I Walked with a Zombie
1943 film by Jacques Tourneur
I Walked with a Zombie is a 1943 film about a Canadian nurse who is hired to care for the wife of a sugar plantation owner, who has been acting strangely, on a Caribbean island.
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- Directed by Jacques Tourneur. Written by Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray, based on an article by Inez Wallace and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.
The blackest magic of voodoo keeps this beautiful woman alive...yet DEAD! (taglines)
Wesley Rand
edit- What he could do to that word: beautiful. That's Paul's great weapon: words. He uses them like other men use their fists.
Betsy Connell
edit- [voice over, giggling after the first line] I walked with a zombie. It does seem an odd thing to say. Had anyone said that to me a year ago, I'm not at all sure I would have known what a zombie was. Oh, I might have had some notion that they were strange and frightening... even a little funny. It all began in such an ordinary way...
- Well, I used to be afraid of the dark when I was a child. But, I'm not afraid any more.
Other
edit- Dr. Maxwell: She makes a beautiful zombie doesn't she?
Dialogue
edit- Betsy Connell: [noticing Alma having difficulty trying to lead a stubborn horse] Alma, try it this way... Turn your back on him. You see, that's the way it is with a horse: you can't lead him and look at him at the same time.
- Alma: [chuckling] Sounds sorta man-like, don't it?
- Job Interviewer: You're single?
- Betsy Connell: Yes.
- Job Interviewer: Where were you trained?
- Betsy Connell: Memorial Hospital, here in Ottawa.
- Job Interviewer: Now, this last question is a little irregular, Miss Connell. I really don't know quite how to begin. Do you believe in witchcraft?
- Betsy Connell: [laughing] Well, they didn't teach it at Memorial Hospital, but I had my suspicions about the Directors of Training.
- Alma: [walking into Betsy's room while Betsy is sleeping, and touching and wiggling Betsy's big toe] Good morning, Miss.
- Betsy Connell: Thank you for waking me.
- Alma: I didn't want to frighten you out of your sleep, Miss. That's why I touched you farthest from your heart.
- Paul Holland: It's not beautiful.
- Betsy Connell: You read my thoughts, Mr. Holland.
- Paul Holland: It's easy enough to read the thoughts of a newcomer. Everything seems beautiful because you don't understand. Those flying fish, they're not leaping for joy, they're jumping in terror. Bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies. The glitter of putrescence. There is no beauty here, only death and decay.
- Betsy Connell: You can't really believe that.
- Paul Holland: Everything good dies here. Even the stars.
- Betsy Connell: Frankly, it was something of a shock to see my patient that way for the first time. Nobody had told me Mrs. Holland was a... mental case.
- Paul Holland: A "mental case"?
- Betsy Connell: I'm sorry...
- Paul Holland: Why should you be? My wife IS a mental case. Please remember that, Miss Connell. Particularly when some of the foolish people on the island start regaling you with the local legends. You'll find superstition a contagious thing. Some people let it get the better of them. I don't think you will.
- Betsy Connell: No.
- Paul Holland: Come along. I'll introduce you to Dr. Maxwell and your patient.
- Betsy Connell: I thought voodoo was something everyone was frightened of?
- Paul Holland: I'm afraid it's not very frightening. They sing and dance and carry on. And then, as I understand it, one of the gods comes down and speaks through one of the people.
- Mrs. Rand: These people are primitive. Things that are natural to them might shock and horrify you.
- Betsy Connell: I'm not easily frightened.
- Mrs. Rand: That may be the pity of it.
Taglines
edit- See this strange, strange story of a woman whose lure set brother against brother; whose love caused hate - and whose beauty bowed to the will of an evil spell in whose power we must refuse to believe - EVEN IF IT'S TRUE!
- The blackest magic of voodoo keeps this beautiful woman alive...yet DEAD!
- Blonde Beauty - Doomed to be one of the walking dead!
- SEE This strange and startling story of a woman to whom it all happened!
- She's alive... yet dead! She's dead... yet alive!
- Who said the dead don't walk?
- See it happen—right before your startled eyes...in the screen sensation that rips the mask from the darkest secrets of forbidden voodoo!
Cast
edit- James Ellison — Wesley Rand
- Frances Dee — Betsy Connell
- Tom Conway — Paul Holland
- Edith Barrett — Mrs. Rand
- James Bell — Dr. Maxwell
- Christine Gordon — Jessica Holland
- Theresa Harris — Alma
- Sir Lancelot — Calypso Singer
- Darby Jones — Carrefour
- Jeni Le Gon — Dancer
