Made on a shoestring budget with bad actors and painted backdrops, this early horror classic still holds up as an entrancing and spooky masterpiece of sorts. White Zombie is the first zombie horror movie ever made and it's hard to pin down why it works. In fact, it's easier to break down its flaws than to state clearly why it is so hypnotic. It has been hailed by some as classic horror and derided by others as an incompetent mess. It’s both but damned if it doesn’t work. It has something to do with the presence of Bela Lugosi, still threatening and noble looking a couple of years after Dracula, the high point and beginning of the end for his film career. It's the sets that look like castoffs from a real studio's prop room, which add to the theatrical and expressionistic feel of the film. Clumsy acting and directing go hand in hand with fairy tale images easily equaling Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete. Whatever it is, this is a memorable film, an unjustly unheralded horror movie that, unlike many of the best-remembered shockers of its era, still manages to frighten.

Compared with other contemporary offerings -- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and Doctor X -- it demonstrates how flexible the horror movie was before the rules were fixed by the 1940s. It's also a case study in how under-funded producers could make their product look far more expensive if they took a modicum of care. In a story that’s really an adaptation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s "Faust," Lugosi stars as Murder Legendre, a shadowy character who exercises supernatural powers over the natives in his Haitian domain. He uses a mysterious powder to zombify his enemies and some of the locals. Wealthy Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazier) covets beautiful Madeline (Madge Bellamy) as his bride, but she’s about to marry her fiancé Neil instead. Beaumont enters into an unholy deal with Legendre, whereby Madeline will fall ill and die, then be resurrected as a zombie and, implicitly, Beaumont's love-slave.

It is typical of Bela Lugosi's poor business judgement that he accepted this role for a mere $500. Hoping to capitalize on Bela Lugosi's popularity after 1931's Dracula, Victor Halperin cast him in a similar part here. His "Murder" Legendre uses many of the same techniques as Dracula did: his hypnotic eyes, commanding gestures that rule out any disobedience, and a regal bearing that seems to summon all the noble decadence of Europe. He strikes a bargain with Beaumont, giving him some of the zombie powder in exchange for some unstated return. Beaumont uses a rose to poison Madeline and, as Legendre performs some ritual outside, she falls ill and seems to die. The crosscutting between Madeline's spoiled wedding reception and Legendre's magicking outside is a thrill to watch. Madeline keels over and is buried. In another great scene, while Madeline’s fiancé Neil drowns his grief in alcohol and grasps at shadows that bear Madeline's face, Legendre's zombies carry her from her mausoleum into his castle, where Beaumont discovers that having a zombie as a girlfriend isn't exactly what he had expected. She's not the vivacious and beautiful thing he fell in love with, and he begs Legendre to put her back the way she was. However, Legendre's bargain quickly reveals itself to be a bum deal.

In the movie's most frightening and expressionistic scene, Beaumont is led through Legendre’s sugar mill, where empty-faced zombies struggle to turn a huge wooden wheel. Its groans fill the room -- the sound on this film, although scratchy with age, is memorable, a genius use of sound in an era when the novelty of having sound seemed to be enough in itself for most filmmakers. Aside from its visuals, the movie's chief technical asset is the use of sound, miles more sophisticated than nearly anything else emanating from Hollywood at the time. Few talkie horror films have ever so expertly captured the "feel" of the silent cinema as White Zombie; the film's ethereal, ghostlike ambience enables the viewer to accept even the most ludicrous of plot twists. The producers use the film's tiny budget to their utmost advantage, evocatively suggesting the horrors that they haven't the financial wherewithal to show on screen.

The key word in this movie however is "look", since much of the acting is poor, the psychology naive and the continuity so clunky that White Zombie could never be mistaken for a major studio product. Creators Edward and Victor Halperin spent nearly the entirety of their career securely on the fringes of Hollywood and rented space sets left over from the likes of Dracula, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and King of Kings. They made extensive use of set-extending opticals that belie the film's low budget. Bela Lugosi offers a performance that is often overly theatrical (particularly by today's standards), though it is likely that anything less overripe would have been ridiculously inappropriate. Robert Frazer offers a beautifully nuanced and subtle performance. On the other hand, John Harron and Madge Bellamy barely provide performances at all, while Joseph Cawthorn gives an idea of what Van Helsing might have been like if played by El Brendel.

The movie is filled with surprisingly striking imagery. The aforementioned sugar mill tops the list, but there are many others: a repeated shot of Madeline walking down a majestic staircase in Legendre's castle, which is shot through a fleur-de-lis carved out of the banister that is reflected in her gown; a shot of her leaning out of the window of the castle, which is superimposed on a painted backdrop showing the rest of the castle as Neil calls to her from below; and an amazing fade from the coach that carries Madeline and her fiancé Neil into a shot of Legendre's menacing stare. What's also amazing is that this is probably the only good movie that Halperin ever made. He made an atrocious "sequel" called Revolt of the Zombies in 1936, sans Lugosi, then faded into obscurity.

There’s some historical relevance to this movie as well. The United States occupied Haiti beginning in 1915. In 1929, a series of major revolts against US military rule, brought about in part by the US practice of using forced labor to build roads, led to an agreement by the US to get out of Haiti before their agreed-on date of 1936. This was achieved in 1934, two years after this movie was made. It was during this time that Americans got wind of voodoo, a syncretic religion that combined Catholicism with the African religions of the former slaves, and its most infamous offshoot, the purported existence of zombies. I'm sure this movie seemed timely when it came out, dealing with the occupation of Haiti, and indirectly with some of the methods of the occupation. The US military forced Haitians to build roads for them, and that's not a far cry from Legendre's forcing people to work his mill. From this perspective, the movie almost works as a criticism, albeit a mild one, of US policy.