Starting around 1929, America experienced this fascination with the idea of voodoo. And in July of 1932, a little pre-code film directed by Victor Halperin and starring Bela Lugosi, fresh from the grave as Dracula in the 1931 classic, was released to fairly boffo box office business and mostly mixed to negative critical assessment. This film is notable for a couple of reasons. Bela Lugosi plays a character with perhaps my favorite name in the history of cinema, “Murder Legendre.” With its scant 69-minute run time, it has the distinction of being the first full-length zombie picture ever made. About 60 years later, its title would be appropriated by one Robert Bartleh Cummings when he named his heavy metal band White Zombie. And of course, his nom de guerre in that band would be Rob Zombie.
