Let me start at the beginning.
I don't know why I became obsessed with Drums O' Voodoo (alias Louisiana alias She Devil). It surely must have cropped up in my research when I commenced this long '30s/'40s horror kick I've been on lately, but I have no idea how that's possible, given that this is one of the least-written about titles I've ever come across, which, trust me, is saying something at this point. There's my answer, I think: when I find rare movies with interesting details about them, which no one else has seen or reviewed in a generation or three, I want to track it down. The title already had me; its status as a '30s race film perpetuated things. (A desire to watch an all-black horror movie from the early days of film while tracking down a copy of Drums O' Voodoo spurred my watching of Son of Ingagi.) Slowly, I learned more and more about it, including that: 1) it was based off of a stage play by J. Augustus Smith, who also acts in the film; 2) after one week, that play was either pulled for censorship reasons or booed offstage, not sure which; 3) the director of the film was the writer of Reefer Madness; 4) this is considered to be the first all-black horror film.
That last bit, though! How am I only the--to the best of my knowledge--second critic to write about this movie on the Internet? I really can't find anything to contradict the idea that Drums O' Voodoo is the first black horror movie, even if its horror elements are relatively toned down...from what I know, if there was any predecessor, its identity is lost to history. And I say that with the knowledge that many of the movies made by black people, or even involving black people, are similarly lost to time. The best alternative to Drums being the first that I could find is this: in 1924 the black auteur Oscar Micheaux made A Son of Satan, about a man forced by a bet to spend the night in a haunted mansion, a la Ghosts of Hanley House. This however was apparently more of a crime movie, with long sequences of domestic violence and nightclub degeneracy. It may have been a remake or rerelease of a 1922 film called The Ghost of Tolson's Manor, which definitely sounds like a horror film, but about which even less is known. Both films are lost and contemporary reviews don't specify if they feature real supernatural elements. Whatever the case, I am simply glad that Drums O' Voodoo is not among the roll call of Movies Lost. Indeed, a lot of sources will even say that this movie doesn't exist anymore, but it most assuredly does! Even with some lost films, where there's a will, there's a way...especially if "way" means "unlisted VHS tape." So here we are!
Myrtle and Ebenezer want to get married, but the whole world's against them. You see, a sleazy mobster type named Tom Catt--yes, really--rolls into a small Louisiana town and opens up a juke joint which as his base of criminal operations. He quickly fixes his eye on Myrtle and intends to make into one of his girls whether she likes it or not. Meanwhile, Ebenezer's grandmother Aunt Hagar (Laura Bowman, who played Dr. Jackson in Son of Ingagi) is a voodoo priestess, who warns the couple that Myrtle's mother had a curse on her that kills the bearer when they have children; hence why her mother died bringing Myrtle into this world. This curse is hereditary and so Myrtle's marriage to Ebenezer would be her death sentence. Myrtle's uncle Amos Berry, the local minister, wants to keep his niece safe from Tom Catt, but is unable to do so because Catt has some good ol' blackmail to hang over him--years ago, Amos spent four years on a chain-gang for murder. In spite of this, Father Berry is willing to go to any distance to get Catt out of his town, and that includes joining forces with Aunt Hagar and her voodoo cult.
It is the last sentence of that synopsis which provides the most intriguing detail about the plot of Drums O' Voodoo: voodoo is presented almost entirely as a positive force. A mysterious and ancient force, with secrets that are unknown and perhaps unknowable to the generally public, but a positive one all the same. Aunt Hagar, and, it seems, her cult, are an accepted part of the community, and she's free to come and go from the church to meet with Father Berry whenever she likes. And that's the thing about it, too: this is a movie where the clergyman protagonist is in league with a voodoo sorceress! But then you think about Sugar Hill, which also portrayed voodoo in a positive light (albeit one of revenge), and it makes sense. To people who practice voodoo, and people who know people who practice voodoo, or live in places with strong relationships with voodoo like Haiti or New Orleans, voodoo is certainly the religion of evil the movies usually make it out to be. Additionally, a lot of branches of voodoo have incorporated Christian beliefs, so relationships between Christian and voodoo communities are often better where voodoo is comparatively common. Amos still condemns voodoo in some way now and again, but one major theme of the film concerns how the "White God" (as the film's narration calls Them) exists concurrently with the "Black Gods," the "jungle gods." There's even a scene where Father Berry tells Aunt Hagar something about "Jesus told us to forgive our enemies." Hagar replies: "Yeah, well, Jesus didn't know Tom Catt!" A '30s film where a voodoo practitioner gets away with sassing off Jesus Christ himself--yeah, this was worth it.
