Isle of the Dead

Set on a Greek island threatened by the plague at the end of the Balkan war of 1912, this moody but slightly muddled RKO horror movie involves the premature burial of the British consul's wife (Emery), who rises as a new Britannia, a silent, emblematic figure killing with a trident and saving Greek womanhood (Drew) from the Greek general (Karloff) to enable her to fall into the arms of an American. Producer Val Lewton occasionally manages to evoke the wondrous effects achieved by Jacques Tourneur (who made Lewton's name as a producer) in I Walked with a Zombie. The film comes magnificently alive with the burial sequence, and with the zombie-like, white-robed woman roaming through shadowy galleries and shuttered rooms.