Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
I Walked with a Zombie / The Body Snatcher, 13 May 2007
"I Walked with a Zombie"
We are treated to exotic titles and expectations with titles such as "I walked With a Zombie." My only encounters with Zombies are those that process in an UNIX operating system that can not be killed. I also watched "Weekend at Bernie's II."
As with other Lewton productions he got a way with a psychological thriller in the guise of a monster movie. In the days of sailing ships a nurse (Frances Dee) is employed to go to San Sebastian to look after a plantation owner's wife (Christine Gordon.) She fined that her charge is more than just a victim of a disease that heft her without will. Turns out if you cut the wife she does not bleed. We all know what that means.
The true story is the relationship to man and wife, man and nurse, nurse and wife, brother and brother, brother and wife, need I say more? Could it mean that there is nothing supernatural or is love moving in mysterious natural.
Can this all be straightened out or is Jessica Holland the wife destined to be zomiated for ever and the nurse must learn to love from afar?
Yeah Lord pity them who are dead and give peace and happiness to the living.
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"The Body Snature"
Based on a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson
"It is through error that a man tries and rises. It is through tragedy he learns. All the roads of learning begin in darkness and go out into the light." Hippocrates of Gos
This film has the psychological complexity of a Val Lewton production but is a lot more graphic than most of his productions where he just implies violence. He even takes it out on innocent dogs. I feel that some one was pushing Lewton from behind to be more vicious with this film.
A young student (Russell Wade) wants to become a doctor like the great Dr. Wolfe 'Toddy' MacFarlane (Henry Daniell.) Little does he know what it will entail?
The DVD has a voiceover commentary from the late Director Robert Wise who directed "West Side Story" and "The Sound of Music." Surprisingly he said that the original basic script was written by Philip MacDonald.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
amazing classics, 10 April 2006
These are two of Lewton's Classic films, though a wee bit mismatched.
"I Walked with a Zombie" must win the award for the most ridiculous title for a super movie. During a period when screenwriters were on strike they had to keep making movies, so they turned to the classics. In this one they took Jane Eyre and moved it to the tropics and added a sprinkle of Voodoo and came out with a very atmospheric film. Any young film director looking to learn the technique of evocative atmosphere needs to start here. This movie oozes a melancholy ambiance that is more sinister than horror. One my my favourite all time films.
The second, they dusted off and trotted out was a Robert Lewis Stephenson tale about evil-doings in the period of body snatching. A very understated yet menacing Karloff is the sinister body snatcher willing to provide a young doctor the much needed corpses he needs for his medical experiments - even if they are still alive and protesting. It's a very understate film, no sensational acting. Costuming for the period Scotland it's wonderful. Excellent direction from the master Robert Wise.
There are theatrical trailers, it has subtitles in England, French and Spanish (but on the feature films only). Also included are commentary by Film Historians Kim Newman and Steve Jones for Zombie and Steve Haberman for Body Snatcher.
These are two of the very best Lewton films. Not to be missed for the power of each does not lessen with time.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Body Snatcher: Well-done drama with Henry Daniell and Boris Karloff, 15 Jul 2007
The Body Snatcher:
For a low-budget, B movie horror quickie, The Body Snatcher holds up remarkably well as a tightly-told, well-acted story. The horror is in the situation, not the actors' make-up or the staggering around of corpses. Corpses there are, but they're freshly dug up, and their purpose is not to grasp and choke, but to be dissected by a complex and morally ambiguous surgeon.
Dr. Wolfe MacFarlane (Henry Daniell) is a brilliant surgeon and teacher in 1831 Edinburgh. He is on the verge of medical breakthroughs involving the spine and the spinal cord. For his work, he needs fresh corpses to dissect for his research. John Gray (Boris Karloff), a cabman, provides those corpses for a price. Gray digs up the freshly interred and delivers them to MacFarlane's laboratory in the basement of the doctor's home. If the pickings are thin, Gray will also create a corpse by applying tightly his hand and finger's over a person's nose and mouth. MacFarlane, who is doing genuinely valuable work, doesn't want to know the details. And it seems Gray also has something to hold over MacFarlane. Only two or three years previously, the body snatching work of Burke and Hare had been discovered. Gray kept MacFarlane's use of the bodies a secret. While MacFarlane may be the verge of a break-through, he is repulsed by his need for Gray and by Gray's increasing familiarity. Gray enjoys his power over MacFarlane and pushes his familiarity to the limit. MacFarlane eventually forces a showdown. The climax is a clattering, rolling carriage ride through driving rain, with MacFarlane whipping the horses on, half-mad, and collapsed beside him is the pale, shuddering corpse of...well, see the movie.
