After Universal’s success with Frankenstein and Dracula in the late 1930s and early 40s, RKO decided to make a series of low-budget horror films. Before the first film in the series, Cat People, was released, production began on I Walked with a Zombie. Often referred to as “a West Indian version of Jane Eyre,” the film’s elliptical narrative transposes the action to the Caribbean, with Rochester’s first wife the victim of a voodoo spell. Director Jacques Tourneur’s caressingly evocative direction, superbly backed by Roy Hunt’s chiaroscuro images, makes sheer magic of the film’s brooding journey into fear by way of voodoo drums, gleaming moonlight, somnambulistic ladies in fluttering white, and dark, silent, “undead” sentries.