The Horror!? 58: White Zombie (1932)

A pair of young lovers, Madeline and Neil, comes to Haiti to get married. They have been invited by an acquaintance of Madeline, the plantation owner Charles Beaumont, who not only invited the two to get married in his home, but also wants to hire Neil as his agent. What they don't know is that Beaumont is madly in love with Madeline and won't even stop at acquiring the services of the sinister Murder Legendre (played by Bela Lugosi!) to win her over. During the wedding banquet, Madeline seemingly dies, poisoned by Beaumont as the first step in her becoming one the Living Dead. But the plantation owner soon understands that he can't love a zombified Madeline and tries to persuade Legendre to take his curse back. Little does he know about Legendre's own infatuation with the woman. Although he will soon learn more than he wants about the man's unscrupulousness.
White Zombie is a veritable classic and even the battered print I watched shows very clearly why. Every single shot, every little angle is constructed to convey a very definite mood, so that soon the film seems to breathe an air of desolation and decay.
Technically it is a strange bastard. On one hand it consciously uses very anti-realistic sets, heavily influenced by German expressionist cinema of the silent era I think; camera work and cutting on the other were highly advanced and unusual for their time. Of course many of these techniques also look and feel very artificial, as does the acting. The genius lies in the way director Victor Halperin uses the all-around artificiality to convey mood and themes of White Zombie much clearer than a naturalistic approach could. Some of this leads directly to the production work of Val Lewton for RKO's horror unit ten years later.
Still, White Zombie remains a singular achievement.