‘There’s no beauty here – only death and decay. Everything dies here – even the stars.’ RKO were on the skids with the commercial failure of Orson Welles’ films so producer Val Lewton was entrusted with churning out low budgeters ($150,000 limit) with audience appeal. One of these famous cult productions is this Jane Eyre adaptation by Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray from a magazine article by Inez Wallace, set in Haiti or an island very like it, with Frances Dee as a nurse hired to care for Christine Gordon who has a mysterious illness. Dee falls for the husband, sugar plantation owner Tom Conway and begins to get drawn into the island’s strange colonial past and the voodoo culture… Zombies, colonial guilt, voodoo ceremonies, calypso, sibling rivalry, supernatural ambiguity and the ineffable blend beautifully in a film that positively drips with atmosphere and scares under the careful direction of Jacques Tourneur, all on the studio lot. Better experienced than read about.
mondomovies 