Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

White Zombie Victor Halperin, 1932 Eight years before the legendary George Romero (the man behind Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead, and so on, generally recognized as the king of cinema zombies) was even born, the zombie genre had its true genesis in the form of 1932’s White Zombie. Perhaps because it did not have the Universal Studios machine behind it, the film is not nearly as well known as its contemporary classic horror cousins such as Dracula, The Mummy, or Frankenstein; however, that is simply a matter of marketing, and has nothing to do with the film’s quality. Indeed, in terms of pure artistic merit and over quality of filmmaking, White Zombie can be looked upon as the best of the old horror classics. White Zombie is a classic horror film like no other, one that does not follow the standard forms adopted by all of the Universal releases in either scripting or presentation. This is apparent from the very beginning, where the viewer is presented not with drawn title cards placed behind brash violin tones, but rather a filmed shot of a group of Haitian locals gathered together reciting a voodoo chant, a chant that is almost instantly hypnotic and draws the audience straight into the film, creating what