Release Year: 1957
Country: USA
Starring: Boris Karloff, Beverly Tyler, Murvin Vye, Elisha Cooke Jr., Rhodes Reason, Jean Engstrom, Friedrich von Ledebur, Glenn Dixon
Writer: Richard H. Landau
Director: Reginald Le Borg
Alternate Title: Silent Death

I think most of us realize that American films have done a pretty poor job of depicting voodoo over the years. The thing is, I think we usually think of the depiction as being poor because of its (pervading) undertones of racism, if not explicit prejudice and a sense of cultural and moral superiority. And, yeah, that's out there. But there's more.

For what I guess are a variety of reasons, voodoo in particular suffered a scattering, diasporic treatment by Hollywood. Until George Romero and company gave the zombie a new home and a conceptual transformation in the late 1960s, zombies and their parent religion always had an uneasy relationship with cinematic geography. Haiti, where voodoo or vodoun/vodun is still widely practiced, was in the public eye in the 1920s and 30s, due to the American occupation there. William Seabrook's The Magic Island (1929) is generally credited as America's first exposure to the zombie phenomenon--a phenomenon which he insisted was very real, in contrast to other Haitian legends which he dismissed as fairy tales--and it was the inspiration for Bela Lugosi's outing in White Zombie (1932).

However, I guess producers felt that American audiences only had so much patience in watching a film set in Haiti, because four years later zombies somehow became Cambodian in the 1936 film Revolt of the Zombies. There are two particularly significant things about that film. First, zombies no longer had to be dead--they could simply be living people under the supernatural or hypnotic control of another person (yes, they allowed for this in White Zombie, but only for the female lead, probably because corpses are generally viewed as unsexy). Second, zombies became nomads, thereafter doomed to settings pretty much anywhere the writer or director wanted to set them up, as long as it was a tropical setting that was preferably set on some unknown island.

Sure, uncharted islands are great for adventure and horror films, as were the ambivalently-received imagistic power of thick, impenetrable jungle and surly, spear-wielding natives. But although vampires, for instance, were not always placed in Transylvania in any given movie, it was sort of understood that they had a homeland. Zombies and voodoo, by contrast, could be made to inhere in the culture of any dark-skinned group of island dwellers that the writer or director wanted to concoct. I know Keith is skeptical of a lot of the scholarly inquiry into films, but I think there are some pretty real implications of the power relations involved in that treatment of what remains a poorly-understood and very real religion which is to this day racialized in the public eye, and I think there's a lot to be said about it.

...but instead, in this space I'm just observing it, because the focus is another stop on the zombie's pre-Romero peregrinations: Voodoo Island, an uncharted island somewhere in the tropical Pacific which is owned by the filthy rich Howard Carlton, who plans to open a hotel and resort there.

Googling the movie will obviate my need to tell you that it kind of sucks. Karloff, the obvious star of the film, seems to have been doing mostly TV work around this time, and I've seen at least one person claim that this film marked his return to film. For all the failings of the movie, I think it's not a terrible return; he turns in an impressive performance, especially given the very limited power of the script, and manages to make a somewhat abrasive character charismatic. Not much can be said for the other actors, though Rhodes Reason appears to have had the looks and voice of a classic leading man, and Beverly Tyler seems to have been a talented (and lovely) young woman; ascribe it to the script. Because more than the movie, the script really sucks. And yet, despite that, I find a number of redeeming features in this film, though judging by the reviews I've seen out there, I stand nearly alone in caring to say so.

After an opening credit sequence focused on a shitty-looking wooden doll with some kind of needle stuck through its head, we see an equally pathetic-looking model hotel in a miniature landscape. Go ahead and get a chuckle out of it, but the joke's on you, because in a rare moment of cleverness for this film, the credits end and the camera pulls back to reveal that it is, in fact, a model of the hotel which Howard Carlton wants to build on his private, unexplored island. However, he sent a four-man team to survey the location, of which Mitchell was the only returnee. Mitchell is now permanently stupefied; he stares blankly and unblinkingly at nothing all of the time, more or less comatose unless someone leads him to a new place to sit.

