White Zombie

The film that gave the zombie genre its name — and its first truly iconic image. Bela Lugosi, fresh from Dracula, plays Murder Legendre, a Haitian sugar mill owner who uses voodoo to raise the dead as his personal slave workforce. When a young bride arrives on the island, Legendre is hired by a wealthy rival to zombify her, and the results are as creepy as early horror gets: dead-eyed workers marching in lockstep through the cane fields, Lugosi's hypnotic stare boring through the camera, and a pervasive atmosphere of tropical dread. Shot on the old Universal horror sets in just eleven days for almost nothing, the film overcomes its low budget through sheer visual ambition and Lugosi's commanding screen presence. It's the origin point for every zombie film that followed, from Night of the Living Dead to The Walking Dead, and it's still genuinely unsettling.