Jane Eyre in horror-film drag

Jacques Tourneur's 1943 masterpiece I Walked with a Zombie appears today, January 29, on DVD in the US as a part of a ravishing boxset devoted to Val Lewton's films. From Digitally Obsessed:

Martin Scorsese Presents
Val Lewton: Man in the Shadows

Legendary Producer of Classic Horror Films is the Subject of a New Feature Length Documentary Available on DVD January 29th from Warner Home Video

Horror fans will have something new to scream about on January 29, as one screen legend honors another with the Warner Home Video (WHV) release of Martin Scorsese Presents Val Lewton: Man in the Shadows. Scorsese produced and narrates this fascinating study of Val Lewton, the legendary film producer who brought a new perspective to the horror genre at RKO during the 1940s. (...)

The Val Lewton Horror Collection, a follow-up to WHV's best-selling 2005 boxed set, will now consist of six discs: the new Scorsese-produced Lewton documentary and 5 double-feature discs -- Cat People/Curse of the Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie/The Body Snatcher, Isle of the Dead/Bedlam, and The Leopard Man/The Ghost Ship and The Seventh Victim which is double-billed with Warner Home Video's previously produced documentary, Shadows in the Dark: The Val Lewton Legacy which are both exclusive to the collection.

Martin Scorsese Presents Val Lewton: Man in the Shadows will be available as a single disc for $19.97 SRP or as part of The Val Lewton Horror Collection six disc gift set for $59.92 SRP.

USA Today adds about I Walked with a Zombie:

Despite a title that suggests Ed Wood, this oft-termed "Jane Eyre in Haiti" has a literate script and (as with Cat People) lots of photographic mood. When RKO reissued it theatrically in the mid-1950s with King Kong, Zombie was the one that spooked me out at age 9. Frances Dee is a nurse hired by planter Tom Conway to care for a wife who may be "one of them"; Tourneur directs again.

But the best definition of I Walked with a Zombie from a Brontë perspective comes from The Palm Beach Post:

[A] zombie movie that is actually Jane Eyre in horror-film drag. (Scott Eyman)

Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV