Tourneur/Lewton’s 𝘐 𝑤𝘢𝘭𝘬𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢 𝑧𝘰𝘮𝘣𝘪𝑒 : a Brontëan hypertext of the cinefantastic

Abstract

Notwithstanding the lack of any reference to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre in the opening credits of I Walked with a Zombie, not only did Val Lewton, the RKO producer, allegedly inform his associates that “in the guise of a zombie chiller, he would make a West Indian version of Jane Eyre”, but even Jacques Tourneur, the film’s director, claimed that he had initially suggested that they should adapt this Victorian novel “simply by radically changing the setting”. Yet at no time do Tourneur/Lewton specify whether Bertha Mason’s Caribbean ethnicity was the inspiring source of their cultural transposition, nor which Brontëan thematic preoccupations Ardel Wray interpolated in Curt Siodmak’s original screenplay based on Inez Wallace’s account of Haitian Voodoo rituals.