I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

Directed by Jacques Tourneur. With Frances Dee, Tom Conway, James Ellison, Edith Barrett. A Canadian nurse is hired to care for the wife of a sugar plantation owner, who has been acting strangely, on a Caribbean island.

I Walked with a Zombie is a 1943 horror film directed by Jacques Tourneur. It was the second horror film from producer Val Lewton for RKO Pictures.

RKO producer Val Lewton seemed to thrive upon taking the most lurid film titles and coming up with pocket-edition works of art. Saddled with the studio-dictated title I Walked With a Zombie, Lewton, together with scripters Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray, concocted a West Indies variation on Jane Eyre. Trained nurse (Frances Dee) travels to the tropics to care for Christine Gordon, the wife of seemingly abusive Tom Conway. At first, Dee merely believes her patient to be comatose. But as the drums throb and the natives behave restlessly, Dee tries to bring her patient back to life by jungle magic. Conway is racked with guilt, believing himself responsible for his wife's condition; his guilt is stoked by Conway's drunken brother James Ellison, who has always loved Gordon. Utilizing very limited sets and only a handful of extras, director Jacques Tourneur manages to evoke an impression of an expansive tropical island populated at every turn by voodoo worshippers. Many of the sequences, notably Frances Dee's first languid stroll into the midst of the native ceremonies, have an eerie dream-like quality that pervades even the most worn-out, badly processed TV prints of I Walked With Zombie.

Overview of I Walked with a Zombie, 1943, directed by Jacques Tourneur, with James Ellison, Frances Dee, Tom Conway, at Turner Classic Movies

I had no idea I'd be doing two Jacques Tourneur/Val Lewton productions so close together but oh well, they're worth comparing.  I saw I Walked With a Zombie before I saw Cat People and on first viewing I loved it, especially considering it's take on Jane Eyre.  Recently rewatching Cat People though colored…

Reportedly, I Walked With a Zombie was producer Val Lewton's favorite out of the nine low-budget horror films he produced for RKO Radio Pictures between 1942 and 1946. Disquieting, ethereal, and powered by shadow and suggestion, I Walked best displays the philosophy of terror tha

I Walked with a Zombie is an RKO movie produced by Val Lewton and directed by Jacques Tourneur. I Walked with a Zombie was released in 1943.

I wish I knew who said this, so that I could attribute it properly. Once upon a time, I encountered a review of Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked with a Zombie whose author contended that the movie’s main worth was its instructive value— “Watch this one to remind yourself how bori

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