Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

I Walked with a Zombie 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov October 8, 2024

Jacques Tourneur's "I Walked With a Zombie" (1943) arrives on 4K Blu-ray courtesy of Criterion. The supplemental features on the release include archival audio commentary by critics Kim Newman and Stephen Jones and alternate audio track with excerpts from Adam Roche's eleven-part series "The Secret History of Hollywood". In English, with optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-Free.

Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked With a Zombie enjoys a formidable reputation. However, praising it as a great film is awfully difficult, which is precisely how many of its fans describe it.

Its plot is very simple, so a lot is done to create a special atmosphere, but with a modest budget. Plantation owner Paul Holland (Tom Conway) hires Canadian nurse Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) to look after his wife, Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon), who seems to be in a permanent shock, at his lavish home in the West Indies. Shortly after Connell begins her duties, her employer clashes with his brother, Wesley (James Ellison), an angry bachelor with a drinking problem, who suggests that her patient’s past is far more complicated than she is led to believe. In the days that follow, Connell then begins suspecting that someone may have put a voodoo hex on her patient.

The original material for I Walked With a Zombie comes from two drastically different sources, but only one of them is officially credited. The official source is a short story by Inez Wallace, which the legendary producer Val Lewton liked but decided to alter. The unofficial source that inspired Lewton’s alterations is Charlotte Bronte’s classic novel Jane Eyre. Unsurprisingly, I Walked With a Zombie does some rather curious overlapping of contrasting ideas and material.

But aside from several short sequences that produce a decent atmosphere, I Walked With a Zombie never convinces that it has the ambition to be anything else but a modest B-film, which is its most obvious and consequential weakness. For example, instead of taking advantage of the many wonderful opportunities that begin emerging from the overlapping of horror and melodrama, I Walked With a Zombie repeatedly forces its characters to keep moving through them, almost as if to ensure that there are as few potentially expensive distractions as possible. The same is true for the evolutions of the relationships between the main characters. They are as straightforward as possible, effectively preventing significant creativity with the darker material, which is the most attractive in I Walked With a Zombie.

The several short sequences that make I Walked With a Zombie worth tracking down and spending a night with work for the same reason -- they are nicely lensed. However, it immediately must be said that Tourneur’s collaboration with J. Roy Hunt is not as impressive as his collaboration with Nicholas Musuraca in Cat People. These short sequences look good but do not create and sustain a great atmosphere. And they cannot because, as mentioned earlier, I Walked With a Zombie is content being a modest B-film. (While not a gigantic project, Cat People has a completely different attitude. It also overlaps contrasting ideas and material, but with an imagination that routinely produces breathtaking visuals and ultimately transforms it into something of a period interactive project).

All individual performances are easy to describe as good. But they also have that unmistakable dated quality that is very common for B-films from the early 1940s.

I Walked With a Zombie is only sixty-nine minutes long, which is to be expected considering that it was produced by RKO. However, it does feel like this short running time is more evidence that it was never meant to be anything else but a modest B-film.

Criterion presents a new 4K restoration of I Walked With a Zombie, which is paired with a new 4K restoration of Mark Robson’s The Seventh Victim in this 4K Blu-ray/Blu-ray combo pack and this Blu-ray only release.

I Walked with a Zombie 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Criterion's release of I Walked With a Zombie is a 4K Blu-ray/Blu-ray combo pack. The 4K Blu-ray is Region-Free. However, the Blu-ray is Region-A "locked".

I Walked With a Zombie is paired with a new 4K restoration of Mark Robson's The Seventh Victim in this 4K Blu-ray/Blu-ray combo pack and this Blu-ray only release.

The following text appears inside the booklet provided with this release:

"These new 4K restorations (for I Walked With a Zombie and The Seventh Victim) were created from the 35mm original nitrate original camera negatives. The negative of The Seventh Victim had large amounts of mold throughout. Digital restoration helped mitigate the damage, but there is still some mold residue present in the picture. The original monaural soundtracks were remastered from a 35mm safety composite fine-grain for I Walked With a Zombie and a 35mm original soundtrack positive for The Seventh Victim.

Mastering supervisors: Lee Kline, Giles Sherwood.
Colorist: Mishel Hassidim/Resilion, New York.
Audio restoration: Criterion Collection."

Please note that all screencaptures included with this article are taken from the 4K Blu-ray and downscaled to 1080p. Therefore, they do not accurately reflect the quality of the 4K content on the 4K Blu-ray.

In native 4K, the 4K restoration of I Walked With a Zombie cannot be viewed with Dolby Vision or HDR grades. I viewed it in its entirety in 4K and later spent time with the 1080p presentation of it on the Blu-ray.

On my system, I Walked With a Zombie looked outstanding. In fact, I was a bit surprised because I expected to see some noticeable signs of aging, but aside from a few more pronounced density fluctuations, the film maintained a consistently very pleasing and attractive organic appearance. Darker footage, which is the most atmospheric, looked great, boasting great ranges of rich and more subtle shadows. The daylight footage was even richer and more vibrant. I would describe delineation, clarity, and depth as excellent, but in the areas with the small density fluctuations they become slightly uneven. Is it possible that a Dolby Vision or HDR grade could have made a substantial, positive difference? I am unsure. Even in the darkest footage, nuances looked superb, without ever struggling to overcome crushing. There are no traces of any problematic digital corrections. Image stability is excellent.

What about the 1080p presentation on the Blu-ray? I think that it is equally impressive. I compared multiple sections with very dark footage and several sections with daylight/brighter footage. Even on a very large screen, all sections looked equally pleasing. The daylight/brighter footage was marginally sharper, or at least it appeared to be on my system, but this discrepancy would be very difficult to spot if one does not do what I did, which was multiple direct comparisons.

I Walked with a Zombie 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this release: English LPCM 1.0. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided for the main feature.

All exchanges are very easy to follow. They are clear and stable. However, if you turn up the volume slightly more than usual, you will notice that in the upper register there is a tiny amount of hiss. I am quite certain that it is on the original soundtrack. The upper register feels slightly thin too, which is again an inherited limitation. I did not encounter any areas with obvious and distracting age-related anomalies.

I Walked with a Zombie 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

4K BLU-RAY DISC

• The Secret History of Hollywood - this alternate audio track features excerpts from Adam Roche's eleven-part series about Val Lewton from his classic-movie podcast, The Secret History of Hollywood, which shares stories about the production of I Walked With a Zombie.

• Commentary - this archival audio commentary was recorded by critics Kim Newman and Stephen Jones in 2005.

• Booklet - 20-page illustrated booklet featuring essay by Chris Fujiwara and Lucy Sante, as well as technical credits.

BLU-RAY DISC

• The Secret History of Hollywood - this alternate audio track features excerpts from Adam Roche's eleven-part series about Val Lewton from his classic-movie podcast, The Secret History of Hollywood, which shares stories about the production of I Walked With a Zombie.

• Commentary - this archival audio commentary was recorded by critics Kim Newman and Stephen Jones in 2005.

• Booklet - 20-page illustrated booklet featuring essay by Chris Fujiwara and Lucy Sante, as well as technical credits.

I Walked with a Zombie 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Instead of a B-film, I Walked With a Zombie should have been a big-budget extravaganza with a tremendous imagination because it works with a very interesting for its era material. It has several sequences with the type of atmosphere one would expect from a film directed by Jacques Tourneur, but it is not in the same league with Cat People. Criterion introduces a terrific new 4K restoration of I Walked With a Zombie, paired with another 4K restoration of Mark Robson's The Seventh Victim. RECOMMENDED to the fans.