Guillermo Del Toro Raves About This Free-To-Stream Chiller: “A perfect Gothic romance”
Tyler Doupe'
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This past October, Guillermo del Toro partnered with Turner Classic Movies to share some of the scarier titles from his Halloween watchlist. Not surprisingly, the director’s spooky season playlist includes several iconic cinematic efforts. Amongst them is the Gothic chiller, I Walked With a Zombie.
In the film:
Canadian nurse Betsey Connell (Frances Dee) is hired to care for Jessica Holland (Christine Gordon), a woman on a Caribbean sugar plantation, who has a bizarre condition. The mysterious affliction baffles Betsy but when she falls for Jessica’s husband, Paul (Tom Conway), she is determined to make him happy by curing his wife. However, in her quest, Betsey is drawn into the island’s dark culture of voodoo and zombies and begins to uncover the Holland family’s sinister secrets.
Del Toro had nothing but praise for the film, even drawing comparisons to Jane Eyre. “I Walked With a Zombie is the second collaboration between Jacques Tourneur and Val Lewton,” says del Toro. “They had the common goal to deliver ‘A’ movies in genre, for a ‘B’ budget. Lewton was in charge of the unit at RKO to create horror movies that were proving to be very profitable. His collaborations with Tourneur would exist now as paradigms of what a beautiful, classy, deep, poetic, and powerful movie can be made, even under the restraints of a tight budget. I Walked With A Zombie is basically their Jane Eyre. Their most magnificent Gothic romance. It has the attraction, the velvety beauty of shadow and light that a perfect Gothic romance has to have. I hope you enjoy it.”
Also Read: Guillermo del Toro Praises Prestige Netflix Thriller as “Clockwork precise and fun”
That’s quite an enthusiastic recommendation. If you’re keen to check the film out for yourself, you can find it streaming on Tubi, as of the publication of this post.
Stay tuned to the site for more recommendations from the masters as we uncover them. And be sure to follow us on Twitter @DreadCentral so you never miss an update.
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