For a low-budget film, the movie looks authentic as well as atmospheric. The wet, cobblestoned streets of Edinburgh gleam in the moonlight, the coal fires in the drawing-room grates cast shadows. Night scenes can cover many shortcuts, and there are a lot of night scenes in The Body Snatcher, but what we can see looks like quality.
The movie is really a duel, as director Robert Wise says, between the two lead characters. Henry Daniell (in one of the best roles he ever had) and Boris Karloff pull off the trick of combining distaste, arrogance and mutual need. Daniell was a major character actor specializing almost exclusively in condescending or villainous types. He unfortunately, perhaps, had the kind of face that, when relaxed, just looked disdainful. With his deepset eyes and thin, mean-spirited line of a mouth, he was instantly recognizable. But he also was an excellent professional actor. When he had occasion to smile genuinely, rare in the parts he played, he could look quite warm. Karloff matches Daniell in the acting. John Gray is no monster. He is a man of great resentments who enjoys having the great Dr. MacFarlane under his thumb. He kills, but once in awhile seems to regret having to do so. He can also move quickly from false subservience to lethal violence.
This is one of the horror films Val Lewton produced in the Forties. It was directed by Robert Wise and has an interesting commentary by Wise on working with Lewton. Wise, like so many other Hollywood directors of the time, learned their craft doing these quickies. He went on to direct other quickies such as The Curse of the Cat People and Blood on the Moon, moved up to Day the Earth Stood Still, Executive Suite and Run Silent, Run Deep, among others, in the Fifties, then really hit the big time with West Side Story, The Sand Pebbles and The Sound of Music in the Sixties. Just to show, I guess, that he hadn't lost his touch with smaller films, he directed the The Haunting in 1963, one of the best and creepiest of movies.
The DVD transfer looks just fine. The copy I watched shares the disc with I Walked with a Zombie. In addition to the commentary by Wise, it also features a commentary by film historian Steve Haberman.
I Walked with a Zombie:
"Everything seems beautiful because you don't understand," says Paul Holland (Tom Conway) to nurse Betsy Connell (Frances Dee), on their voyage to Haiti where she will take care of his seriously ill wife. "Those flying fish, they're jumping in terror because bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water...it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies, the glitter of putrescence. There's no beauty here, only death and decay." If that attitude isn't enough to be off-putting, Betsy discovers that Holland's "ill" wife is actually a zombie.
This is one of the low-budget horror quickies Val Lewton produced in the Forties and which form the basis of his reputation today. It's paired with The Body Snatcher on one disc. With little money to spend, Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur managed to create a movie heavy with atmosphere and foreboding. To their credit, it doesn't look like a cheap quickie. At the same time, the movie is a strange amalgam of dread and eerie atmosphere which works well despite there being almost no zombie thrills. The title of the movie, which the studio insisted Lewton use, is something of a bait-and-switch.
The story tells us of Betsy's care for Holland's wife, and the relationships that developed before Betsy arrived at Fort Hollland, the sugar cane plantation, among Holland, his wife, Holland's half brother and their mother. And in the distance, past the sugar cane fields and in the jungle, is the beating of the drums, frenetic dances and those native beliefs. The movie, in my opinion, works well until the full story is disclosed and the fate of Jessica is determined. Then, for me, things veer into melodramatic silliness. Still, the movie is worth seeing for fans of dramatic use of an eerie atmosphere.
Holland is played by Tom Conway, George Sanders' older brother. He never achieved his brother's success in films and ended destitute and an alcoholic. Jacques Tourneur was an amazingly variable director. He churned out countless low grade movies, yet was capable of bringing to the screen one of the best noirs ever made, Out of the Past, and one of the creepiest movies, Night of the Demon.
The DVD transfer looks just fine. The disc features a commentary, which I didn't listen to, by Kim Newman and Steve Jones, who are described as film historians.
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