The doctor is baffled by the symptoms, so Carlton hires Phillip Knight, renowned debunker of supernatural and paranormal phenomena who apparently has several popular books and a television show. Knight is a stolid "realist" who assumes that supernatural phenomena and native religions, as well as belief in monsters, etc., are all means by which the unscrupulous can take advantage of ignorant laymen and make a quick buck. Even though this is not a particularly eye-opening concept, and in the 1950s at the height of faith in science it may have seemed a very easy perspective to agree with, Knight is such a skeptic that he risks being unsympathetic. If Karloff were not able to use his talents, as he does, to make Knight a very charismatic and charming jerk, this movie would be numbered amongst the films so mediocre that they can make a grown man cry blood.

(If you don't know what I mean by that, then I'm happy for you. Don't try to find out.)

So Knight is convinced that the whole thing, like everything else he's ever come across, is a huge publicity scam. "The public loves to be frightened," he explains to Carlton. Knight agrees to investigate the phenomenon, accompanied by Carlton's employees, his own assistant, and... the comatose Mitchell. To the latter's inclusion, the doctor protests, and when Carlton's assistant Finch explains over the phone that Mitchell will be the sixth and final member of the exploration party, the line goes dead, caged parakeets start flapping around, and a plant for some reason growing on the miniature landscape of the model hotel wilts and then bleeds.

We will soon see scenes introducing the other characters, the most remarkable here are the two women. Adams (Beverly Tyler) is Knight's beautiful but very reserved assistant, who is academically skilled but socially cold; Winters is Carlton's decorator or somesuch, and she unsuccessfully attempts to convince Adams to have a preflight martini or two with her. So begins what is by far the most interesting character dynamic in this film--Winters is pretty clearly intended to be a lesbian, and for the era, at least, her attempts to get under Adams' skirt are relatively overt. Given the apparent budget, the genre, and the time period, I found this not-exactly-latent homosexuality rather surprising, and much more impressive than most of its attempts at horror. Or any of the rest of its romantic depictions, which are more awkward than teenagers getting drunk and making out for the first time.

The next day, the group departs by plane for a stopover island. They're buffeted by a storm and unable to make radio contact... but on the destination island, the radiomen can hear them loud and clear and are unable to make themselves heard in reply, and they can't detect any evidence of weather disturbances at all. The plane lands without incident nonetheless. In the following scene, the same phenomenon occurs--they are able to be heard via radio, but don't realize this because they can't hear the replies--and there are a lot of mostly-silent closeups of people sitting around until Mitchell becomes animated for the first time, taking several steps toward Adams before collapsing and suffering a drop in blood pressure. As Adams insists that he was trying to say something (it looked more like he was having too much trouble just trying to walk, but that's me), his blood pressure returns to normal and the group finally is able to hear a reply from the Wake Island radio station. That's a relief, I guess.

So, after that string of good luck, the group has no qualms departing the next day for another island. Just before takeoff, some guy who may or may not be a native porter finds a split-faced ragdoll under the landing gear which looks like the same doll that some native girl was sewing up before the group's first departure. We'll return to that doll, sort of, in a bit.

Arrival at the next island brings Finch and Knight into conversation with down-on-his-luck hotel owner Schuyler and his ship's captain, Gunn. Yes, pretty much every character is known on a last-name basis here. Gunn might best be summed up as a poor man's precursor to Han Solo; he makes wisecracks, sports a devil-may-care attitude beneath which lies a caring individual, and he's a pilot (of a ship). Schuyler might best be summed up as a wiener. Not a cock, not a jerkoff, but a wiener. His basic role is to be wide-eyed and quick to protest, but also easily bought off with the promise of future riches by cooperating with Carlton. True to that theme, Schuyler's initial protests of his inclusion in the party and Mitchell's presence on his island are both quelled with a few piles of greenbacks. "This is just a small down payment," Finch assures him. Schuyler then agrees to let the group use his boat to get to Carlton's island and figure out what happened to Mitchell and his three missing companions.

