is truly fantastic; One of the great sequences of thirties and forties horror.
If the film has faults it's in the performances of the other players which appear quite stilted, the same goes for the dialogue at times and the denouement where Bellamy returns to life (how?) borders on the ludicrous, but Lugosi towers over such trifling faults with his sheer bravado in probably the best independent horror film of the 1930's.
A second viewing for me in the space of eight months for what is a quite remarkable film. For such a low budget film -$5k i think, the sound design is incredible.
It's short enough - 66 minutes - and atmospheric enough to return to time and time again.
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