Victor Halperin

The Halperin brothers' follow-up to their cult hit White Zombie — loosely, since this one's set in post-WWI Cambodia and has no Lugosi. An expedition hunts for the lost Angkor secret that once let priests raise armies of the dead, and Count Mazovia (Roy D'Arcy, doing his best zombie-hypnotist glare) gets to it first, turning the local population into an undead work force. Dean Jagger, in one of his earliest leads, plays the expedition's psychic officer. Slow even by mid-thirties horror standards, but the premise — zombies as a weapon of war — was decades ahead of its time. The film entered the public domain after its copyright was not renewed.

Horror

Often cited as the first feature-length zombie film, White Zombie stars Bela Lugosi as Murder Legendre, a Haitian voodoo master who runs a sugar mill worked by the walking dead. A young couple arrives in Haiti to marry at the estate of a wealthy acquaintance, who turns to Legendre to zombify the bride so he can have her for himself. The film predates the flesh-eating zombie of George Romero by decades; its zombies are enslaved laborers, drawn from the same folklore that fascinated 1930s audiences. Lugosi, fresh off Dracula, carries the picture with his hypnotic stare. Made independently for around fifty thousand dollars, it was a surprise hit and the only real success for the Halperin brothers. The film is in the public domain in the United States.

Horror