We begin our month-long Zombie Film Festival with the movie that started it all – White Zombie (1932) with Bela Lugosi.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

White Zombie is an American horror film, first released on August 4, 1932. It was the first film to feature zombies. Victor Halperin directed. The film is in black and white and runs for 69 minutes.

The script by Garnett Weston features a young couple in Haiti, Neil Parker (John Harron) and Madeleine Short (Madge Bellamy), who have been invited by a casual acquaintance, Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer, to get married at his plantation. Beaumont, however, is actually in love with Madeline and hopes to persuade her to become his wife instead. Rebuffed, he approaches local white Voodoo master “Murder” Legendre (Béla Lugosi) to temporarily turn her into a zombie, have her declared dead, send Neil back to the States in mourning, then revive her so that he can woo her anew. Legendre, however, has his own plans for the young lady, and for Beaumont.

White Zombie is among the most renowned horror films of the early sound era. Its legacy includes a namesake rock band. Many factors contribute to White Zombie's enduring cult film status:

• Its use of sophisticated camera, lighting, and sound techniques was pioneering for the genre.
• It features a full musical score, albeit composed of secondary source material; contemporary horrors Dracula and Frankenstein did not.
• Its elaborate sets and striking painted background images belie its independent film status.
• Jack Pierce, Universal's resident makeup genius who created the landmark face designs for the Frankenstein Monster, the Mummy, and later the Wolf Man, was the makeup artist for the film.
• It contains a multitude of singularly-memorable moments, including:
o The foot-to-head introductory pan of the zombie played by Frederick Peters, one of the genre’s scariest-looking characters.
o The famous "flub" of Brandon Hurst holding his nose as he’s being thrown to a watery death.
o Actor-musician Clarence Muse’s description of zombies, a rare instance in early films, especially horror films, in which an African-American was permitted to deliver lines in a non-stereotypical manner.
o The early close-up of Lugosi’s eyes that travels across a wide shot and settles on the head of the actor.

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Remember, you don’t have to watch the film here to discuss it, zombie films and how they’ve changed, Bela Lugosi, or anything else it brings to mind.



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“Revolt Of The Zombies” is a post- WW1 story of zombies in Cambodia. From the director of “White Zombie” (Victor Halperin) four years later, the 1936 film is not a sequel, but another attempt to establish the zombie genre. Unlike its groundbreaking predecessor, it was typical of early low-budget horror films. But it’s worth seeing as a textbook example of the old-fashioned zombie film – or, as some fans call it, the “B.R.” (Before Romero) zombie film.

For the most part, zombie films before “Night Of The Living Dead” presented the traditional zombie from folklore – a mindless, shuffling corpse reanimated after death in a trancelike state to serve its master, an evil sorcerer. Flesh-eating zombies created by radiation or diseases didn’t come along until Romero introduced them in the 60s, transforming the zombie film from a minor subgenre into one of the most popular types of horror movie.

This “B.R.” zombie film stars Dean Jagger as a student of dead languages determined to find the secret of turning people into zombie slaves. His ultimate motive is romantic – he’s hurt in a love triangle with characters played by Dorothy Stone and Robert Nolan. He’s part of an expedition sent to Cambodia to find the zombie secret, but while everyone else wants to destroy it so it can’t be used again, he plans to use it for revenge.

Feel free to discuss the film, the zombie genre, or anything else it brings to mind in this thread, whether you watch the film here or not.



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Part 2 of the archived zombie fest, including "Carnival Of Souls" and Night Of The Living Dead," is here:

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