''Ouanga'', also advertised as ''The Love Wanga'', is a
voodoo
Voodoo may refer to:
Religions
* West African Vodún, a religion practiced by Gbe-speaking ethnic groups
* African diaspora religions, a list of related religions sometimes called Vodou/Voodoo
** Candomblé Jejé, also known as Brazilian Vodu ...
-themed 1936 American film starring
Fredi Washington
Fredericka Carolyn "Fredi" Washington (December 23, 1903 – June 28, 1994) was an American stage and film actress, civil rights activist, performer, and writer. Washington was of African American descent. She was one of the first Black Americans ...
.
George Terwilliger
George Walter Terwilliger (February 27, 1882 – December 12, 1970) was an American film director, screenwriter, and journalist. The film's themes include
miscegenation
Miscegenation ( ) is marriage or admixture between people who are members of different races or ethnicities. It has occurred many times throughout history, in many places. It has occasionally been controversial or illegal. Adjectives describin ...
and it features various racial stereotypes and portrays the people who practice voodoo as primitive. The movie is considered to be perhaps the second zombie film ever made after '' White Zombie''.
Plot
Klili Gordon is a half-white and half-black plantation owner who is attracted to Adam Maynard, a nearby plantation owner who is white. Adam is a close friend of Klili, but he fears of their relationship going further due to Gordon's mixed-race heritage per the
one-drop rule
The one-drop rule was a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of African ancestry ("one drop" of "black blood")Davis, F. James. Front ...
. Adam chooses Eve, a white woman, over Gordon which causes her to become enraged and turn to
voodoo
Voodoo may refer to:
Religions
* West African Vodún, a religion practiced by Gbe-speaking ethnic groups
* African diaspora religions, a list of related religions sometimes called Vodou/Voodoo
** Candomblé Jejé, also known as Brazilian Vodu ...
. After a death charm known as a ''
wanga
The Wanga kingdom is a traditional Realm, kingdom within Kenya, consisting of the Wanga (Abawanga) tribe of the Luhya people (Abaluyia). At its peak the kingdom covered an expansive area from Jinja, Uganda, Jinja in west to Naivasha in the East ...
'' fails to kill Eve, Klili raises 13 black men from the dead to put Eve into a trance so that Klili can murder her. LeStrange, the overseer of Adam's plantation, is adept at voodoo and places a curse on Klili by hanging the dead body of a black woman that is dressed as Klili. After Klili fails to get with Adam and LeStrange fails to murder Klili with voodoo, LeStrange murders Klili by choking her.
Cast
*
Fredi Washington
Fredericka Carolyn "Fredi" Washington (December 23, 1903 – June 28, 1994) was an American stage and film actress, civil rights activist, performer, and writer. Washington was of African American descent. She was one of the first Black Americans ...
as Klili Gordon
* Philip Brandon as Adam Maynard
* Marie Paxton as Eve Langley
*
Sheldon Leonard
Sheldon Leonard Bershad (February 22, 1907 – January 11, 1997) was an American film and television actor, producer, director, and screenwriter.
Early life
Sheldon Leonard Bershad was born in Manhattan, New York City, the son of middle-class ...
as LeStrange
*
Winifred Harris
Winifred Vera Emily Harris (17 March 1880 – 18 April 1972) was a British actress with a substantial career in America. She appeared in New York plays beginning in 1914 and acted in numerous plays up to 1934. She left Broadway plays for films th ...
as Aunt Sarah
* Sidney Easton as Jackson
* Babe Joyce as Susie
* George Spink as Johnson
Production
''Ouanga'' is the second film to feature zombies, after the 1932 film '' White Zombie''. Black actress Fredi Washington was cast to play the "
tragic mulatto
The tragic mulatto is a fictional character type that frequently appeared in American literature during the 19th and 20th centuries, starting in 1837. The "tragic mulatto" is a stereotypical mixed-race person (a "mulatto"), who is depressed, or ev ...
" role of Klili Gordon while white actor
Sheldon Leonard
Sheldon Leonard Bershad (February 22, 1907 – January 11, 1997) was an American film and television actor, producer, director, and screenwriter.
Early life
Sheldon Leonard Bershad was born in Manhattan, New York City, the son of middle-class ...
was cast as LeStrange, the black man who looks over Adam's plantation. LeStrange may have been cast as a black character due to an incident involving the 1933 film ''
The Emperor Jones
''The Emperor Jones'' is a 1920 tragic play by American dramatist Eugene O'Neill that tells the tale of Brutus Jones, a resourceful, self-assured African American and a former Pullman porter, who kills another black man in a dice game, is jailed ...
'', in which censors thought that Washington kissing a black man looked too close to "a white woman kissing a black man". In ''The Emperor Jones'', Washington wore darker makeup to look "more black".
It was planned for the production crew to hire dancers and drummers from Haiti, but the plan did not happen due to the ''papaloi'', male voodoo priests, objecting and the director was threatened with a ''wanga'' placed in his car. The person in charge of props stole sacred objects including stuffed snakeskins and skulls for the film's production from Haiti. The filming was moved to Jamaica where it was reported by
Roger Luckhurst
Roger Luckhurst is a British writer and academic and since 2020 the Geoffrey Tillotson Chair of Nineteenth Century Studies at Birkbeck College. He was appointed professor in modern and contemporary literature in the Department of English, Theatre ...
that two crew members died from a cyclone. Author Toni Pressley-Sanon wrote that two crew members died with one being killed by a
barracuda
A barracuda is a large, predatory, ray-finned, saltwater fish of the genus ''Sphyraena'', the only genus in the family Sphyraenidae, which was named by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. It is found in tropical and subtropical oceans worldw ...
and one dying from yellow fever.
The film was not released in the United States until 1942. ''Ouanga'' was remade into the 1939 film '' The Devil's Daughter'' to appeal to a black audience despite it being created by whites. The
UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...
Film & Television Archive restored the film in 2015. On June 10, 2021, UCLA held a virtual screening of the restored film.
Reception
Lionel Collier of ''
Picturegoer
''Picturegoer'' was a fan magazine published in the United Kingdom between 1911 and 23 April 1960.
Background
The magazine was started in 1911 under the name ''The Pictures'' and in 1914 it merged with ''Picturegoer''. Following the merge it was ...
'' wrote that it was a "drama clumsily built around 'Voodooism'" and that it was "extremely crudely produced and badly acted", though he praised the authentic settings.Collier, Lionel. "On the Screens Now." ''
Picturegoer
''Picturegoer'' was a fan magazine published in the United Kingdom between 1911 and 23 April 1960.
Background
The magazine was started in 1911 under the name ''The Pictures'' and in 1914 it merged with ''Picturegoer''. Following the merge it was ...