Great Film overall

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Slow-going old horror film from Columbia about a woman (Dorothy Burgess) whose parents were murdered in a voodoo ritual in the West Indies when she was a child. Years later she's all grown up with a husband (Jack Holt) and kid, so what does she do? She decides to go BACK to the island, dragging along the kid and her nanny (Fay Wray), who happens to be in love with the husband. Needless to say the voodoo folks are happy to see her back. This one isn't a classic on par with the Universal horror greats but it's not a complete misfire, either. Directed by the often under-appreciated Roy William Neill, it certainly looks nice and has some good atmosphere. Holt's stiff as a board but Burgess is decent. Disappointingly, Fay Wray's mainly in this to be a replacement wife and mother in the end after the inevitable fate befalls Burgess. She doesn't get much to do outside of that. Despite the short runtime, it does feel like it drags a bit. Worth a look for fans of Wray or anyone into old horror films from the '30s and '40s.

At a time (1934) when horror films filled the screen with Universal's neck-biters and plodding giants, there's this little voodoo obscurity from Columbia studios. It's a genuine oddity, more closely related to the great Val Lewton atmospheric series of the 40's than the genres of the 30's. Seems an upper-class lady (Burgess) returns to Haiti following a voodoo curse placed upon her as a child. Going with her are her husband (Holt), nanny (Wray), and daughter (Collins). The island is a dark place and soon the lady begins acting strangely. Is it the bygone curse or some other malign influence.I'm not surprised that Lewton's I Walked With A Zombie (1943) references this film in its screenplay (IMDB). There are many parallels, especially in mood and setting. Moon, however, lacks the coherence and general impact of the later film. Nonetheless, there are many unsettling moments—the first voodoo ceremony where Burgess twists and leaps to the accompaniment of a resounding drum beat. In fact, the crowd scenes featuring natives in synchrony to the incessant beat are especially effective. However, the story itself never really gels into a riveting whole. Perhaps that's because the focus shifts too often, splitting the story into threads that tend to scatter the suspense. Still, the movie's definitely worth catching up with, and may even surprise viewers considering its general obscurity.

This is a tense and exciting little film. I was surprised how quickly and effectively the movie manages to ratchet up the tension without wasting time on endless setup, giving us just enough to know the characters and get involved with the situation. There is a very effective and ominous tone struck with the opening frames and nicely developed as the cast heads to an island that is cut off from help. Good performances and cinematography help greatly; for once we have a juvenile who is not annoying and smart leads in Fay Wray and Jack Holt. Dorothy Burgess does a good job with a complicated part. This plays like a forerunner to Val Lewton's classic I Walked with a Zombie, though there are no zombies present here. Worth catching the beautiful print on TCM.

Certainly this is an oddball film, worth watching perhaps for a few laughs, but I must have watched another movie than the one that most reviewers here are talking about. First of all, if you're saying that this was ahead of its time, you're just showing your ignorance. It's not a precursor to the Val Lewton films of the 40s, it's a rehash of the bad racist jungle epics of the 1920s. There were tons of these movies, and the only thing that really makes this film notable is the fact that Fay Wray is in it, and that it allows the husband (a visibly embarrassed Jack Holt) to get away with killing his wife (Dorothy Burgess) in order to prevent her murdering their daughter in a voodoo ritual.Sounds pretty exciting, right? It's really not. The photography and direction are dull, there's no real magic nor any monsters, and the story is just a trifle designed to shock middle-class theater patrons of the early 1930s. It is full of racist imagery and characters, and even the ostensibly noble black character (Clarence Muse), whose presence perhaps was intended to make the film seem less racist, just manages to make things even worse.Dramatically, the film suffers from a transparent plot, and the lack of any real villain outside of Burgess' bored housewife on a voodoo binge. The black characters are treated as too infantile to do anything without the direction of either their priest or the white woman they inexplicably worship. Whenever a dangerous situation looms, Holt simply fires his gun at whoever is causing the danger and the situation is immediately defused. If only he had fired his pistol at the screenwriter.