White Zombie (1932) on Netflix
Madeleine Short arrives in Haiti to marry her fiancé Neil Parker, but the plantation owner Charles Beaumont wants her for himself. He asks the voodoo master Legendre for help.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.2/1012,852 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes86%
Trailer
Plot summary
In Haiti, Madeleine Short is reunited with her fiancé Neil Parker, and the two plan to marry. Madeleine met Charles Beaumont while traveling from New York, and the wealthy plantation owner invites the couple to stay and marry at his mansion. Beaumont is obsessed with Madeleine and tries to persuade her to leave Neil for him. With time short, he goes secretly to the voodoo master known as Murder Legendre, who runs his sugarcane mill with mind-controlled zombies. Legendre tells him the only way to win Madeleine is a potion that turns her into a zombie. Beaumont recoils at the idea, then takes the potion. Missionary Dr. Bruner is to preside at the wedding.
Cast
- George Burr MacAnnanas Von Gelder - Zombie
- John Printzas Ledot, a zombie
- Claude Morganas Zombie
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about White Zombie (1932)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Kenneth Webb sued the Halperin brothers for copyright infringement, claiming White Zombie's zombie theme was inspired by his Broadway play Zombie, but Webb did not win his case.
- White Zombie was shot in eleven days in March 1932 on a budget of about $50,000, so small that much of it had to be filmed at night.
- Set designer Ralph Berger dressed White Zombie with rented sets from earlier horror films, including the great halls from Dracula, dark corridors from Frankenstein, and chairs from The Cat and the Canary.
- Actor Clarence Muse, who played the coach driver, claimed that Bela Lugosi partly re-wrote or re-staged some scenes and also helped direct some re-takes.
- Clarence Muse replaced the original actor as the coach driver once filming had started, and a bit of the unknown original's footage made it into White Zombie.
- The heavy metal band White Zombie took their name from the film, and vocalist Rob Zombie called it a great film that not a lot of people know about.
- Bela Lugosi was considered for the villain Armand Louque, but Dean Jagger got the part when the producers had a dispute with Lugosi.
