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One of the most challenging share ofTobe Hooper ’s careerinvolved the short - lived plans that the illustrious horror director had to helm a vehement , surrealistic remaking of the cult classic film , White Zombie . regrettably , complicated legal issues and a wither budget stop production from happen , and theWhite Zombieremake joined a long listing of otherunmade horror movies that would have been amazing .
The originalWhite Zombie , put out in 1932 , is most notable for being the first zombi movie ever made . Even though George A. Romero’sNight of the Living Deadpopularized the shape - eating undead legion that delimitate the advanced idea of a zombie , White Zombieused Haitian folklore to firstintroduce the conception of a shambling , blank - eyed reanimated corpse to repulsion picture palace . These zombi were n’t concerned in eating people , but were or else ricochet to the notion of their sea captain , Bela Lugosi ’s Murder Legendre , who had resurrected them from the stagnant .
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Screenwriter Jared Rivet write a spec script for Tobe Hooper after producer from RKO Pictures , one of the gargantuan studio of Hollywood ’s Golden Age that was trying to reclaim its success , go up him to ask him to direct aWhite Zombieremake . Initially , Hooper hated Rivet ’s discourse , but the two worked together to rise a full screenplay to modernize the report and more explicitly show plot details that were only hinted at in the original cinema . The result was a violent , surreal , and socio - political horror story that Rivet compared to Lucio Fulci , George A. Romero , andWes Craven’sThe Serpent and the Rainbow .
Why Tobe Hooper Never Remade White Zombie
AlthoughWhite Zombieis still in the public land , Hooper and Rivet discovered that there were rights issue relate to the seed stuff that the original picture show was in the beginning establish on . The Magic Island , an exaggerated but influential write up on Haitian Vodou compose by explorerWilliam Seabrook , helped launch the American fascination with the Haitian snake god and inspiredWhite Zombie . In fact , producer Victor Halperin and music director Edward Halperin allegedly lift parts of the book , which meant that Rivet and Hooper had to remove the most obvious references to the writing .
In an consultation on the podcastBest Movies Never Made , Rivet start on to excuse that producer Sidney Sheinberg eventually optioned the rights to the book , but output still never belong through . This was because Sheinberg and the other producers kept insisting on changes to the level in edict to cut the budget down . For instance , whereas Hooper and Rivet wanted the movie to be coiffure in Haiti on a private landed estate isolated from the rest period of the state , the producer want to modify the setting to Louisiana .
Perhaps the most frustrating criticism Sheinberg and the other manufacturer lobbed at the script was that it was too strange . Gone were Hooper ’s hallucinatory sequences and the veils the zombies wear out to keep flies from seethe around their decomposed body . As the director realise his vision was becoming diluted , he convinced his writing partner to leave the task with him . The good news is that , due to the elastic legal rights regardingWhite Zombie , a remaking can always reappear in the future , albeit regrettably not under Hooper ’s direction , as he passed forth in 2017 .
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