White Zombie: Anatomy of a Horror Film [Hardcover]

Gary Don Rhodes (Author), George E. Turner (Foreword)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0786409886 | ISBN-13: 978-0786409884 | Publication Date: October 2001

The 1932 horror film White Zombie starring Bela Lugosi has received controversial attention from film reviewers and scholars-but it is unarguably a cult classic worthy of study. This book analyzes the film text from nearly every possible viewpoint, using both academic and popular film theories. Also supplied is an extensive intellectual history of the predecessor works to White Zombie, as well as information on the significance it carried for subsequent books and films, its theatrical release around the country, its modern cultural influence, and the attempts to restore the film to its original state. Other noteworthy features of this work include an in-depth biography of White Zombie director Victor Halperin, the first complete study of his life and career, and over 200 images and photographs.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Massive...excellent...loaded with rare stills and illustrations...fascinating reading” --Scarlet Street

“Exhaustive...[a] massively documented work...deserves to be emulated as a model for single-film scholarship in the future” --C&RL News

“Exhaustive...most impressive in its tireless research and impeccable scholarship...wealth of fascinating information...it’s a winner” --Little Shoppe of Horrors --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Gary D. Rhodes currently teaches at the University of Oklahoma College of Business and in the Department of Film/Video Studies. He is also the author of the definitive Lugosi (1997, $55).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 360 pages
• Publisher: McFarland & Company (October 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786409886
• ISBN-13: 978-0786409884
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 8.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,215,967 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "There IS No Other Way", March 25, 2002

By 

Michael H. Price (Fort Worth, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: White Zombie: Anatomy of a Horror Film (Hardcover)

Gary Don Rhodes' take on "White Zombie" is keenly akin to those of Pauline Kael on "Citizen Kane" or George E. Turner on "King Kong": Each author's fascination with a focused topic yields a book of intense purpose and value beyond mere interest in one particular motion picture. Each of us has such a film in our picture-going experience, one overriding favorite that informs the way we regard all other movies, and such authors as Kael, Turner and Rhodes show us how a deeper understanding of that one film can enrich the viewing experience across-the-board.

Rhodes' scholarship (on practically any topic) is meticulous to the point of obsession. In "W.Z.: Anatomy of a Horror Film" he puts this fact-finding mania to compelling use, not only sharing the raw materials he has unearthed but also interpreting them to demonstrate how and why "White Zombie" -- an "unlikely classic," as George Turner and I once termed the film in an article for "American Cinematographer" -- has remained relevant over the long stretch.

Painstakingly researched and assembled, Rhodes' book was in preparation all during and beyond the mid-1990s period when George Turner (since deceased) and I were assembling our 20th anniversary edition of the more generalized book "Forgotten Horrors," on whose research Rhodes helped out considerably. George and I beefed up considerably our own book's chapter on "White Zombie," but we also left it to Gary Don Rhodes to get in the final say on that film's significance. Our trust has proved well placed, and the resulting volume is a fusion of style and substance worth cherishing.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quite amazing, February 14, 2008

By 

Gary Morris (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: White Zombie: Anatomy of a Horror Film (Paperback)

In the cinephile's ideal world, every film would get the deluxe treatment McFarland has given to White Zombie in Gary Rhodes' book. It's hard to imagine why this 1932 horror film, a primitive but atmospheric Gothic directed by Victor Halperin, was chosen, but we're not complaining. Rhodes is aware of the film's dubious rep ("Many lovers of classic movies agree with what many critics said in the beginning, that this is a silly, badly played example of penny-dreadful filmmaking"), but is determined to rehabilitate it by examining it from every possible angle from the historical to the sociological to the analytical. Rhodes is persuasive in outlining the film's attractions. There's the contribution of the inestimable Bela Lugosi ("leaner and more wolfish than in any of his other pictures"); the fantastic mishmash of sets (from The Cat and the Canary, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and others) that together make for a compelling otherworldly atmosphere; the chiaroscuro cinematography; the film's foreshadowing of the mood-drenched Val Lewton B films ten years later; and the film's standing, in the author's words, as "an important work of 1930s cinema, of independent filmmaking, and of the horror film genre."

Rhodes thoroughly investigates the evolution of White Zombie from a myrid of sources classical (Faust), popular (Trilby), and exploitative (the 1929 nonfiction voodoo book The Magic Island), through preproduction, postproduction, and finished film to its purportedly wide influence on "subsequent voodoo and zombie related books, articles, films, and plays." Rhodes deserves kudos for seeking out a wide range of original sources, including the director's widow who supplied him with biographical information on Halperin missing from all other accounts. A series of detailed appendices cover everything from reviews of the film to box-office grosses to pressbook reproductions. If the author's (freely admitted) obsession with White Zombie sometimes carries him over the edge -- the "Victor Halperin Family Scrapbook Photographs" is nice but is it necessary? -- it's easy to forgive him considering the breadth and depth of this obvious labor of love. Included in the feast are 244 images and photographs.

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing!, July 16, 2007

By 

K. Dewey "Lugosi's Girl" (Under the Iron Sea) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: White Zombie: Anatomy of a Horror Film (Paperback)

Wow! All I can say is how much I really enjoy this book! This book by Mr. Rhodes gives such insight into the making of White Zombie that it is hard to believe so much can be found about one movie. Especially a movie such as White Zombie with its awesome press kit pictures and other amazing stills. I thought his first book on Lugosi was thoroughly researched...this one is just as good! Superbly done. Again and again Rhodes does not disappoint and should be a necessary book in anyone's book collection or any Lugosi completist's library.