Just saw this. It's excellent and campy at the same time--way better than I expected.
Lugosi is deliciously evil. The silent movie/German Expressionist stylings are creepy and effective. There's some amazingly good cinematography here, and the racist elements waver between amusing, kind of interesting, and titillatingly offensive. There's also a nice pre-Hayes moment of skimpy clothing.
Lugosi is deliciously evil. The silent movie/German Expressionist stylings are creepy and effective. There's some amazingly good cinematography here, and the racist elements waver between amusing, kind of interesting, and titillatingly offensive. There's also a nice pre-Hayes moment of skimpy clothing.
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Buffalo
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Re: White Zombie
Fri, August 25, 2006 - 9:19 AMHello! i'm new here,and being that WHITE ZOMBIE is one of my favorite movies of all time,I thought I would make this my debut. I went to a White Zombie concert in the mid "90'sand they had a large screen behind the band that would flash weird images and,of course,Bela as M.Legendre was among them!
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Re: White Zombie
Fri, January 26, 2007 - 10:53 PMI love that the film retained what, for me, is the true horror of the original zombie legend: not decay or cannibalism, but the threat of eternal slavery, with no escape even after death.
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Re: White Zombie
Tue, January 30, 2007 - 12:33 AMActually, a zombie that eats human flesh is called a Ghoul, though that too is some times interpretted differently.
You can blame night of the living dead and later films for the whole flesh eating zombies thing.
There was a Hammer horror film about zombies that pretty much paved the way for bringing back zombie films in a time when the genre was about completely dead and decayed, which pretty much spawned the NOTLD films and later imitators.
Check out:
The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
Starring: André Morell, Diane Clare
Director: John Gilling
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Re: White Zombie
Wed, October 24, 2007 - 10:55 AMSaw it last night: classic Bela. Where have I seen that hand gesture before? Did Landau do it in 'Ed Wood'? The too-loud vulture shrieks where rather creepy-
Also sort of a socialist bent to the plot..."they will even continue exploiting our corpses with labor". -
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Re: White Zombie
Fri, October 26, 2007 - 1:29 PMVery good film. Walter Landau did play Bela in Ed Wood. -
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Re: White Zombie
Fri, October 26, 2007 - 2:20 PMMartin Landau - I grew up on Space 1999. What I meant was: I know he did Bela's "come to me" finger gestures while coaxing Vampira through the TV, but did he also do the "inverted 6's" hand grasp as seen in WZ at some point?
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Re: White Zombie
Sat, July 19, 2008 - 5:53 PMThere has been some wonderful digital restoration of this film. Back in the 1970's I used to borrow a 16mm copy from the Castro Valley Library. I must have watched it 30 times on my wall.
I remember distinctly the first time I saw it, at a 'rep' house in San Francisco's North Beach when I was 13 years old.
The Halperin brothers used some sets at Universal City. And poor Bela got screwed. He took the job for a flat fee of (as I recall) $600. He had just finished Tod Browning's "Dracula", but it was before he became a 'star' due to his wonderful performance as the Count.
I LOVE the scene where the camera is inside the crypt 'niche' when the coffin is removed. It is reminiscent of Cary Dreyer's 'Vampyr'.
My only regret is that the supporting actors weren't more professional.
Still and all, it is one of Bela's finest performances.
"Only a pinpoint!" and "Perhaps we understand one another better now" will resonate in my memory forever.
