White Zombie
UCLA Festival of Preservation
White Zombie
(Victor Halperin, US 1932, 68 min., 35mm)
“The most famous horror movie from Poverty Row is nothing but a fairy tale in mufti, pegged to a jazz age voodoo vogue popularized by William Seabrook’s occult writings. Quickly produced on the cheap to exploit the post-Dracula horror film cycle, White Zombie was sneered at for decades before its rehabilitation in the 1960s by scholars like William Everson, Carlos Clarens, and Arthur Lennig. An incredibly two-brained film, White Zombie’s reach far exceeds its grasp. Within five minutes its ostensible setting in contemporary Haiti is discounted as the story reels backward into realms of mythological romanticism.” – Scott MacQueen, UCLA
The Crime of Doctor Crespi
(John H. Auer, US 1935, 63 min., 35mm) UCLA Festival of Preservation.
“Hungarian émigré John H. Auer summoned Erich von Stroheim to New York for The Crime of Doctor Crespi, a ragtag riff on Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Premature Burial,’ filmed on a shoestring in the Bronx. Its plot shares sexual peccadilloes with two superior horror pictures released in July, ahead of Crespi’s October bow. Eschewing the heady romanticism of Bela Lugosi’s Dr. Vollin in The Raven and the Krafft-Ebing aspect of Peter Lorre’s Dr. Gogol in Mad Love, von Stroheim’s equally ruthless mad doctor appears superficially more practical. Likewise motivated by sexual desire, Crespi removes obstacles to his carnal objectives with brutal determination, savoring the sadistic destruction of his rival while offering sly solace to the conquered wife.” – Scott MacQueen, UCLA.
Preservation funding for both films provided by the Packard Humanities Institute. 35mm preservation prints courtesy of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.