American Cinematographer - February 1988 - 37

White Zombie

was bankrolled by Amusement
Corporation, a New York firm specializing in
motion picture financing. The capital involved fell far
short of the needs of a United Artists sort of project,
putting the producers in a caste with the likes of Allied,
Invincible-Chesterfield, Majestic, Monogram and
Tiffany.
A typical independent operation of the era
obtained financing, arranged for deferment of lab
costs, rented studio space by the day or week as
needed, and avoided retakes. Special effects other than
art titles and optical transitions were generally not
considered cost viable. Schedules were grueling and
budgets were tight, features often being brought in for
as little as $8,000 to $10,000 with from four to 10
days of
shooting. Two weeks and $75,000 constituted a super¬
production well beyond the grasp of most Poverty Row
impresarios. The working hours for cast and crew were
long and the pay was scale or less (the actual compen¬
sation often being less than what was reported offi¬
cially). Film editors crammed six-reel features onto five
reels because sound tracks were taxed by the reel -

Securities

Opposite: The burial
roadway, night
for night shot on the

in the

Universal backlot.
Above: Arthur
Martinelli at work.
Left: Enzo Martinelli

$500 per.

as an

Low

budget Westerns for the rural and Satur¬
day matinee audiences dominated the independent
output. The non-Western features were designed
chiefly as the "exciting co-hits" at the bottom of dou¬
ble-feature programs. Sometimes they were awful,
sometimes they helped, and - occasionally - they
saved the bill by providing the entertainment an audi¬
ence

assistant

cameraman.

failed to find in the bill topper.
With a rumored $50,000 in hand the Hal-

perins were able to produce their film with amazing
speed and economy, yet achieve spectacular produc¬
tion values through proper utilization of settings, pho¬
tographic technique and special effects. Strong preproduction planning was the key. The cinematography,
which is of major studio quality throughout, is by
Arthur Martinelli, ASC.
The Halperins -

Victor always directed and
producer - came to Hollywood
from Chicago in the early 1920s as a producing team.
Victor, born in 1895 and an alumnus of the University
of Wisconsin and the University of Chicago, had been
a
stage actor and director. Edward, born in 1908, was a
Northwestern University graduate. Both men were
athletic and poured enormous energy into their work.
They produced about 20 silent pictures, some for their
company and others for First National, InspirationUnited Artists, Vitagraph and others. Most were ro¬
mantic melodramas about life in the big city, as typified
by the successful Dance Magic (1927), with Pauline
Starke and Ben Lyon. None of their earlier works bear
any thematic resemblance to White Zombie except in the
persistence of an almost Victorian romanticism.
The brothers were continually theorizing and
experimenting to find a scientific approach to movie¬
making. They made graphs analyzing successful films
in an effort to establish foolproof structural formu¬
lae. By the time they embarked upon White Zombie
Edward

was

the line

pictures brought their attention to the successes scored
by a number of horror pictures, notably Universal's
Dracula and Frankenstein and Paramount's Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde. Having thoroughly studied the available
talking pictures, they reached the accurate conclusion
that most contained too much talk and not enough
action. They decided to hold dialogue to 15 per cent of
the action, limiting it to whatever was necessary to
advance the story. Just as a good artist will follow
through with a planned design with as little deviation
as possible, the
Halperins stuck with their decision and
came close to
achieving their goal, even though it
meant pruning pages from the script. The result is a
rapid, smooth continuity, a simple and direct render¬
ing of a fairy tale theme:
Along a desolate road in the Haitian moun¬
tains, a carriage bearing Neil Parker (John Harron) and
Madeline Short (Madge Bellamy) encounters a funeral
in which the body is being interred in the roadway.
Their driver (Clarence Muse) explains that such prac¬
tice is widespread in Haiti - it protects the body from
theft by ghouls. Further down the road the coach stops
again at sight of a man of satanic appearance, later to
be identified as a man called Murder (Bela Lugosi). Six
human shapes step forth. The coachman cries, "Zom¬
bies!" and

whips the horses on at breakneck speed as
stranger pulls a scarf from about Madeline's neck.

they had made about 30 pictures. Their analyses of hit

the

February 1988

American

Cinematographer

American Cinematographer - February 1988

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