For the first time, I recently watched the film I Walked With a Zombie, an oft-discussed 1943 “B-movie” directed by Jacques Tourneur and produced by Val Lewton for RKO Pictures. (If those names sound at all familiar, it’s because the cult-classic horror film Cat People came from the same creative team.) The movie stars Frances Dee, Tom Conway, and James Ellison; these three play, respectively, nurse Betsy Connell, sugar-cane plantation owner Paul Holland, and Holland’s half-brother, Wesley Rand.
Possibly what makes the film so odd is that it’s a reinterpretation of Jane Eyre, mixed with Haitian folklore and commentaries on slavery, teetering precariously between exoticism and realism. For a 1943 film, it’s less wildly offensive than I had expected it would be, though it’s hardly free of racist implications; it is trying to comment seriously on exploitation, slavery, and race, though it falls down on the job regularly and severely.
[A set of thoughts.]