Black Moon

Director: Roy William Neill
Script: Wells Root
Cast: Jack Holt, Fay Wray, Dorothy Burgess, Corn Sue Collins, Arnold Korff, Clarence Muse
Running time: 68.5 minutes
Year: 1934
Certificate: No certificate

After many years of being away from her childhood home on the island of San Christopher, near Haiti, Juanita Lane (Dorothy Burgess) persuades her older husband, Stephen Lane (Jack Holt), to let her go back to the island for a while in order to recapture some of the youthful vigour that she feels she’s now lost. He agrees, but only after making her promise to take their nursemaid, their daughter and his secretary, Gail (Fay Wray), with her.

Before she leaves for the Caribbean her uncle, Dr Perez (Arnold Korff), sends his trusted friend, Macklin, to warn her off and, if that’s not successful, to persuade her husband to change his mind about letting her go. However, Macklin is killed by a tribesman using a throwing knife just outside Stephen’s office, before he can deliver his crucial message. After smoothing things over with her husband, Juanita heads to the Caribbean regardless, determined that she’ll meet her secret ‘demons’ face-to-face, back in the ‘old country’.

We later learn that throughout her childhood the island natives befriended Juanita and introduced her to their pseudo-religion, namely Voodoo. She would secretly be taken to their sacrificial rites and watch the tribes perform violent acts in the name of their malevolent deities. The idea being that one day she would be made into a high-priestess of the old religion. Finally, she’d left the island following an uprising against her parents, resulting in their untimely and violent deaths.

During the final two thirds of the film we follow their visit to the island and the uncomfortable build-up to the time of the ‘triple full moon’ when the craziness really begins in earnest… There’s a nice build-up of tension through the use of steadily beating drums leading to a nihilistic ending, which still remains quite shocking, even today.

Black Moon is very much a product of its time, with somewhat racist language, at times, and some uncomfortable ‘old world’ views and attitudes regarding whites being superior to blacks frequently on display. I guess this might explain why the film wasn’t submitted to the BBFC for a certificate. However, as a piece of occult entertainment it still works well and is an enjoyable pot-boiler. This version, presented by the always reliable Imprint label, is a nice package with excellent picture and sound quality (especially for a film of this vintage), with a nice amount of grain retained. The music is quite understated for this type of film and the film’s pacing is quick, moving from one period of interest to the next, conveniently ignoring other days/weeks if they’re not essential to drive the plot forward.

On the negative side, the plot (based initially on a story by Clements Riley) seems to be very improbable, even for a black magic picture, but the director skips through the timeline quickly so one doesn’t really have any time to think too much about all the opportunities our main protagonists have had to escape from the troublesome island.

And, there are also a number of instances of not-so-great back-projection, which I know was in vogue when the film was made, but it’s still a bit of a bugbear with me. While the acting is generally pretty decent, for me the only characters that really stand out are Burgess’s and Wray’s. The others were a little two dimensional, especially Holt’s character, which is underwritten, hence the actor having to spend much of his screen time trying to convey angst via a series of stoic facial expressions.

Unfairly, Black Moon is something of a forgotten horror film, from Columbia studios, one that falls somewhere between the early zombie classic White Zombie, starring Bela Lugosi, and Val Lewton’s later, and arguably better, I Walked With a Zombie. Hence, many thanks to Imprint for unearthing this interesting piece of film history and giving us a nice transfer too, while they were at it.

The disc’s only special feature is the fact that Imprint have also provided us with the tinted version of the film. By tinted I mean it looks like they’ve added coloured filters to a number of sections of the film. For example, a sepia-coloured one for some talky scenes, green tinted for jungle scenes and blue tinted for boat-related scenes. I guess it all adds to the overall ambiance. Overall, it’s a shame about the lack of special features as it would have been nice to have had a decent commentary track run by film historians, a stills gallery and a trailer. I guess the age of the film prohibited Imprint from getting hold of the last two items on my wish list.