That night, Winters really makes her orientation clear. She approaches Adams as the latter is gazing out into the night, and under the guise of discussing her attire and makeup techniques, makes statements such as, "I could make you come alive." Adams gets flustered and storms off, and Gunn attempts to convince Winters that since he's a man, she might want to give it up to him. She explains that her "club" is exclusive and very private, and he's not going to become a member. Again, this seems pretty ballsy (honestly not a backhanded pun) for the times, and a lot more ambitious thematically than most of the rest of the film.

The next day, before launch, Mitchell wanders off on his own and drops dead on the dock, his arms pointed toward Voodoo Island. When the group returns to the spot to launch, they find designs on the ground drawn in white powder, at the center of which is an "ouanga" bag filled with "death wishes" written out on strips of paper or leather or something, one for every member of the party. Knight smiles at this and pitches the death wishes into the sea, and the group embarks... only to find that the boat's engine inexplicably stops working after the island comes into view. They're forced to let the tide take them to shore, which takes all night.

It's from here on out that the movie comes about as close to "coming into its own" as it ever will... Although I previously linked it to other voodoo and zombie films, it's worth also linking it to the tradition of monster films set in island locations where it takes forever--eternity being manifested in irritating and patently false dialogue regarding tepid-at-best bickering and other crude and ass-backwards attempts at creating character development or something--to finally see what turn out to be underwhelming monsters with a dearth of screen time (Navy vs. the Night Monsters, The Mushroom People, I'm looking at you). So you can gauge it, we're already more than halfway through the movie before it actually kicks into gear. If you can call it that.

The group stumbles upon surveying equipment perfectly aligned to lead them to Mitchell and co.'s quondam campsite. While the men return to the boat only to find that their food supplies are now filled with maggots, Winters unsuccessfully acts the temptress only to decide, around the time that the men return with the bad news, that she'll go skinny dipping in a nearby lagoon. Call her an overzealous pioneer, or a lesbian being punished by a horror film unable to free itself from the conservatism of its era, but she's the first to find out that the plants of the island eat people... by getting tangled up in the inflated leaves of some kind of lake plant with cephalopod-looking suckers all over them.

Winters thus becomes the first martyr to the cause of the group's enlightenment. Knight incredulously exclaims that the plant which killed her (by drowning, I guess?) is a "throwback" to the Cretaceous or earlier... as far as I know, dinosaurs were not eaten by giant carnivorous plants, but I guess if you don't care whether voodoo is Haitian or Hawaiian, you're not likely to care about palaeobotanical reality, either.

Not long after, the group learns that there's another, more dangerous, "more carnivorous" (Knight's term, not mine, whatever the fuck it means) plant living on land. Adams is saved by some quick machete work from being the next victim. That night, perhaps awakened by Winters' death, Adams proclaims her ardent feelings for Gunn, and the two embrace for an embarrassingly-scripted fireside kiss.

Finch, the next morning, decides for some reason to move away from the fire and attempt to get more sleep under the shelter of the nearby undergrowth. I understand that sometimes we all experience a bit of slow-mindedness in the morning, but given the imminent sense of danger likely shared by the group, and Finch's consistent protests against further exploration ever since the first discovery of carnivorous plants, this move seems less a demonstration of his fallibility as a character and more a convenient and really stupid plot device. The device operates curiously; when he's nearly eaten by carnivorous plants, rather than running back to the fire where there's a safe clearing, he runs... into the jungle. Like an asshole.

Because of his stupid flight, he's then able to witness two native girls at play, one of whom steps into the newest type of carnivorous plant, whose immense leaves curl up around the victim as it presumably digests her. In some ways, this is one of the more effective scenes in the film, as this very innocent girl is subjected to lethal incarceration. In other ways, the ridiculously stupid and random setup really undercuts that effectiveness, because I don't see how this girl, young as she is, was raised in this jungle but never learned about this dangerous, snare-like plant, and yet Finch the wandering jackass somehow stumbled through a great deal of thick growth without getting attacked by anything.

