I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE: Blu-ray (RKO 1943) IVC Entertainment (Japan import)
If not for a
fortuitous decision made in the fall of 1941, the name Val Lewton might never
have been known in Hollywood. Lewton, who began his career as a newspaper
hound, fired for fabricating a story about a bunch of crated Kosher chickens
prostrated and dying in the heat, eventually found more lasting fame as the
author of a lurid novella, No Bed of Her
Own. It was exactly the sort of dime store pulp that sold copy and caught
Hollywood’s attention; more sordid fiction quickly following it. A bit of a
dreamer, something of a wanderer, and thoroughly bored in general with the
stalemates in his life, Lewton’s initial hope was to live the sort of
romanticized exoticism his woolgathering – if highly literate and star-struck –
mother had encouraged throughout his youth. Lewton was blessed with a fanciful
imagination to be sure, and the gumption to pursue every avenue opening up
before him. But he was equally as short-fused and prone to bouts of deep depression
when those around him failed to share his interests. Lewton would have rather a
bad time of it as story editor to impresario, David O. Selznick, famously
calling out Margaret Mitchell’s novel, Gone
With The Wind as a “ponderous piece
of trash” during an editorial tête-à-tête with Selznick (and this, after the
producer had already made his decision to film it); Lewton, suggesting Selznick
he would lose the shirt off his back if he proceeded to ignore his advice.
Naysaying
aside, Lewton was not very happy working for the fastidious David O. at
Selznick International and elected in the fall of 1941 to make a move to RKO –
then, a beleaguered poor cousin, virtually on the verge of financial ruin
thanks to back to back misfires from their young protégé, Orson Welles. To
Welles, the enfant terrible who had terrorized scores of radio listeners with
his realistic broadcast of War of the Worlds, RKO had thrown
open the doors to their once profitable kingdom, utterly convinced Welles held
the keys to its future fiscal solvency after their spate of highly profitable
Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals had run their course and one of their most
prolific talents, producer, Pandro S. Berman had already departed for greener
pastures over at MGM. Alas, to Lewton the powers that be at RKO merely tossed aside
the emaciated remains of this crumbling empire with a promise of ‘showmanship in place of genius’ to
denote the company’s future plans to make quick n’ dirty programmers on a
shoestring budget that could capitalize on the public’s insatiable appetite for
crime stories and tales of the supernatural. Lewton’s desire to produce as well
as write was further hampered by the studio’s insistence on picking the titles
for his latest projects. No one could have anticipated Lewton would take up
this brass ring and go far beyond all expectations, transforming such idiotic
titles as ‘Cat People’ and ‘I Walked With A Zombie’ into
masterpieces of psychological horror. Indeed, screening the daily rushes,
executives at RKO feared they had another Welles on their hands; Lewton’s approach
to the material too cerebral; too highbrow for the masses.
In hindsight,
they had nothing to fear and virtually everything to gain; Lewton’s logic
sound; his ability to perfectly cast talent from the studio’s homegrown roster
of hungry young artists, willing to give it their all, resulting in an
uninterrupted series of remarkably literate and compelling horror classics that
have since withstood the test of time and, in their day, made RKO a king’s ransom
to rebuild their ailing coffers.
Lewton’s Russian heritage bowed with his passion for recreating
pseudo-European folklore as contemporary and uniquely American fright fests. Yet
Lewton was disinterested in merely resurrecting the arc of Gothic chills and
screams already well-established over at Universal Studios. No, Lewton’s stories
were born in the concrete jungles of a bustling big city or tropical hideaway
mostly prone to the tourist trade. Of
the nine films eventually culled to make up Lewton’s legacy, 1943’s I Walked With A Zombie endures as an
early and irrefutable high point, misjudged upon its release by The New York
Times as “dull” and “disgusting” – which only made audiences
want to see it more! In our present era, overly saturated in tales of the
undead, we must first pause to reconsider how neither the concept, nor even the
name ‘zombie’ were well-known to the movie-going public back then; despite the
release of a 1932 pre-code thriller, White
Zombie, that did little to propagate the idea.
And, in truth,
Lewton had little to zero interest in making a ‘traditional’ zombie picture –
whatever that may be; turning to screenwriters, Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray
with the high concept of transforming Inez Wallace’s serialized stories into a
repurposed account of Bronte’s immortal Jane
Eyre, relocated to the West Indies. For creative inspiration, Lewton would
rely on director, Jacques Tourneur and his verve for moodily lit film noir. As
he had done previously with Cat People,
Tourneur approached the subject matter with a visual elegance that belied the
picture’s miniscule budget, using sparely redecorated sets left over from other
pictures; adding lighting and wind effects to embellish its atmospheric
qualities. As with his earlier foray, Lewton cast I Walked With A Zombie from a list of B-grade studio contract
players; the biggest name likely Tom Conway – the brother of George Sanders and
affectionately known around the back lot as ‘the
nice George Sanders’. Conway, who had inherited the role of The Falcon from his brother, in RKO’s
serialized franchise of low budget crime thrillers, was, at least for Lewton,
ideally cast as the oft ambiguous and devious man of means; unscrupulous to his
core, or at least seemingly so, and, enterprising to a fault. Gee, he sounds an
awfully lot like George Sanders to me! But I digress.
