He and They Walk at Night
 |
| 'Murder' Legendre (Bela Lugosi) is up to no good in White Zombie (1932) |
***/****
Somewhere in my “VHS vault” (a place in my backyard shed) is one of the very first VHS tapes I ever owned, way back in perhaps 1990 or 1991. Hmm, probably 1990. Anyway, this tape is so old that its protective shield (it would mechanically open through the processes of the VCR so that the film could be read) was gone. Exposed tape doesn’t bode well for the film so, sufficed to say, its shelf-life was in trouble. But the advent of the internet and its status in the public domain (it joined the ranks of Night of the Living Dead & Carnival of Souls as a title that could sell cheap DVDs) gave me other chances to see it. But the last several years, Turner Classics has been the place I depend on for its best possible presentation. But it has been 87 years, so what we get is probably near as quality as we’ll ever see it. The passage of time can be quite detrimental to any film. I still weep thinking of all the silent film history lost into the ether, never to studied and appreciated, artists who produced works we’ll never see. So we have the White Zombies, relics of their time featuring the all-time greats. I don’t really want to hang on Lugosi’s errors as a human being because most of us, at one point or another, wished we could turn back time and make a different decision than we did in that moment—such as Lugosi’s financial judgment which robbed him of riches he deserved for White Zombie –so I’ll focus on what made tonight’s particular viewing such a pleasure. The cast does very little to wow me, but I never put much into the stock characters that often were overshadowed by the greats they worked with such as Lugosi, Atwill, Karloff, Rains, and Chaney, Jr. Not that there weren’t good character actors that we didn’t get rewarded, but in White Zombie, I’d say Lugosi was pretty much it. Bellamy as Madeline, benefits from her background as a silent film actress, because she spends a majority of her time in a trance, her “soul” or “presence” robbed by Lugosi’s voodoo. Lugosi is commissioned by plantation owner, Robert Frazer, to give him some “spell” he could use to have Bellamy for himself. Harron as Neil, Madeline’s fiancé and eventually husband, gets the unfortunate David Manners’ straight part where he’s joyous, then mourning, then boozing in a great café sequence using patrons’ shadows as silhouettes and the vision of his love calling to him. Frazer realizes his error at ever confronting Lugosi for any help in placing a fake death spell on Bellamy, “resurrecting” her…but without any life behind the staring eyes and silence, just playing a melancholic tune on a piano at his decaying castle overlooking a steep cliff into the ocean off Haiti. Lugosi, always scheming and plotting, his eyebrows curving up, his ears pointy, his eyes sinister, the obvious makeup of The Devil is perfectly clear…and Lugosi plays it to the hilt. His famous approach towards the camera is part of the actor’s remaining mystique. The camera dissolves and use of Lugosi’s eyes to communicate malicious intent is where I think the film is at its very best. And the “zombies”, corpses that once gave ‘Murder’ Legendre a lot of fits when alive now forced to do his bidding without any say-so in death, stilt about in a dazed walk, either working the sugar cane machine that has that repeating agonizing squeak of its wheel or following their boss’ lead, remain a spooky reminder of what voodoo can do when used by the worst possible sort. Lugosi was made for dark suits and capes, mustachioed villainy, and coming out of the dark to scare you. When he stands outside the castle and lights up a candled figurine of a victim, opening a lamp fixture to set the head aflame, Lugosi is the nightmare fuel you never want to come across. When he smiles at Frazer with that “gotcha”, reminding him of how to use a particular kind of potion/poison, Lugosi’s dark plan revealed, this film finally sets in motion the finale where zombies walk right off a castle to their doom and Frazer must stop Legendre or else. Cemeteries looted by Legendre for his sugar mill (he asks Frazer why he wouldn’t use them for his mill), distance shots of the zombies walking in line, a road blocked by a voodoo funeral, and massive Universal Studios’ sets rented by the Halperins for castle interiors all do the trick when the pacing and acting might not hit the mark. Despite being a superior candidate for early morning insomnia chiller theatre, the last few times I’ve watched this are on Sunday evenings. This will always be an October must-see, but I envision open-eyed folks up during a cold evening on 1972 with nothing else better to do. Grab the popcorn, a beer or drink, and take in Lugosi at his most iconic (next to Dracula and Ygor, of course).
