Directed by Jacques Tourneur. Produced by Val Lewton. RKO pictures.
Everything good dies here.
I have just started my second year of graduate school at the University of New Mexico. This semester I am taking a film theory class focused on zombie movies. When asked what my favorite film is, George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead often comes to mind and I love horror movies in general, so this class seemed right up my alley. Each week we are to watch a zombie movie, moving chronologically from early zombie fare to more recent efforts. Last week I watched White Zombie (1932) with Bela Lugosi. I was struck by how insignificant and non-threatening the actual zombies were in that film. The real fear is not being attacked by zombies but in being turned into a zombie - not the flesh eating kind but a simple mindless fuck. The same is true with I Walked with a Zombie. In fact, we are never sure that the zombies are really zombies in this film and maybe the film is not really about zombies at all in the end.
The symbolic use of the arrow ravaged Saint Sebastian (in this film, set on the fictional island of San Sebastian, is represented by “Ti Misery” the figure head from a slave ship that is now part of the sugar plantation garden) is a rather interesting contrast to the voodoo religion of the islanders. Sebastian, before being martyred, was ordered to be killed by arrows. He survived and was nursed back to health by a Christian widow named Irene (obvious parallels to nurse Betsy and zombie Jessica who should be martyred for putting up with her insufferable husband). Interestingly, Saint Sebastian is also the patron of plague victims. Each character in this film seems plagued by some different flavor of torment that human beings bring upon themselves.
Early in the film, we get our first introduction to the zombie concept as it is mansplained to Betsy. (Zombies, and I don’t mean the cocktail!) I was struck by this seemingly oddball reference to the Zombie cocktail which dates to 1934 and the rise of “tiki culture”, an appropriation and amalgamation merging products and culture from the Caribbean islands with those of the South Pacific – if you’ve seen one island savage, you’ve seen them all. So, pour me another glass of rum.