Starring Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy, Joseph Cawthorn, Robert Frazer, John Harron
Directed by Victor Halperin
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
A wealthy man on the island of Haiti falls for a young bride-to-be and recruits a sinister master of zombies for help in possessing her.
Lugosi stars in this legendary horror film, made independently but lensed on the Universal studio's lot, taking advantage of the existing sets built for their horror classics. It contains a fine and unique performance from the actor, portraying the voodoo master Murder Legendre as both cultured and sinister, with penetrating eyes under oddly block-shaped eyebrows. There are similarities to Dracula of course, with Halperin utilizing familiar closeups of the actor's eyes and fingers as in that film, but it's a different character, and Lugosi seems very comfortable in the role as a more calculating villain. The picture is well photographed by Arthur Martinelli, using some clever staging of shadows in a sequence where Harron sees visions of Bellamy, and some memorable music is tracked into the scenes where Lugosi puts his hypnotic powers to work. The stiff slow moments of the zombies, and the haunting look of their blank expressions, especially the bulging-eyed former executioner, lends much power to the film, giving it a shocking realism that is still unsettling today.
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