Somewhere in my “VHS vault” (a place in my backyard shed) is one of the very first VHS tapes I ever owned, way back in perhaps 1990 or 1991. Hmm, probably 1990. Anyway, this tape is so old that its protective shield (it would mechanically open through the processes of the VCR so that the film could be read) was gone. Exposed tape doesn’t bode well for the film so, sufficed to say, its shelf-life was in trouble. But the advent of the internet and its status in the public domain (it joined the ranks of Night of the Living Dead & Carnival of Souls as a title that could sell cheap DVDs) gave me other chances to see it. But the last several years, Turner Classics has been the place I depend on for its best possible presentation. But it has been 87 years, so what we get is probably near as quality as we’ll ever see it. The passage of time can be quite detrimental to any film. I still weep thinking of all the silent film history lost into the ether, never to studied and appreciated, artists who produced works we’ll never see. So we have the White Zombies, relics of their time featuring the all-time greats. I don’t really want to hang on Lugosi’s errors as a human being because most of us, at one point or another, wished we could turn back time and make a different decision than we did in that moment—such as Lugosi’s financial judgment which robbed him of riches he deserved for White Zombie –so I’ll focus on what made tonight’s particular viewing such a pleasure. The cast does very little to wow me, but I never put much into the stock characters that often were overshadowed by the greats they worked with such as Lugosi, Atwill, Karloff, Rains, and Chaney, Jr. Not that there weren’t good character actors that we didn’t get rewarded, but in White Zombie, I’d say Lugosi was pretty much it. Bellamy as Madeline, benefits from her background as a silent film actress, because she spends a majority of her time in a trance, her “soul” or “presence” robbed by Lugosi’s voodoo. Lugosi is commissioned by plantation owner, Robert Frazer, to give him some “spell” he could use to have Bellamy for himself. Harron as Neil, Madeline’s fiancé and eventually husband, gets the unfortunate David Manners’ straight part where he’s joyous, then mourning, then boozing in a great café sequence using patrons’ shadows as silhouettes and the vision of his love calling to him. Frazer realizes his error at ever confronting Lugosi for any help in placing a fake death spell on Bellamy, “resurrecting” her…but without any life behind the staring eyes and silence, just playing a melancholic tune on a piano at his decaying castle overlooking a steep cliff into the ocean off Haiti. Lugosi, always scheming and plotting, his eyebrows curving up, his ears pointy, his eyes sinister, the obvious makeup of The Devil is perfectly clear…and Lugosi plays it to the hilt. His famous approach towards the camera is part of the actor’s remaining mystique. The camera dissolves and use of Lugosi’s eyes to communicate malicious intent is where I think the film is at its very best. And the “zombies”, corpses that once gave ‘Murder’ Legendre a lot of fits when alive now forced to do his bidding without any say-so in death, stilt about in a dazed walk, either working the sugar cane machine that has that repeating agonizing squeak of its wheel or following their boss’ lead, remain a spooky reminder of what voodoo can do when used by the worst possible sort. Lugosi was made for dark suits and capes, mustachioed villainy, and coming out of the dark to scare you. When he stands outside the castle and lights up a candled figurine of a victim, opening a lamp fixture to set the head aflame, Lugosi is the nightmare fuel you never want to come across. When he smiles at Frazer with that “gotcha”, reminding him of how to use a particular kind of potion/poison, Lugosi’s dark plan revealed, this film finally sets in motion the finale where zombies walk right off a castle to their doom and Frazer must stop Legendre or else. Cemeteries looted by Legendre for his sugar mill (he asks Frazer why he wouldn’t use them for his mill), distance shots of the zombies walking in line, a road blocked by a voodoo funeral, and massive Universal Studios’ sets rented by the Halperins for castle interiors all do the trick when the pacing and acting might not hit the mark. Despite being a superior candidate for early morning insomnia chiller theatre, the last few times I’ve watched this are on Sunday evenings. This will always be an October must-see, but I envision open-eyed folks up during a cold evening on 1972 with nothing else better to do. Grab the popcorn, a beer or drink, and take in Lugosi at his most iconic (next to Dracula and Ygor, of course).
Comments
Post a Comment