I Walked with a Zombie (1943 Jacques Tourneur)

It's unavoidable. Give me a hot, late night, a glass of cognac and a spliff, and I'll be watching I Walked with a Zombie, a film I would defend as being worthy of the Top 100 title for its consumptive, rich, eerie and utterly oneiric atmosphere. Is it, to use William Boyd's great word, a work of febrile imagination? Or is it, to defer to Lewis Carroll, tulgey?

Words are no good. Let's consider the stripy, textured lighting of one undersung hero, J. Roy Hunt. Witness the magic of this simple light on / light off:

If that isn't enough to conjure up the correct mood, how about some dreamlike stairs shots?

Frances Dee and Tom Conway:

 

Not just stripes, textures:

Unforgettable night walk through the cotton fields conjures up Onibaba:

Dee with Christine Gordon...

...meeting Darby Jones

Rest of cast: James Ellison, Edith Barrett (Mrs Rand), Sir Lancelot (Trinidadian singer who lived until the age of 98).

The plot seems derived from Jane Eyre but has entirely its own twisty rule-book. Inez Wallace wrote the original story and it was adapted by Wilder's Berlin buddy Curt Siodmak, with Ardel Wray. It is my favourite of all the Val Lewton RKO horrors: Mark Robson was still editing then and the legendary Roy Webb wrote the music. If Roger Corman didn't have these strangely haunting films in mind when he produced his own series of horrors, I'd eat the hat I don't own. (He doesn't mention them in his autobiography 'How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime'.)