No one is going to mistake White Zombie for a presciently progressive picture, but for horror fans who can place films in the context of the times in which they were made, there's a lot to dig. Halperin summons a dankly Goth atmosphere straight out of German Expressionism, with its weird shadows, skeletal graveyards, and floating, disembodied eyes. The soundtrack, which includes pieces by Mussorgsky, Borch, and Wagner, as well as an original chant by Guy Bevier Williams, is superb. But the top selling point of White Zombie is the chance to see Bela Lugosi at his most commanding. His vile slave master Murder Legendre isn't as iconic as Dracula, nor does Lugosi play the character with quite as much relish as he would play Ygor, but for sheer menace, Legendre has no peer in Lugosi's ouvre. Plus that name is totally bitchin'.
Probably too slow moving for modern tastes, White Zombie nevertheless remains a great movie to look at. So how does Film Masters' new bare-bones Blu-ray present its great looking images? Well, from a distance, it's actually fairly presentable. Contrast is very strong, clarity is decent, and damage seems minimal. Get up close to the screen, and everything falls apart. There's so much smeary noise reduction that the image looks like you're viewing it through patterned glass. All the scratches and debris barely noticeable when viewing from a reasonable distance dance around the screen like a swarm of moths.
But since most people don't watch movies with their noses pressed against the screen, these are not really major issues. Not that there aren't any. That strong contrast can actually be a problem since blacks tend to lack detail and whites are often blown out like overexposed film. The packaging indicates nothing about the source used for this release, but multiple ones were clearly used. Any shot that features a wipe, a superimposition, or a split screen is extremely blurry. In one scene, in which the film's Jonathan Harker stand-in confers with its Van Helsing stand-in, there's a switch to an inferior source right in the middle of a shot. There are also several missing frames.
All that being said, I didn't actually find the flaws so distracting that they impeded my enjoyment of the film. However, I would have appreciated a slightly less tinny soundtrack whenever the screechiest vulture in cinema history appeared on screen. Ouch.
This blu-ray was sponsored by AV Entertainment and Movie Zyng and can be purchased at Movie Zyng here.
