Review: White Zombie

A rich man (Robert Frazer) entices a young couple to come visit him in Haiti with the ulterior motive of stealing the man’s fiancé (Madge Bellamy, terrible). Bela Lugosi plays a man named Murder Legendre (!) who uses voodoo magic to get manual labour work done on his plantation by workers in a trance. You don’t have to be Einstein to see where this is going.

 

One of the earliest zombie movies, this 1932 film from director Victor Halperin (“Revolt of the Zombies”, “Torture Ship”) is a mostly tedious C-grade affair despite its reputation. The zombies are interesting, Bela Lugosi makes up for a lack of acting talent with sheer unique presence, and his character itself is frankly more interesting than his overrated interpretation of “Dracula”. He’s a real dastardly bastard in this one. Lugosi’s creepy stare is probably the most memorable thing about the film, which of course inspired the name of Rob Zombie’s band who gave us the hit ‘More Human than Human’ (I prefer Zombie’s solo hit ‘Dragula’ myself). Elsewhere the performances save for an OK Robert Frazer are pretty abysmal, and despite a short running time of just over an hour…there’s just not enough here to keep one engaged. Some of the imagery is nice, but since it’s not a silent film, you need more than that keeping you awake.

 

At first, you’re kind of intrigued by how these zombies seem less re-animated corpses being summoned by Lugosi, and more entranced living beings being controlled by Lugosi. Scripted by Garnett Weston (a couple of the “Bulldog Drummond” films), the central idea – if you remove the dated racial element at least – is one with merit, actually. It’s just that the execution is mostly tedious and static. At 60 minutes, it feels twice as long with scenes dragging on far too long, even the best scenes. In that 60 minutes, maybe 10 or 15 of it is worthy, the rest is sleep-inducing. I didn’t have that same problem with Murnau’s silent classic “Nosferatu”, let alone James Whale’s ‘talkie’ “Frankenstein”, so you can’t blame its age. The sound is particularly shoddy, again not something one can say about “Frankenstein”. I guess this one joins “I Walked With a Zombie” and “Carnival of Souls” as yet another supposed horror classic that I don’t quite see the appeal in.

 

A dated zombie outing that doesn’t have much going on beyond the creepy zombies and oddball Bela Lugosi. It’s not terrible, just not particularly interesting for the most part and most of the non-zombie cast seem stiffer than the supposed revived corpses. Culturally questionable at times too, looking at it from a 2020 perspective. Lugosi fans might want to bump the rating up a bit (especially considering how much worse the roles got for him over the years), I’m more of a Boris Karloff or Christopher Lee guy. The zombies sure are creepy, though.

 

Rating: C

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review: Hellraiser (2022)

Recovering junkie Odessa A’zion accompanies scuzzy boyfriend Drew Starkey on a break-in where all they find is a weird puzzle box. A’zion later opens the box and after some weird shit happens, A’zion and Starkey figure it might be a good idea to learn more about this messed up trinket. Goran Visnjic plays a millionaire who possessed the box before our protagonist nicked it.   Is there any point in remaking/rebooting “Hellraiser” when the 1987 adaptation of Clive Barker’s original text was written and directed by Barker himself? And is considered a horror classic? On evidence here, absolutely not. Directed by David Bruckner ( “The Signal” ) and scripted by Ben Collins ( “The Night House” ) and Luke Piotrowski (ditto) this is an entirely tedious affair. I took a long time to get on board with the 1987 “Hellraiser” , I have to admit. It was wildly imaginative and original, like a nightmare transplanted on to film. However, the characters were stone cold and left me similarly chilly t
Read more

Review: Boyka: Undisputed

Yuri Boyka (Scott Adkins) is out of prison and fighting for a living, with ambitions for the ‘Most Complete Fighter’ to make a real name for himself. However, after an opponent dies during a fight, the deeply religious Boyka starts to have a crisis of conscience. He tries to make amends with the man’s widow, which eventually pits him against a local gangster (Alon Moni Aboutboul, quite good). Anything with Scott Adkins will generally get me interested, and although this series peaked with the superlative “Undisputed II: Last Man Standing” , this 2017 film from director Todor Chapkanov (director of the SyFy movies “Copperhead” and “Ghost Town” ) is no slouch in a series yet to deliver anything less than solid entertainment. Producer Isaac Florentine is missed in the director’s chair, but Chapkanov gives us at the very least the series’ most dramatically ambitious entry, as Adkins’ ‘most complete fighter’ Yuri Boyka continues on his journey to redemption here. In this one, the
Read more

Review: Ninja 2: Shadow of a Tear

Scott Adkins is once again Casey, an American proponent of the martial art of Ninjutsu. When Casey’s pregnant Japanese wife (Mika Hijii) is rubbed out, he’s on a vengeance mission to find her killers. A friendly face, Nakabara (Kane Kosugi) turns up at the funeral, and suggests Casey come to Thailand to deal with his grief in another country. Casey initially declines, but eventually takes Nakabara up on his offer. However, his wife’s murder still haunts Casey, and with intel supplied by Nakabara, the trail eventually leads Casey to a brutal drug baron named Goro (Shun Sugata).   I was extremely disappointed with the first “Ninja” , but had heard that this 2013 sequel from director Isaac Florentine ( “Undisputed II: Last Man Standing” , “Undisputed III: Redemption” , “Ninja” ) was a damn near masterpiece of the martial-arts action movie genre. Having now finally gotten my hot little hands on it, I’d say the hype is a bit much, but this is unquestionably a much better film than the f
Read more