SATURDAY NIGHT MIDNIGHT SPECIAL
The visually elegant I Walked With a Zombie (1943) is a very loose adaptation of Jane Eyre, transposed to a Caribbean setting.
In the 1943 film, Connell (Frances Dee) travels to the Caribbean to care for the comatose wife of plantation owner Paul Holland (Tom Conway). But as Connell starts to fall in love with Holland, she gradually realizes that her patient is not comatose: She neither lives nor dies, existing as something not quite human and not quiet demon.
“I Walked With a Zombie was said to be Val Lewton’s personal favorite among his films, even though he despised the title. It was forced on him by RKO studio executive Charles Koerner who liked exploitive titles for purely commercial reasons. Nevertheless, the end result was anything but lurid and remains one of the most poetic films in the horror genre.” – Jeff Stafford, TCM
