The Worst Film Ever

Purely Joyful Movie!

It is a performances centric movie

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Madeline (Madge Bellamy) and Neil (John Harron) travel to Haiti where they are to be wed. Unfortunately for the loved up couple, devious local Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer) has designs on Madeline and gets voodoo witch doctor 'Murder' Legendre (Bela Lugosi) to make it appear as though the young woman has died. In reality, she is under a powerful zombie spell and is brought back from the grave to become Beaumont's obedient love slave.White Zombie, starring Bela Lugosi, is considered an early horror classic by many, who laud the film for its eerie dreamlike atmosphere and expressionist/gothic imagery. I, on the other hand, found it all rather disappointing, the extremely sluggish pace and hammy acting (Lugosi leading the charge, with his evil zombie eyes and silly zombie grip) leaving me distinctly unimpressed.Yes, there are some memorable visuals, most notably Legendre's creaky sugar mill (powered by zombies), his cliff-top fortress and its cavernous reception room, but there are also long stretches where nothing much of interest happens (most of the scenes involving the expressionless Madeline), making it the sort of film likely to put all but the most ardent of Lugosi fans into a catatonic state.3.5 out of 10, rounded up to 4 for IMDb.

An early independent horror movie, which stands as the first ever movie to feature zombies, or at least creatures that can be called zombies. Don't be put off by the typical plot, or the fact that these zombies are not of the modern flesh-eating variety seen in NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, rather the old-fashioned mute slaves. WHITE ZOMBIE features some nice (if low budgeted) atmospheric scenes in graveyards, where bodies are ripped from their graves under the cover of the night and used in sinister black magic rituals where they are reanimated and set to work. You see, zombies are the perfect workers; they don't talk, they don't need paying, they don't even have a union! We just know we're back in familiar horror territory when the film opens with two young lovers fleeing into an unknown world (in this case, Haiti) in a carriage, little realising the terrible situations they will find themselves in. Unfortunately a lot of potential impact is ruined when the actors begin acting - and we realise that they're hopelessly trapped in the past, their over-acting carefully built up in the silent movies and unable to let go, only a few years after the silent films had actually ended.At fault the most? Probably the actor playing the couple's host, who permanently has manic hair, gleaming eyes, and a larger-than-life persona. The dashing hero is not in the least bit dashing, instead he keeps on fainting instead of battling the hordes of evil, and it is up to an old man to save the day in the final reel! What a wimp. The actress playing his wife isn't much better, it's difficult to distinguish her transformation from human into zombie seeing as she's just about catatonic for the entire film. Still, her woeful/soulless demeanour is a good one and scenes of her under Legendre's control are genuinely unsettling.Thankfully, though, we have old Bela Lugosi hanging around the sets, giving us an actor to watch and recognise in all this madness. Lugosi was already typecast after making the fantastic Dracula, and it shows here, with maximum emphasis on Lugosi's evil appearance (complete with goatee beard). The film also employs the trick of having Lugosi's staring, wild eyes displayed in close-up, a technique Hammer relied on in their Dracula films with Lee substituted for Lugosi. You can really believe that Legendre is capable of hypnotising people with the smallest effort, and of course, being the baddie he gets all the best lines. The best line in the film is where the hero asks who the zombies are, Lugosi replies "For you, my friend, they are the Angels of Death!".Okay, so much of the film is slow and static, but this is to be expected. To break up the dialogue we have some weird shots of zombies at work in the sugar mills, ignoring a fellow worker who collapses into the mill and is ground up in the wheels. They just keep working, willed on by Legendre's powers, single-minded and single-purposed, with no thought of their own. To accentuate the fact that these people are supposedly dead, some crude black makeup is used to make fingers seem thin and skeletal, also in eye sockets to make the actors look like cadavers. While this might not be frightening to a modern audience, it is effective in a simplistic way.WHITE ZOMBIE is perhaps a little too low key for it's own good, but there is some genuine suspense built up at the finale, where Lugosi clutches his hands together in a battle of wills with the hero and heroine, and the zombies are forced to walk off a cliff after good wins out in the end (and you just knew it would). This exciting climax compliments an atmospheric film which wrings maximum haunting impact from the zombies themselves.

The legendary George Carlin once said that zombies are unreliable, and while he wasn't referring to the quality of the films they appear in, I'll hijack his statement and agree with him. I'd also add that they're inconsistent in their behavior. Sometimes they run, sometimes they shamble, and sometimes they come back for revenge.The undead behave a little differently than what we as modern viewers have come to expect in"White Zombie." No, I'm not referring to Rob Zombie's industrial metal band - I'm talking about the 1932 film directed by Victor Halperin and starring Bela Lugosi. It's considered by many as the first feature-length zombie film, and its walking dead are less of the shambling, flesh-eating than they are voodoo and mind-controlled variety.The story takes place in the West Indies, and gets into swing when a witch doctor turns a newly-wed bride into a zombie slave. He's been doing it to the natives, but people only really start to care when he does it to a white woman. The commentary on slavery and racism here is daring for a movie of its time, though I'd be hesitant to claim it has anything particularly interesting to say about its subject matter. Bela Lugosi stars as zombiism-practitioner 'Murder' Legendre (could you have a name more badass than that?) and he chews up the scenery in a performance with more than a passing similarity to his one in "Dracula" a year earlier. I think the only difference is his facial hair. He glares at the audience and wears comical expressions throughout, and is a joy to watch whenever he's on screen. His ham is well complimented by the rest of cast, who bring a slice of their own cheese to this black and white sandwich. There's some inventive cinematography on display, but only occasionally, as the film resembles a stage play for the majority of its runtime. There are a couple of impressive, albeit primitive matte paintings, and a bizarre effects sequence where the screen is split in half with a Star Wars-style screen wipe that doesn't quite work. On a technical level, the film is ambitious. Sadly, the version I watched came in one of those "10 movies for 5 bucks!" packs and it wasn't exactly what I'd call "lovingly restored." The dialogue sounded like it was recorded on a potato. It's not just the technical elements that make films like "White Zombie" and others from its era a little more challenging to watch nowadays. 34 years after it was released, George Romero redefined - or, more bluntly - DEFINED the zombie genre with "Night of the Living Dead." It's difficult to see how scary "White Zombie" was to viewers in 1932 since our perceptions of horror have been molded by our experiences with another century worth of the genre's evolution. In fact, the most effective thing in the film was a large bird of prey that sounded like a woman screaming. If it wasn't so funny, it would be disturbing."White Zombie" hasn't lost all of its impact, however. It's still entertaining, and admirable for its claim as the first zombie film. There's a lot to appreciate about these films that did something new in their genre, and it's truly mind-boggling to think that there was ever a time history when the cinematic zombie was a fresh idea!

This movie was good for its time, in that it surely instilled horror in the people the watched it. The lighting is slim to none, and in some scenes, a little more light might not have hurt. It was very clear that this movie was low budget, and more could have been done with what they had. Lighting, again, was the best part of this film. There is rarely, if ever, a noticeable shadow, which is remarkable because it is almost impossible to do now. The fact this movie was still in black and white adds to lighting effect, allowing things to appear darker then they would if the film was in color. As a horror movie released in the early 30's, this movie was a good fit to the genre.