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I Walked With a Zombie - 1943 Betsy Connell, a Canadian nurse, relates in a voiceover how she once "walked with a zombie." Betsy is hired to care for the wife of Paul Holland, a sugar plantation owner on the Caribbean island of Saint Sebastian. Saint Sebastian is inhabited by a small white community and descendants of African slaves. Betsy is told the story of how the Hollands brought slaves to the island, and that the statue of "Ti-Misery" (Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows) in the courtyard is the figurehead from a slave ship.
 That night at dinner, Betsy meets Paul's half-brother and employee, Wesley Rand. While getting ready for bed, Betsy hears crying. When she investigates, a woman in a white robe walks towards her, her eyes staring. Betsy screams, waking the rest of the household. Paul takes charge of Jessica Holland, the woman Betsy is to care for. The next morning, Dr. Maxwell tells Betsy that Jessica's spinal cord was irreparably damaged, leaving her totally without the willpower to do anything for herself.
 On her day off, Betsy encounters Wesley in town. While he drinks himself into a stupor, a calypso singer sings about how Jessica was going to run away with Wesley, but Paul would not let them go. Then she was struck down by the fever. Betsy meets Mrs. Rand, Paul and Wesley's doctor mother. That night, at dinner, Paul tries to persuade Wesley to reduce his drinking, but he accuses Paul of trying to impress Betsy and of driving Jessica insane in the first place.
Later, Betsy is drawn to the sound of Paul playing the piano. He apologizes for bringing her to the island and admits that he may have been the cause of his wife's condition. Betsy has been falling in love with her moody employer. She determines to make him happy by curing Jessica. Betsy gets Paul to agree to try a potentially fatal treatment of insulin shock on Jessica, but it has no effect. Housemaid Alma then tells her that a Voodoo priest cured a woman of a similar condition. | |
The Serpent and the Rainbow - 1988 In 1978, a Haitian man named Christophe mysteriously dies in a French missionary clinic, while outside a voodoo parade marches past his window with a burning coffin. Back in Boston, Alan is approached by a large pharmaceutical corporation looking to investigate a drug used in the Voodoo religion of Haiti to create zombies. The company wants Alan to acquire the drug for mass production and use it as a type of "super anesthetic".
 The corporation sends him to Haiti. He encounters a local witch doctor, Mozart, who is reported to have knowledge of the zombie drug and the procedure necessary for its creation. After embarrassing Mozart in public, the Voodoo witch doctor agrees to show Alan exactly how to produce the zombie drug for a fee. Alan, however, still refuses to do so and meets with Mozart to create the zombie drug. This was planted in his head by Peytraud, revealed to be an evil bokor who turns enemies into zombies and steals their souls.
Waking up screaming in his coffin a few hours later, Alan is rescued by Christophe who was also turned into a zombie by Peytraud many years earlier and now lives in a cemetery thinking that he is still dead. Having escaped Peytraud's trap, Alan returns to the Tonton Macoute headquarters looking for Marielle. There, Alan and his jaguar spirit defeat Peytraud and send the evil bokor's soul to Hell. As the Haitian people celebrate the downfall of Jean-Claude Duvalier, Marielle proclaims "The nightmare is over". | |
Dead Alive - 1992 In 1957, The "Sumatran Rat-Monkey" is a hybrid creature that, "according to legend", resulted from the rape of tree monkeys on Skull Island by plague-carrying rats. Stewart, an explorer returning from the depths of the island with his team, is carrying a rat-monkey in a cage and is stopped by fierce warrior natives that demand the return of the monkey. They escape to a waiting jeep, but Stewart gets bitten by the Rat-Monkey.
 Seeing the mark of the monkey's bite on his right hand, Stewart's men hold down the explorer and amputate it. A bite mark is then seen on his left arm, which results in the removal of that limb. Finally, they see a set of bloody scratches on Stewart's forehead and kill him. The captured rat-monkey is shipped to Wellington Zoo in New Zealand. Sometime later, Lionel Cosgrove lives with his domineering mother, Vera. To Vera's dismay, Lionel falls in love with a shopkeeper's daughter, Paquita.
 While snooping on the two during a visit to the zoo, Vera is bitten by the rat-monkey. The animal's bite turns her into a ravenous zombie. Lionel tries keeping her locked in the basement while simultaneously trying to maintain his relationship with the oblivious Paquita. Vera escapes and is hit by a tram. As the townspeople assume she is dead, Lionel tranquilizes the zombie for her funeral. After she is buried, he returns to the graveyard to administer more anesthetic, but is accosted by a gang of hoodlums. Vera bursts from her grave, resulting in more deaths and zombies. As their numbers grow, Lionel manages to keep the zombies under relative control with repeated injections, and tries keeping them concealed in his home. However, Lionel's uncle Les arrives to wrangle with Lionel over Vera's estate. Les discovers the "corpses" and blackmails his nephew into giving up his inheritance in return for his silence. | |
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