After a long absence, we return, dear listeners! Today we take a look at early zombie and voodoo films, gape at how bad some of them were, and point you to the campaign for an innovative new anthology of zombie tales by Black writers, called Blackened Roots…
VOODOO ON SCREEN
Although there had been literature which included voodoo before the 1920s — for example, Henry Francis Downing, an African-American politician and writer, wrote a play called Voodoo in 1914 — it was mainly William Buehler Seabrook’s book The Magic Island (1929) which threw voodoo and zombies into the wider world’s imagination, and surely primed the imagination of the movie studios.
Sometimes sympathetic, sometimes sensationalised, and supposedly factual, the book, based on his experiences in Haiti, was a bestseller:
“I learned from Louis that we white strangers in this twentieth-century city, with our electric lights and motor cars, bridge games and cocktail parties, were surrounded by another world invisible, a world of marvels, miracles, and wonders — a world in which the dead rose from their graves and walked, in which a man lay dying within shouting distance of my own house and from no mortal illness but because an old woman out in Leogane sat slowly unwinding the thread wrapped round a wooden doll made in his image; a world in which trees and beasts talked for those whose ears were attuned, in which gods spoke from burning bushes, as on Sinai, and sometimes still walked bodily incarnate as in Eden’s garden.”
It seems no coincidence that within a couple of years of The Magic Island being published, the studios began producing a whole slew of low budget films featuring voodoo and/or zombies (another contributory factor may have been the questionable United States occupation of Haiti from 1915–1934, when US troops and administrators were exposed to aspects of local customs and practices – and brought stories home).
There were film offerings such as White Zombie, Black Moon, Drums O’ Voodoo, Chloe Love Is Calling You, Ouanga, Revolt of the Zombies, The Devil’s Daughter, The Ghost Breakers, King of the Zombies, Revenge of the Zombies, I Walked with a Zombie, Voodoo Man, and Zombies on Broadway (all these were made between 1932 and 1945).
Voodoo* on screen was splattered over a whole range of real and fictional islands, usually with white stars parachuted in for the big audiences. ‘Inter-racial’ romance was a no-no, lighter coloured Black people often got the better parts, with darker skinned actors frequently relegated to the role of servant (scary or comedic) or supposed savage. And voodoo itself was generally shown as a wild, primitive hangover from the ‘jungle’, rather than a syncretised religion drawing on both Catholic and West African beliefs.
Despite this, the films are still important in their way, both as film history and for giving access to how Black people and their beliefs, especially those of the Caribbean and Deep South, could be represented on screen at the time. Sometimes it’s positive and interesting; sometimes it’s either offensive or bloody awful.
*Although we would normally use ‘vodou’ to refer to the Haitian-based religion, or other terms depending on what, where, and when, the prevalent blanket term in the media back then was voodoo (don’t get us started on American hoodoo, which is another matter — see http://greydogtales.com/blog/aint-no-witch-caroline-dye-hoodoo-blues/ . So we’ll mostly stick to ‘voodoo’ here.
TRIVIA: In 1914 the Black composer Harry Lawrence Freeman (the first African-American to have an opera successfully produced — Epthalia, 1891) also wrote an opera called Voodoo, though it wasn’t performed until 1928. The work includes rituals to removed a love rival, including, apparently, a powerful voodoo ceremony in the Third Act.
In those days, you got proper zombies on your screens. None of these rotting, running-around, flesh-eating pretenders, with their viruses and suchlike. You got intact zombies who lumbered and stared, who obeyed houngan and papaloi, mambo and mamaloi (or Bela Lugosi, of course), stolen shamelessly from Black culture. They were thrust onto the big screen to scare the bejaysus out of audiences, stock cinema figures just as Catholic exorcists later became in the seventies. They were the real fake thing. Seabrook wrote:
“The zombie, they say, is a soulless human corpse, still dead, but taken from the grave and endowed by sorcery with a mechanical semblance of life. People who have the power to do this go to a fresh grave, dig up the body before it has had time to rot, galvanize it into movement, and then make of it a servant or slave, occasionally for the commission of some crime, more often simply as a drudge around the habitation or the farm, setting it dull heavy tasks, and beating it like a dumb beast if it slackens.”
In fact, there has always been controversy as to whether ‘zombies’ were dead bodies, or bodies lacking souls, or just the living in thrall:
“Zombis,” said Crawfish Jonny. “You gotten yerself dead men, grave-goods, and the Lord won’t let you rest for that.”
Lyall grinned. “Zombis, huh? Well, some would agree there, and some wouldn’t. There’s bodies like my boys used to work the big fields in Haiti – tireless bodies, making no complaint. A fine change from ‘Mistuh Lyall, this ain’t what I’s owed’ and ‘Mistuh Lyall, I cain’t do a stroke ‘til I’ve slept a mite.’ Those voices, they can aggravate a man.”
