GManfred This picture has been on many times in the past and I always missed it. I'm glad to say I finally got to see it and was pleasantly surprised. Lots of horror pictures from this era are just schlock, but this had a pretty good story and holds your interest. I know, I know, but these are movie zombies, so for 70 minutes I suspended my disbelief and just went with it.A couple decide to get married on an island inhabited by zombies, but at the request of a 'good friend' who happens to live there. But who do you think is the Head of the Zombies? Of course, who else? There he is in all his creepy, sinister persona threatening, intimidating and glowering, and all in his unctuous, low key voice. This is one of the typecast Lugosi's best roles and is worth the price of admission - which in my case was a replay of the DVR I was smart enough to tape.

jadavix "White Zombie" is a cool little horror tale, barely clocking in at feature film length at only an hour and seven minutes.The film is a take on the zombie legend of Haiti which is a far cry from the kind of zombie movie/TV show/video game we have all seen at least a million times. The movie does feature an army of zombies, rather than just one, but they are not flesh eating creatures who transmit their disease through bites and must be put down with a shotgun blast to the head. Instead, they are more like mindless automatons.Moreover, what this film has, that very, very few zombie movies in the modern era have had, is a main bad guy. Generally the zombie outbreak is caused by a phenomena like a crashed satellite or comet. Often times it is not even accounted for. In "White Zombie", there is a very definite cause for the dead walking: voodoo magic performed by none other than Bela Lugosi.Watching "White Zombie" made me wonder a couple of things. Firstly, I was considering whether Romero (RIP) and his "Living Dead" pictures were the first time zombies were depicted as flesh eaters. In "White Zombie", they are slaves created to do Lugosi's bidding. His evil nature is accentuated by the fact that it is hinted that some of the zombies are former rivals of his, being exploited after death as an ultimate act of humiliation.Secondly, I wondered if, by not having a main bad guy controlling the zombies that "White Zombie" has, we are essentially missing a key ingredient that would generally improve these stories. I mean, nobody is scared of zombies any more, if they ever were. They exist basically to demonstrate the different ways the human body can be degraded and destroyed, and maybe to make us think how we would try to survive an "outbreak". "White Zombie" gives you a real channel for fear in the consummately evil character created by Lugosi.I do penalize "White Zombie", however, for not containing any extremely effective frightening moments. This might be a bigger minus for some rather than others; if you watch a lot of horror films like me, you don't expect them to scare you, because most don't. You expect to be entertained, and you will be.

TheRedDeath30 I would guess that there is some film geek out there that could dispute this notion with some obscurity that no one has ever heard of, but for all intents, this is the first zombie movie. Of course, these are not shambling brain munchers or lightning fast infected. These are not the zombies that litter indie horror nowadays. No, the zombies we are speaking of here are of the old voodoo variety. Maybe still shambling in their own way, but mindless hypnotized minions, set one destruction at the whim of their master.The movie sets an eerie tone right from the outset as a young couple moves to the West Indies and we open on their carriage ride to their new plantation, but something interrupts that ride. There is a ceremony going on at a crossroads, a voodoo ceremony at that. They are burying their dead in the road to prevent grave robbers from stealing the bodies. It immediately sets a wonderful midnight mood to this movie, as the crowd chants their songs. Seems our young lady has met a man who promises to be their guide through the exotic land, but he has more on his mind than that. He covets the young woman as his bride. Rather than try to win her the old fashioned way, he sets upon an evil plot. We meet Lugosi as Murder Legendre, one of his absolute best roles. He runs a sugar plantation where the workers seem to do anything their boss desires, in fact they do because they are all hypnotized zombies. Legendre tempts this young man with the idea that he can hypnotize our young maiden and make her a slave. Of course, the whole thing will eventually go awry, as you can never trust an evil mastermind.There are plenty of eerie scenes in this movie, including an odd march of the zombies, as they descend down a hill on their way to accomplish their master's commands. Even more, the theme of hypnotism is played out in the cinematography of the film. The actors often move with a slow steadiness. The camera pans and sweeps with serene movement. The entire thing feels like a dream (or perhaps, a nightmare). This effect is heightened because most prints I have seen are not of the best quality, so the graininess of the film adds to the effect. Watch this movie on an October evening with the lights down low. It's not an outright terror, by any means, but there is an overwhelming hypnotic quality that will creep in and settle with you.

sawyerdog Honestly I didn't really like this movie at all. I thought it was really slow and the pay off at the end sucked. I would say it is definitely worth a watch because it looks pretty cool and it is pretty eerie. If your going to watch this movie thinking the zombies are going to be shall I say walking dead looking then you will be very disappointed. Even Bela Lugosi Dracula himself I barely payed attention to in this movie. Even writing this review is hard to do because I didn't like it at all. I didn't like the main male actor in it I thought he was a strange looking guy and I just couldn't shake my dislike for him. Watch this movie if you want.