YouTube Friday: The Val Lewton Edition

Val Lewton in the motherfucking house!

TCM and Martin Scorsese have made a documentary about the life and times of horror producer Val Lewton, famous for such classic pictures as Cat People (1942) and The Leopard Man (1943). Great films, great plots, great acting.

Great producer.

My personal favorite - surprise, surprise - is 1943's I Walked With a Zombie.

I can't even begin to say how excellent this film is: beautifully directed by Jacques Tourneur, beautifully shot with all the ethereal resonance of a pre-Raphaelite painting; there is something truly mythic about this film. Maybe it's the eternal paradox of moral ambiguity the film presents: is it possible to view the world in terms of black and white, good and evil, pagan and Christian, the colonizer and the colonized? Or is it, as I suspect Tourneur and Lewton argued, simply varying shades of grey?

Is Jessica a zombie? A mental case?

Is Betsy's unrelenting zeal to heal Jessica a sign of he overwhelmingly good heart? Or a symptom of her sad, misguided oppression?

Who knows? I don't even think Lewton could - or would even want to - answer that question. As a witness of WWII, I'm sure Lewton could attest to the moral ambiguities of war-time everyday life where "good" people suddenly found themselves doing bad things just to stay alive. To Lewton, I suspect the world was entirely grey.

Regardless of his philosophical leanings, Lewton's films are finally enjoying the recognition they deserve.

Watch Scorsese's documentary Monday night at 7:00pm central on TCM.

Yahoo! article: Scorsese chronicles horror film producer

TCM Val Lewton website: http://www.tcm.com/2008/vallewton/index.html


And now, in order to pay my part of the YouTube Friday bargain, the salacious trailer for I Walked With a Zombie:


Believe it or not, I Walked With a Zombie was loosely based on the Charlotte Bronte Gothic chiller, Jane Eyre.

What? You thought Jane Eyre was just one of those stuffy "classics" you read in English? Hells no! There's enough Gothic in this crazy drama to shake a stick at. Hmm....let's see. A mysterious evil woman. A drafty, foreboding house. A brooding, Byronic hero. A madwoman in the attic. Madness. Despair. Grievous bodily harm. Fires. Barely suppressed sexuality. Heaving bosoms. The list goes on and on.

So in honor of the Jane Eyre Gothic tradition and in celebration of the BBC's excellent new adaptation of said masterpiece, might I present to you, good sirs and ladies, Miss Jane Eyre?