Once again, the proverb from the Gospel of Matthew is proven correct: “He who lives by the zombie, dies by the zombie”. Victor Halperin directs with an economy of style and budget with long takes and minimal coverage while DP Arthur Martinelli’s low angle and low-key lighting allow Bela Lugosi to dominate every scene, towering over his victims with his mesmerizing eyes and menacing demeanor. Martinelli’s use of extreme close-ups of Lugosi’s dark disembodied eyes is powerful, while he often dollies the camera in for another extreme close-up of his leering face, slowly pulling focus until we are consumed by his presence. Imagine this magnified to 36 feet tall in a packed theatre circa 1933. Wow.
Murder Legendre (Bela Lugosi) rules Haiti with a cadre of the walking undead, and once he becomes obsessed with visiting socialite Madeleine Short (Madge Bellamy) he schemes his way into her life, which now has an expectancy to match her last name. But Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer) a white plantation owner has nefarious ideas of his own concerning Ms. Short, and he unknowingly utilizes the services of the one man who seeks to undermine his plans! Hint, when planning a crime, it’s best not to include a conspirator with the first name of Murder. So, after some voodoo alchemy the fight for Madeleine's body and soul begins between the triumvirate of Legendre, Beaumont and her fiancée Neil Parker (John Harron).
As one would expect in an early horror film, the woman is marginalized to nothing more than victim, an object that must be saved by her stalwart fiancée and his pipe smoking cohort Dr. Bruner (Joseph Cawthorn), who plays an incidental “Dr. Van Helsing” role to Parker’s “Jonathan Harker” persona. However, in Stoker’s novel Mina is an active participant and helps defeat the supernatural threat while here, Madeleine is nothing more than window dressing for male entitlement, a prize to be won. It’s still a creepy and disturbing film! In one scene, when Beaumont visits Legendre in his Mill to purchase the prenuptial alchemy, he sees a worker fall into the machine and the zombified servants continue to grind away without pause or emotion. Maybe the zombies should unionize!
This is one of Bela Lugosi’s most cruel roles and he delivers almost to the point of parody. The other actors deliver their lines and are blocked accordingly, mere caricatures in a genre film. Joseph Cawthorn, in a lengthy conversation in the Second Act which slows the story considerably, even flubs a line, but Halperin prints it! Low budget indeed. We also get a raven, hawk, buzzard kinda thing that screams every so often. But we are blessed with a small role from the always wonderful Clarence Muse! There is another interesting story buried in this living dead melodrama, as Legendre brags about turning his mentor and enemies into his servants: that’s the film I’d rather watch!
Final Grade: (C+)