Finch doesn't return, and the group awakens surrounded by painted, spear-wielding, lai-wearing natives, who then guide them to their chief. Knight cautions everyone to go along with them; first, because the natives outnumber them and could slaughter them easily, and second, because it's clear to him that someone has been watching them the whole time, guiding them to the abandoned campsite, and that people have only been killed or menaced by the plants when they were foolish enough to wander off, away from the guided trails.

So who's the mastermind of that whole plan, the point of which still escapes me? A white guy. Friedrich von Ledebur plays the role of the "native chief," who offers up some kind of narrative of having to island-hop to avoid the persecution of white people until his people were able to get to the center of this island of deadly plants, thus being protected from the outside world and rendered invisible. He explains all of this in what's clearly a German accent, which I guess in 1957 must've passed as an indigenous South Pacific accent.

This is another legacy of racism which long haunted cinematic depictions of voodoo; behind every voodoo scheme, at least before the 1970s, was a white person who somehow had power over any darker-skinned practitioners. The case of Voodoo Island is unique in that sense, I guess, because the actor is white but they're trying to pass him off as native (kind of like that scene in Death Curse of Tartu where they try to pass twelve noon off as nighttime simply by acting like they're not sitting in broad daylight). Still, this might be the most jarringly absurd moment in the movie, because I could put war paint on my freckled, Irish-looking skin and pass as a Zulu warrior before von Ledebur could pass for a Pacific Islander chief.

From there, the movie winds down. I mean, I guess the climax is still up ahead, but I'd argue that there's less of a climax than... well, the movie is basically an uneven plateau, full of minor ups and downs, which concludes by just kind of ending in mid-air, with you still wondering if anything is really going to happen.

But if you're not cynical about it, the climax comes shortly after the discussion with the chief. Knight works his magic in persuading the chief that he'll keep the islanders' secret safe from the public, but Schuyler then protests because Knight promised him riches and fame, damnit! Consequently, the group gets tied up, and when they awaken the next morning, Schuyler has been replaced with a new voodoo doll. Soon after, Knight finds Schuyler behaving strangely on a bridge, and when Schuyler looks down, he sees the ghostly image of his own voodoo doll in the wooden planks and then flings himself off the bridge, dropping a fatal couple of yards into water that's probably as deep as he is tall.

Knight, persuaded by whatever the fuck exactly happened, admits to Chief Friedrich that he lied the other day, but is now convinced that the voodoo powers of these natives are real, and so this time, he'll respect the agreement that last night he intended to renege on. This is somehow persuasive to these people whose oral history seems to focus on perpetual attempts to escape white persecution and treachery before accepting the dangers of an island filled with maneating plants in exchange for total isolation. The end.

The movie is really not better than it sounds, although it's not absolutely horrible. It skirts around toxic levels of mediocrity, of that dangerous sort alluded to before. But as I said, I found some redeeming features in it. If you're going to bother tracking it down for any reason, I guess they'd be as follows:

1) Zombies. Zombies have at least some redemptive power most movies, although there are even less zombies in this film than Zombie Holocaust, and barely more than in the zombieless Zombie Island Massacre. Although Mitchell is repeatedly described as being like a dead man, he later actually dies... "zombie" here means mind control, and the mind control isn't really exercised for any particular purpose. Traditionally, zombies provided slave labor. Other mind-control zombie films of this era offered zombies as guards, assassins, or soldiers. This film... just kinda has them. Like in Zombie Holocaust, they're just there, and most of the danger is other tropical stuff like carnivorous plants. Zombies aren't really a redeeming feature here, but I thought I'd point that out more specifically because their inclusion at all makes this a "zombie film," which is exactly why I, for one, bothered to watch it at all.

2) The lesbian tensions between Winters and Adams are significant enough that I'd imagine some people might want to track it down. If the script ever comes close to not sucking, it's in Winters' exchanges with Adams and, separately, with Gunn. Unfortunately, the third side of that triangle, Gunn's exchanges with Adams, are extremely trite heteronormative crap, in which wisecracking and mutual loathing give way to passionate embraces and nighttime cliched confessions.

