I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

 I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

Though you’ve probably seen the photos of Darby Jones, that’s not the zombie the title refers to.

An odd four-sided triangle is formed when a nurse is brought from Canada to the Caribbean Island of Saint Sebastian (patron saint of pincushions,) to take care of a somnambulist/catatonic patient who’s been unresponsive since a tropical fever and whom the natives believe is one of the walking dead.

She is struck by her future patient’s Byronic husband just on her trip there, but once there she realizes she has fallen in love with him. The undead wife just makes it all awkward.

She is received by her boss’s half-brother and meets him again on her day off; and, while exploring the island with him, overhears a troubadour sing a song whose lyrics reveal the first three sides of a tragic love triangle in her employer’s family, (she, having since become the fourth side.) Since this is openly sung about it can’t even be considered a skeleton in the closet anymore, but it is information she wasn’t previously privy to.

Being a morally just person, she decides to be big about it and does her best, first by convincing a Western doctor to utilize a risky, shocking, but sometimes successful treatment to no avail; then, a bit more desperately, by resorting to the occult when a local tells her the voodoo priest has obtained positive results in similar cases.

Secretly, on a moonlit night, she walks her patient to where the voodoo rituals are being conducted, without realizing yet more revelations await her…

I suppose the walking dead imagery (either from the pale, with-robed female patient, or the half-naked native guardian/slave,) is genuinely creepy and some of the revelations quite horrible, (even when a doctor’s opinion somewhat casts doubt on the events which have transpired); but even the voodoo ritual is not quite played up to full horrific detail.

Is there even a true supernatural event presented?

Maybe, maybe not, since we know real life zombies are simply the natural victims of a toxic drug.

Scenes of successful long-distance beckoning or mind control are the closest we get to possible fantastic content.

This is simply a poetic, atmospheric, visually impressive, near-Fantasy which is nevertheless critically considered a Horror masterpiece.

With James Ellison, Frances Dee, and Tom Conway.

Essential watching.