I Walked with a Zombie Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

I Walked with a Zombie Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov October 8, 2024

Jacques Tourneur's "I Walked With a Zombie" (1943) arrives on 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-A "locked".

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 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.37:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, I Walked With a Zombie arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Criterion.

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."

After it was restored in 4K, I Walk With a Zombie looks terrific (in 1080p and in native 4K). Even though there are a few areas with small but noticeable density fluctuations, the overall quality of the visuals is wonderful. I mentioned in our review of the 4K release that I was quite surprised to see that it look this good because I keep an older DVD release of it in my library that and on it the film looks quite dated. The grayscale is fantastic, so the atmospheric darker footage can be quite striking. There are no traces of problematic digital corrections. Grain exposure is very nice and even, except of course for the few areas where the density fluctuations occur. Image stability is excellent. All in all, I would say that the 4K restoration gives the entire film a wonderful and very attractive organic appearance that will delight its fans. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

I Walked with a Zombie 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.

I viewed I Walked With a Zombie in native 4K and then spent time with the 1080p presentation on the Blu-ray. The comments below are from our review of the 4K Blu-ray release.

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 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• 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 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.