12 Hidden Gem Zombie Movies You've Probably Never Seen
5. I Walked With A Zombie
Long before the tropes of the modern zombie movie were established with Night Of The Living Dead, there was White Zombie. Made in 1932 as a vehicle for Bela Lugosi's newly minted Dracula stardom, White Zombie was the first ever zombie film. It's also really not very good, hamstrung by stilted scripting and Lugosi's usual hammy acting.
That is not to say, though, that the pre-Romero genre of Haitian-influenced zombie movies is not without its gems. In particular, 1943's I Walked With A Zombie stands out as the best of the pack.
The film was a follow-up to producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur's Cat People, an unusual and arresting psychological horror which established Lewton's work at RKO as a lower budget, more experimental and suggestive alternative to the mainstream monster movies being made at Universal.
Like The Serpent And The Rainbow, I Walked With A Zombie was inspired by a non-fiction source, in this case an article of that title written by Inez Wallace for American Weekly Magazine. In reality, though, this has very little relation to the plot which is instead a reworking of Jane Eyre set in a Caribbean plantation and inspired by Haitian Vodou legends.
Like Tourneur's other early horrors, I Walked With A Zombie is ripe with uncomfortable atmosphere and ambiguity about the degree to which the events are supernatural or psychological. A very different movie from the shambling hordes of flesh eaters that we see in zombie stories today, I Walked With A Zombie is nevertheless well worth revisiting for fans of classic horror.