Actually, this movie has a lot going for it where it would have probably been heinous in its time, proclivity for polytheism aside. Our first introduction to Myrtle is her in the juke joint dancing to jazz in, horror of horrors, a miniskirt! Hell, it was a big deal to show off someone dancing in a miniskirt in a movie in the mid '60s, much less the mid '30s. While there's definitely a lot in the script to add credence to the "booed offstage" theory regarding the short life of the play version, this stuff, plus some other stuff I'll get to, is enough to suggest that someone set up an obscenity charge. Maybe that was a total shitstorm. I wish I knew more.
And I wish I knew more about this movie in general--about its production details, yes, but also about the plot. You see, unlike a lot of my reviews, I haven't spoiled the ending of this one, and there's a reason for that. The ending of Drums O' Voodoo may be impossible to spoil, ever, because there is clearly much footage lost, which seems to include the proper conclusion. Now maybe the producers of my VHS copy had access to a faulty print, but Turner Classic Movies says that footage was cut. And how--IMDB and TCM alike list the movie as 70 minutes, and my copy doesn't even make it to 50! While this leads to one of the most hilariously jarring conclusions of all time, the idea of this movie missing over twenty minutes of footage is disheartening to say the least. The fact that we don't know how much was lost to censorship and how much was lost to film decay is almost worse than not knowing what was on those missing frames. TCM helpfully fills in the blanks, revealing that what's missing is only an extrapolation of what we already see (it's not like there were going to be hidden zombies or anything), but still. That's why I'm especially disappointed that no one else has talked about this movie. If the missing footage is still out there, no one is looking for it, and even if it was found by accident no one would care.
I can understand why even people who have seen this wouldn't care. Drums O' Voodoo has plenty o' faults, with the biggest one being one which afflicts so many old horror movies based off of stage plays: it's essentially a filmed version of the play, with no strong use of the effects that film can offer. There are times where you will find it merciful for a shot of two characters talking to be suddenly interrupted by the dynamic change of showing one of the characters in close-up instead. And when all the characters are hugged together on the cramped "backyard" scene with its terrible, obvious matte painting background, you will suddenly feel like you're sitting in front of a stage. Adding to the tedium this induces is the fact that a lot of the movie is dedicated to a church scene. In fact, the church scene, wherein characters sing, dance, quote scripture, and accuse each other, is arguably the primary scene of the movie, just because of how much time it eats up. That's upsetting, because this scene, once the gospel music stops, draaags. I do not enjoy listening to Biblical sermons even if I find a movie's religious themes interesting. It was a mistake for the filmmakers to spend so much time watching the characters at church when they could have been developing them as people or doling out voodoo vengeance instead.
And yet there is a lot to love. There are fun performances, interesting backstories, and that voodoo cave set has some actual atmosphere to it. There are also some fun trash qualities, like the fact that the movie has a weird humorous approach to naming its characters. It's hard not to fall for a slick, sleazy crook type from the city with a groovy name like "Tom Catt," and I can't believe that the insistence on calling Amos Berry "Elder," or more specifically "Elder Berry," was an accident. It's not fully played for laughs but it kinda sets a tone in your mind. Similarly odd is a character named Brother Zero who we meet during that lengthy sermon sequence. Brother Zero may have the highest-pitched voice I've ever heard in an adult man, and I don't know if this is supposed to be funny or not. The first time he spoke, I had to take a break just to give myself time to "...what?" IMDB tells me that Brother Zero's actor, Fred Bonny, had a lengthy and successful career in vaudeville prior to this, so it probably is supposed to be comedic. Finally, there is the scene where the town lays a trap for Tom Catt and get ready to hang him, so he doesn't whisk away any more girls. Aunt Hagar stops them so that they aren't tainted with unjustly-spilled blood, but not without going on a verbal beatdown against Catt, basically saying that the townsfolk should hang him for how worthless his soul is, and how even though she saves him today, the voodoo spirits will catch up with him eventually for his crimes. She doesn't spare a breath in letting this guy know that she hates his guts. Aunt Hagar is awesome all the way through, and I am officially a Laura Bowman fan for life.
More people should know about Drums O' Voodoo, for all its drawbacks. It's not a great movie, but I am glad to have seen it. It is available from Sinister Cinema even if it's not on their website. (Don't order it from Loving the Classics, the only other source I've found to ostensibly sell it, as the Better Business Bureau and others list them as having scammed a lot of people.) It's a forgotten piece of history, and it has stuff to offer even besides having that distinction. Check it out!
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