Pretti Klili (Fredi Washington) is the daughter of a Haitian plantation owner and a practitioner of voodoo. When her white lover returns from New York with his new white fiancee she declares that if she cannot have him, nobody can. Enter into this is Adam’s overseer LeStrange (Sheldon Leonard) who says if he can’t have Klili, nobody can. Something of a love rectangle. Love stinks.
This film made my radar because it is the second ever to feature zombies after White Zombie. It is super low budget and surprisingly hard to get. I contacted another blogger who turned me on to Something Weird Video. When I thanked him, he ominously replied “Better watch it first -- THEN decide if you want to thank me!” I’ve watched it. While it’s no White Zombie, I do thank him.
Our protagonist appears to be voodoo priestess Klili. Absolutely the villain but it’s she whom the story follows. We understand her motivation. We understand her desire to use voodoo to harm lovely blond Eve because she earned Adam’s affections (wait, what? Adam and Eve? Goddammit …) Anyhow, Klili is on screen for almost the entirety of the film. We don’t hate her, we kinda root for her.
One cannot watch old films, especially Hollywood films, and completely ignore the issue of race. Many discriminate through exclusion. Films, even those set in the underbelly of the city or even inside prisons, won’t have even a single black person on screen. And those that do cast them either as comic relief or in servant roles. A few were well meaning but the scenes don’t age well. Here is another approach. Klili is a light skinned Haitian in love with a white man. He chooses to marry Eve even though she is no whiter than Klili. It’s what’s inside that matters, but not in a good way. LeStrange cautions her to keep to her “own kind” (let’s ignore for the moment that Leonard Sheldon looks nor behaves nothing like any of the other Haitians).
This somewhat mirrors Fredi Washington’s real-life experience. White enough to “pass”, she refused and that cost her better roles. But our characters aren’t expressing what is true or right (except, ironically, maybe our villain) but the reality of the time and culture they were in. Somewhat thought provoking. I am curious to learn the perspective of the non-white bread.
Interesting as these elements are, The Love Wanga is a very low budget film. The story is rather simple, the dialog trite, the acting stilted, the video quality terrible, and the audio even worse. It was a tough film to watch for those reasons, but it did feature two bona fide zombies. And for this it is memorable. Still, I can’t bring myself to rate it any higher than 2.5. By the way, a Wanga (or Ouanga) is a voodoo spell.
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