#3 - I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

One of the great Val Lewton-produced horror films of the 1940's, this classic is about a young Canadian nurse who is hired to take care of a plantation owner's wife in the West Indies. Upon arrival, she discovers that the woman she came to care for may not just be sick... she may be the living dead! This is long before George A. Romero, so the zombies here are of the Voodoo variety, not brain-hungry corpses, but that doesn't make the film any less scary. Intelligent, subtle, and creepy, it would be tempting to say that "they don't make movies like this anymore", except that it's pretty difficult to find a film from ANY era that is this effective.