3) Karloff turns in, as stated, a very charismatic performance. Despite that Knight isn't particularly likable, Karloff makes him seem likable. As another online reviewer put it, it's not hard to see how Karloff's Knight could have become famous. His rational realist reductions of anything the least bit enigmatic today seem dated and arrogant, perhaps even more than they did in the 50s, but they still allow Karloff to make him an interesting character, all the more when he's paired with his assistant Adams. Beverly Tyler isn't given much to work with here, as she plays a pretty but cold assistant who's in love with Knight's rationalism and analytical acumen, but this does create an interesting relationship between the very charismatic and effervescently skeptical Knight, and his un-charismatic and "robot-like" assistant... though this relationship is later compromised, again, by Adams' being broken out of her shell by Gunn, who rescinds his assessment of her as a "push-button robot" only as she shrugs off the characteristics that inspired it.

4) The irrationality of the film is in some ways before its time. I think this is part of its ultimate failure; the writers clearly wanted to create a sense of un-reality at a time when there weren't many films whose lead they might follow. Bleeding plants, the voodoo ragdoll which serves no apparent purpose, the "death wishes" based on real magic (so goes the conclusion of the film) which don't end up being lethal, the trouble with the radio, etc.... These have been criticized elsewhere as loose ends of a script that never had a final draft. I'll throw out the possibility that, in fact, they were more deliberate attempts to undermine Knight's stolid positivism because--and I'm not trying to be cute here--there was no unity to their disunity. Knight and co. are about to enter a world where rationality defers to "black magic" and the unlikelihood of an entire island of maneating plants which apparently evolutionarily predate mankind by millenia upon millenia. The scattered phenomena really undermine the power of science: radios which stop working, doctors at a loss to explain Mitchell's condition (much less offer a cure), ship engines which fail, storms which exist only subjectively for the individuals inside one airplane, and plants which bleed...

But wait, isn't that what any supernatural horror film does? Yeah, kinda, usually, but remember, this film is all about the conversion of a skeptic: for the first time in his life, Knight is led to admit that there's no rational, man-behind-the-curtain, damn-you-meddling-kids explanation for the phenomena the group has experienced. Each phenomenon builds up to that climax, forcing Knight to assume an ever-greater orchestration of a bigger and bigger hoax, until finally the hoax becomes too vast to be a hoax at all. This adds up to an attempt, I think, to achieve the same sort of unreality which Fulci, for instance, attempted. The attempt is just very ham-handed and lacks the subtlety and completeness which would have made the writers' intentions clearer, and their vision more evocative.

...of course, if they'd actually had more vision, this would be a better movie. It's never clear what causes the wind to pick up, and supernatural storms to appear, and radios not to work. Is someone specifically practicing voodoo magic? Is it just the magical power of the island? Probably the former, but we never learn any properties of that magic, and so the island becomes a metonym for voodoo, which itself is basically reduced to a symbol of the limitations of science. Unfortunately, when the symbol is more important to the writers than its manifestation in the story, it ends up falling flat and lifeless, and being confusing to boot.

The overarching point is, I guess, that regardless of its shortcomings and weaknesses, this film does exist. I'd recommend it to you only if one of the four above points really strikes your fancy. If you just want to see Karloff in a zombie movie, I would strongly suggest The Snake People instead; it has more zombies, and a crazed dwarf. But if you're interested in the history of zombie films in America, as I've tried to note above, this film embodies all at once a number of the distinctive features of the zombie's meandering geographic basis and conceptual identity before Romero established a new model which wasn't limited to the exclusionary category of "exotica". White guys in power behind the dark-skinned natives, transplantation across tropical locales, a lack of differentiation between voodoo and any other tropical island religions, and a very selective definition of the zombie... these things are all there. So if that's your deal, then like I said, this movie... exists.

Labels: Horror: Creepy Cults, Horror: Zombies, Year: 1957