List of Zombie Movies

In going through some files I happened upon this paper by one of my students from a few years back. It is an interesting catalogue of "Zombie" movies. Certainly Hollywood has played a role in creating a popular image in the U.S. which haunts the words "Voodoo" and "Zombie," a haunting that leads some scholars to abandon those words all together and use different spellings. I've avoided those solutions and prefer to simply confront the misconceptions.

Regarding the whole notion of misperceptions of Haiti in our culture, in case you don't know of Robert Lawless' book, Haiti's Bad Press, it is a book you might well want to read. He tells a sad tale of misinformation, much of it deliberate, much of it just bad journalism and scholarship.

At any rate: Zombie films:

One addition, I noted in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch that a film is playing in town called DEMON KNIGHT, which is billed by a local reviewer as "A lame zombie tale with pretty good special effects."

Lisa's notes are at the end of the paper.


Lisa Willey
Haitian Voodoo
Bob Corbett
17 December 1991

Guide to Zombie Movies

Reference Page


Later addition the internet:

Everyone has left out Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard's film "The Ghost Breakers" based on a play by Dickey & Goddard (no relation) early in the century. It was made twice as a silent film and remade by Martin & Lewis as "Scared Stiff". The plot involved zombies, but in Cuba, rather than Haiti.


There is also a movie called "The Golden Mistress", made in 1954, directed by Abner Biberman, using the name Joel Judge, starring John Agar. It's about a guy who goes to Haiti to help his girfriend find out who killed her father & gets mixed up with voodoo & zombies. Saw it years ago, don't remember all that much about it (shows you how good it must have been!), but it was shot in Haiti and according to John Agar, they had some problems with a lot of the locals who were into voodoo and didn't want the movie made (death threats, sabotage, etc.). Don't know if it's out on video yet.


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