‘You is a hip cat, you has your boots on.’
A woman travels from Harlem to Jamaica to assume the running of the family plantation from her half-sister. When she arrives, she finds that her sibling has apparently disappeared. Another complication is the handsome young overseer and he is worried by the throbbing of the jungle drums…
Sack Pictures made films exclusively for what was euphemistically called the ‘speciality market’ or, put more simply, black audiences. Back in the 1930’s filmgoers were still segregated; with blacks and whites sitting separately or blacks attending their own movie houses to watch films made specifically for them. Unsurprisingly, these so-called ‘race films’ were shoestring budget affairs without the benefit of the greater technical expertise enjoyed by the big studios.
This film has claims to be the first ‘all-black’ horror film with a tale of voodoo top-lined by Nina Mae McKinney, who had made quite a splash in MGM’s hit musical ‘Hallelujah’ (1929). If that had happened a few decades later, her reward would have been more exposure in big, mainstream films but, stuck in the 1930s, her future held only bottom of the barrel pictures like this. To her credit, she’s obviously a natural actress, but the confidence of her performance here only goes to highlight the desperate inadequacies of the rest of the cast. This is a major problem because McKinney (as the absent half-sister) doesn’t get an awful lot of screen-time and we are forced to spend far too long in the company of Ida James (the heroine), John Carter (the overseer) and Emmett Wallace (the dependable friend). Their romantic triangle is somewhat less than riveting.
Like most of the audience, Ida was struggling to say awake.
There’s also some fairly painful comedy schtick from Percy Jackson (no, not that one!) who is played here by Hamtree Harrington. Luckily, he’s mostly in the company of Willa Mae Lang. Apart from McKinney, she’s the only cast member who doesn’t sound like she’s reading her dialogue off distant cue cards. Scriptwriter George Terwilliger was both a writer and a director and had fulfilled the latter role on ‘Daughters Who Pay’ (1925), a silent feature that had starred a pre-stardom Bela Lugosi.
So is this the first ‘all-black’ horror film as some have claimed?‘ Well McKinney does try to scare James away using local superstitions and a black magic ritual but it’s more a case of ’voo-don’t’ than ’voodoo’ at the climax. In fact, the wrap-up is far too rushed and convenient, and isn’t super-anything, let alone supernatural.
Amazingly enough this was filmed on location in Jamaica and originally ran for 67 minutes as opposed to the 52 minute print available today. Having struggled my way through it, I can honestly say that a longer version would be truly horrific.
Mark David Welsh 