Since it dated all the way back to the 1930s, I actually expected this movie to be a silent number like The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. Far from it. White Zombie had dialog, eerie music and, most importantly, Bela Lugosi as the master of zombie slaves, aptly called the Murder Legendre. By the way, in case the same thought raced through your mind, yes, the popular Metal band was named after this movie.

Here's a brief overview of the story. It's a simple story at best. This rather naive couple are off to get married their friend's cozy home in Haiti. Ah, but the friend in question, Charles Beaumont, has diabolical plans; he wants to marry Madeline, the bride-to-be and his brilliant idea of breaking up a wedding involved setting up the ceremony at his plantation. Go figure. He could have been saved a lot of pain and one-on-one time with Murder Legendre if he had Julia Roberts' manipulative tactics from My Best Friend's Wedding.

Well, he didn't plan this 'break-up' well. So Beaumont finds himself in that Murder guy's mill, rubbing shoulders with zombie slaves and making a deal with Murder for the zombie-making formula. Madeline becomes 'undead' which roughly translates as staring into space while playing the piano. Her fiance thinks she has passed on and is running amok on the beach, drunk and slightly frothing at the mouth.

It gets better. Beaumont wants Madeline to stop being so ... zombie-like. It turns out that it's not part of the greater plan. Murder wants Madeline for himself and he has taken a fancy to Beaumont. No, not like that. He simply wants Beaumont to drink the formula, become a zombie and do his every bidding ...  alright, so maybe it is like that. We'll never know for sure as Murder was a bit secretive about the actual chore list for his zombies. I'm not going to give away too much more. If you want to know whether Madeline hooked up with Mr. Murder or if she was saved by a) Beaumont, b) her fiance or c) the pipe-smoking doctor, do check out the movie.

What did I like about the movie? I will say that it was refreshing to watch a movie that didn't fall back on the 'zombie infestation' concept. The explanation for creation of undead has relied all too heavily on deadly flu-like sickness or weird gases created in secret labs. For once, it was interesting to see a movie maker take the lesser 'zombiefied' route. Murder had a secret formula which he used to subjugate people, make them his slaves. Thus, they work without complaint in his sugar mill, wobble in from odd crevices when he needs manpower and even chucks the butler into the water. Disturbing in itself, isn't it? Who needs blood and gore to give you chills?

Continuing the theme of domination, I must also point to the not-so-subtle message about colonialism. Did anyone else notice the references to a wealthy landowner exploiting and enslaving all in his way? In a foreign land to boot? Surely there was a lot of underlying messages in this movie and I am simply not reading too much into it? I can excuse evil-as-hell Murder barely raising an eyebrow when his minion stumbled into the grinder. However, it says a lot about complacency that Beaumont was all too eager to overlook this point.

And lastly, I really enjoyed Lugosi's performance in this movie. I have not seen many of his movies other than coming across the odd vampire clip. He did an excellent job as the nasty, creepy and yet stylishly evil Mr. Murder. I mean, is it just me or does he look like a charming banker sans the unibrow?