Haiti and Horror Movies

A six minute video about the relationship between Haitian culture and American horror movies.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• horror
• Haiti
• film
• cinema
• zombies
• voodoo
• vodoun
• vodoo
• earthquake
• pat robertson
• maya deren
• alan parker
• robert deniro
• mickey rourke
• Jacque
• Tourneur
• Val Lewton
• I walked with a Zombie
• Naked Evil
• The Devil's Daughter
• Romero
• Night of the Living Dead
• Meshes of the afternoon
• Divine Horseman
• Partners in Health
• Angel Heart
• Dr Terror's House of Horrors
• Richard Ledes
• A Hole In One
• Michelle Williams
• Ghosts Don't Move Out
• Ghosts
• Horror
• Shining
• scary
• Rot and Decay Films

[SeanSocco]

Check out the chapter "American Fantasy and Haitian Vodou" by Laennec Hurbon in Donald Cosentino's anthology Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodou.

[SeanSocco]

One of them, Faustin Wirkus, was basically like Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. Imagine Kurtz returning to the US to write books about Vietnamese black magic! To say that there are racial stereotypes in these movies is to put it waaaayyyy too mildly!  The whole Haitian Voodoo genre is rooted in the time in America's past when white people openly spoke about their racial superiority. Voodoo was the nightmare based on that racism.

[SeanSocco]

The story is even deeper. Two things you gotta rembember. One is that in 1791 Haiti was the home of the first successful slave rebellion, which made it the scariest place on Earth in the minds of Southern White racists of the time (and I guess Pat Robertson still today). The other thing is that the original American movies about Voodoo and zombies were based on the writings and experiences of military officers who were part of the US occupation of Haiti in 1915.

[RGKLEIN21]

I like this very much-it's quite enlightening as to what the American/Hollywood fantasm of Haiti has turned on to be-and Haiti's response to this fantasm