“But these ain’t dead men walking, are they Barnard Lyall?” Mamma Lucy eased back the arms which held her, standing almost free. “They’re goofered and tricked, and iffen they die like this, it’s you who’ll be payin’.”
A dismissive snort from the man. “Peh. A few pieces of trash, picked here and there, brought up to the big house to take their medicine and listen to Uncle Lyall. They don’t know they’re alive, so it makes no matter to them. No pain, no hunger – nice change for colored boys like these.”
Mamma Lucy felt her neck muscles knotting in anger…
Pine in the Soul, John Linwood Grant
But born of sorcery, hypnosis, mental illness or dark pharmaceuticals, zombies — and voodoo — were here to stay. Are these films any good as pieces of cinema? Er… well, many are not (The Devil’s Daughter is just so tedious that we almost didn’t list it). However, some do have notable aspects or moments where it’s informative to see how the subject is handled (we’ll say nothing about White Zombie (1932) today, because that one’s been covered so many times before, elsewhere). Instead, here are six specific films, with reasons why you might want to check them out:
1) DRUMS O’VOODOO (1934)
An all-Black cast deliver an earnest morality play, punctuated by an over-extended debate scene in a Black church. This one is definitely worth a look, though, if you want to see a rare attempt to portray both church and voodoo as relevant and even complementary spiritual systems/religions for Black people, and is far more nuanced than usually seen in these films. Ignoring the obvious plot of the Conflicted Preacher, the Innocent Girl, and The Baddie, the core question here is how Christianity and voodoo serve the Black community.
The very fact that no white actors suddenly barge into the spotlight helps, and you also get a mamaloi in the spotlight, Auntie Hagar, played by Laura Bowman. Admittedly, the way she alternates between wise old woman and over-the-top rhyming voodoo priestess is a bit odd, but still… Oh, and this one’s set in Louisiana, not the Caribbean or elsewhere (it was based on the play Louisiana by African-American actor/playwright J Augustus Smith.
TRIVIA: The film was re-released in 1940, using the even more lurid and ludicrous title She Devil.
2) CHLOE, LOVE IS CALLING YOU (1934)
A fairly uninviting film which focuses on miscegenation, the ‘one drop’ rule, and where it turns out (SERIOUS SPOILER) that a vengeful woman raised in the Black community is in fact white but didn’t know it — which makes everything right for her, as she suddenly gets a ‘white’ name and a new frock. Lots of ‘you’ll never marry X because of your blood’ stuff. Hmm. Reflecting the racism of the time — and not helping at all — this is one to make yourself sit through if you want to see how the subject was portrayed at the movies. Banned in Ohio, possibly because the Film Board fell asleep.
TRIVIA: This was the last film of Olive Mary Borden (1906 – 1947) who was a fourth cousin of Lizzie Borden, the woman tried and acquitted after the axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts 1892.
3) REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES (1936)
Peculiar zombie nonsense which gets you scratching your head, so has to be included. Notable as a period film which completely ignores African and Caribbean roots for no apparent reason. In an unexpected and frankly bizarre twist, during World War One a French Cambodian regiment bring back to Europe a Cambodian high priest who has the black magic (sic) art of making zombies. Yep… it all comes down to the secrets of a Hindu temple somewhere near Phnom Penh. So that’s where a European expedition heads. Who’d have thunk it? With a few powders and rituals thrown in, zombification turns out to be the mind control of the ‘Mystic East’. With a plot which wavers between destroying the secret and harnessing it for the Allies, who knows how they dreamt this one up?
TRIVIA: Uses the shots of Bela Lugosi’s eyes from White Zombie, to symbolise the mental power of he who makes and controls the zombies.
4) THE DEVIL’S DAUGHTER (1939)
If it is possible to be really bored by something in which you’re really interested, this film achieves it. A dull dispute over an island estate between half-sisters, it has an all-Black cast (though some of the actors are quite light, as noted above), and stars the now-forgotten major African-American movie star Nina Mae McKinney (1912 – 1967), once known in Europe as ‘The Black Garbo’. Despite mention of running from the dead, a ritual, and a drug-induced trance, it doesn’t advance the topic. The key interest is that this film uses the term obeah, not the more common voodoo. Compared to voodoo, obeah is more a range of folk beliefs and practices than a religion, and is present in both West Africa and the Caribbean.
