I walked with a Zombie (1943)

This B-Movie could not be more different from the Zombie movies that would follow a couple of decades later, whereas the folklore is the same, the portrayal is not. The zombies in this film are indeed the undead, roaming the earth, except they appear to be of no danger to anyone, at least physically, though they can drive you crazy mentally it seems. This film draws from the voodoo idea of Zombies, and features some quite impressive scenes of voodoo to go with it.

The basic premise of this film is thus: A young nurse travels to the West Indies to care for the wife of a plantation manager who whilst displaying the physical signs of life, seems to show none of the mental capacity of someone living. Whilst doing so the young Nurse falls for the husband of her patient and sets about trying to cure her using voodoo, after everything else has failed, as she wants to make the man she loves happy. I have no issues with the plot, actually it ticks along with some nice twists along the way, keeping the audience engaged throughout the relatively brief running time. The script itself is mostly okay, but there are a couple of moments when you are reminded that you are watching a B Movie.

The one area that this film doesn't feel like a B movie is in atmosphere. There is never a sense of danger in this film, nor does there need to be. There is however a constant sense of unease, an unease that many people at the time would have felt toward voodoo, which was seen as ungodly. The Voodoo portrayed in this film though, is used purely to help people, or at least to try. Without spoiling anything for you, the person who is conducting all the voodoo ceremonies says that they do so to try and help people take the medicine that will actually help them get better. On the one hand this is dismissive of voodoo as an actual force for good, but on the other it recognises the strong belief that some people feel toward the practice.

I think that with films like these you have to judge them on their aims. This was never supposed to be a main feature, it was never aiming to be a masterpiece and win awards, it was a secondary feature designed to entertain, and in that respect it did its job very well. It was engaging, well plotted, well acted (mostly) and well shot. It never feels like a mainstream picture, and it's probably not something that I would choose to watch again, but if anyone is interested in B Movies, and wants to see  good example of one, then they'd be hard pressed to find a better example of the era than this.