TRIVIA: Nina Mae McKinney also featured in 1929’s Hallelujah, the first Black musical, and in 1935’s Sanders of the River, alongside Paul Robeson — who later found to his disgust that the film had been altered to portray the white colonials in a better light. Another of the film’s stars, Jack Carter, was perhaps most well-known for playing Macbeth in Orson Welles’s 1936 all-Black version of Macbeth, often called the Voodoo Macbeth. Welles set this version on an imagined Caribbean island, and the play earned its later name because the witches were replaced by Haitian vodou, including a male priest instead of Hecate.
MORE TRIVIA: Henry S Whitehead, a friend of H P Lovecraft, served as Archdeacon of the Virgin Islands from 1921 to 1929 and wrote a large number of supernatural tales linked to obeah. Whilst the stories do have some racist content, Whitehead had really been among these island communities, and treated local beliefs with more respect, even sympathy, than most white writers of the time.
5) KING OF THE ZOMBIES (1941)
A comedy-horror film which has the peculiarity of trying to blend ‘evil white man who learns zombification secret’ with hypnosis and some actual zombie lore, including the concept of not feeding a zombie salt, which will break the ‘spell’. There is a mamaloi/mambo to hand as the white villain’s henchwoman, and plenty of proper zombies. In an odd way, this one’s almost enjoyable – except it’s still racist. Prolific Black comedian Mantan Moreland, as “Jeff” Jackson, has all the best ‘Scooby Doo’ lines, although he is in the tiresome stock role as hapless Black valet – which means that he’s supposedly a superstitous scaredy-cat because he’s Black.
TRIVIA: Although work dried up a bit as the eye-rolling Black sidekick role became less popular, Moreland (1902 – 1973) was later considered as a strong candidate to join the Three Stooges after one of the original Stooges died.
6) I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943)
The best of them all, even with its main focus on the white nurse and the woman she comes to tend. Here we’re offered voodoo, zombies and all, with references to slavery, and some disturbing cinematic images. Despite talk of fakery and pseudo-medical arguments, there is genuine voodoo at work — the moment when the ‘mad woman’ is drawn out of her room and into the night is terrific.
It’s all a potent blend of Jane Eyre, misguided colonialism, and Black sorrows. The presence of a scarred slave-ship figurehead and Carrefour — a magnificently silent, forbidding figure who is zombie, god and guardian — push this one right up the list (‘Carrefour’ being French for crossroads, an abiding element of vodou, voodoo and hoodoo beliefs). Themes of injustice and bondage abound, and it includes detailed scenes at a houmfort, a voodoo place of worship. And the white men are guilty of their own personal failings. Well worth seeing.
https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/i-walked_with_a_zombie.html
TRIVIA: I Walked with a Zombie was directed by Jacques Tourneur, who did such magnificent work on 1957’s chilling The Night of the Demon, adapted from M R James’s story ‘Casting the Runes’. The 1943 film was based on the work of writer/reporter, Inez Wallace (1888 —1966), who had travelled to various Caribbean islands and written about voodoo and obeah. You can read a contemporary piece about her here:
https://www.newspapers.com/clip/50177534/inez-wallace/
END-WORD
As far as films go, the whole voodoo and zombie on screen thing went fairly pear-shaped after the mid-1940s. Over the decades, the zombie turned into the only incarnation that most people know nowadays, caused by anything from cosmic waves and radioactive waste to medical experiments run amok and fungi. The voodoo connection was almost totally abandoned, but the stolen Z Word remained. Some might blame George Romero and his landmark 1968 film Night of the Living Dead, though Romero didn’t refer to his creatures as zombies, but as ‘ghouls’, and stated that part of his inspiration was Richard Matheson’s book I Am Legend (1954), where the creatures are more vampiric.
And thus have generations been nurtured on these modern so-called zombies who dash around like they’re on amphetamines, or shuffle after brains, not remembering that brains are ludicrously high in cholesterol — we’re pretty sure that such an exclusive diet would lead to these undead fellers having serious cardiac events. What such creatures should be called nowadays, we don’t know…
But they probably ain’t zombies.
Blackened Roots
Time for a last reminder that the campaign for Mocha Memoirs’ latest project Blackened Roots — “an anthology of stories written by Black writers from all over the world featuring tales of non-traditional zombies” — has only a few days to run. MM did a fantastic job with their anthology SLAY: Stories of the Vampire Noire, and we expect this one to be just as cool. Pledge and get in there.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/blackened-roots-an-anthology-of-the-undead–2/x/13985334#/
Whilst you’re pondering the above, why not have a look at John Linwood Grant’s own recent second collection,Where All is Night, and Starless (Trepidatio 2021). A Shirley Jackson Award Nominee, it’s not bad.
AVAILABLE NOW THROUGH AMAZON UK & US, AND THROUGH THE PUBLISHER, JOURNALSTONE
Amazon US: Where All is Night, and Starless
Amazon UK: Where All is Night, and Starless