For the part
of the empathetic nurse, come to the tropics to look after a paralytic patient Lewton
chose relative unknown, Francis Dee. Despite a decade’s worth of tireless work,
Dee had yet to break out in the industry. In retrospect, Dee would never become
a star, though she unequivocally proved herself quite the actress and gives
every indication, at least in this film that superstardom might be just around
the corner. The rest of the cast fell into place almost as an afterthought;
James Ellison, against type as the seemingly forthright leading man, Wesley
Rand, harboring a deep secret; Christine Gordon, as the undead Jessica Holland,
perversely drawn into the woods by a voodoo spell; Theresa Harris as Alma, the
kindly housemaid administering sound advice on this remote sugar plantation,
and, Edith Barrett, as Paul and Wesley’s devoted mama, Mrs. Rand. Two
African-American actors would ensure a certain air of authenticity; Sir
Lancelot, herein playing the nondescript and rather insidious Calypso singer,
his pleasantly warbled strains simultaneously drenched in ominous foreboding;
and Darby Jones as Carrefour – at seven feet, with contact lenses inserted to
cloud the dark of his eyes, a formidable presence, first glimpsed in shadowy
silhouette strolling along an isolated stretch of beach with Dee’s kindly
nurse, Betsy Connell. Much later, Jones proves a considerable fright to Betsy,
confronting her in the dried out and rustling sugar cane fields, dotted with
animal sacrifices and other paraphernalia devoted to the ritualized summoning
of the dead by the true believers of this island faith.
I Walked With A Zombie is perhaps
Lewton’s most elegant and proficient horror classic; Tourneur’s minimalist
approach to the material, perpetually sheathing his interiors in refracted
light, filtered through half drawn bamboo blinds and/or lattice work, creates
interesting shadows on the wall. The
film’s premise is deliberately meant to ferment and linger under a cloud of
suspicion, never entirely resolved for the audience. Is the catatonic Jessica
Holland suffering the ill effects of a tropical malaise or has she truly been
transformed by local lore into a zombie? There is some evidence to suggest
Tourneur might have preferred a more clear-cut narrative; Jessica, a lithe and
willowy figure with a far-away stare, appearing to levitate one half-moon lit
night, passing Betsy’s boudoir in her flowing white lingerie as she enters the
secluded and darkened tower on the plantation grounds, pursued by a curious Betsy
and glimpsed with split-second precision in an affecting makeup, with hollowed
out sockets in place of eyes; the illusion both terrifying and fleeting, as
Betsy’s terrorized screams draw Paul to her rescue; his oil lamp casting less
threatening shadows across Jessica’s blank and withdrawn face. It is a
deliciously terrific moment of suspense in the film; Tourneur later topping it
as his camera follows Betsy and Jessica through a labyrinth of dried sugar cane
rustling in the cool night air; the echoes of voodoo drums growing louder in
the distance as they stumble upon several omens; an animal skull supported on a
wooden dowel, then a more recent animal sacrifice dangling from the gallows of
a nearby tree, and finally, the unexpected and sudden appearance of the
albino-eyed Carrefour caught in the dim pall of Betsy’s flashlight.
Throughout I Walked With A Zombie runs a thread of
distinct melancholy; begun almost immediately as Betsy’s arrival to the West
Indies isle of Saint Sebastian is marked by a shooting star. Situated somewhere between western-cultured rationalism
and ancient superstitions, the locals of this remote, but seemingly thriving
tropical paradise are a strange mix; the Holland manor – the most profitable
plantation in these parts - framed by imposing wrought iron gates, dense vegetation
and a rather spooky water fountain in its forecourt, the statuary depicting
‘Ti-Misery’; a tortured Saint Sebastian, staring with panged suffrage into the
heavens, pierced through his chest with multiple arrows. Betsy’s introduction
to the Paul Holland seems promising, even if the prospects of breaking the
spell of his wife’s catatonia are impossible from the outset. Throughout these
establishing scenes, Lewton and Tourneur give us flashes of the dark
premonitions yet to come; a pervading sense of unquantifiable evil derived
mostly from little more than frightened stares, and then, a little later on,
ostensibly the result of Paul and Wesley’s sibling rivalry; their unresolved
guilt, mutual contempt and jealousies directing toward more sinister accusations
and suspicions; miseries exacerbated by the ancient voodoo cult and worship
taking place not more than a few miles away.
Interestingly,
the main title sequence, depicting Frances Dee and Darby Jones strolling
together along the windswept bulkhead has absolutely nothing to do with
anything else in our story, nor does it serve as the penultimate denouement to
our tale as told in flashback; Dee’s voiceover narration regressing the plot to
Betsy’s blissful appointment to San Sebastian; a means to escape the harsh
Canadian winters and serve in the capacity as a nurse. In short order, she
meets Paul aboard the clipper bound for San Sebastian; the starry night viewed
through the romantic porthole of a young woman’s heart. Paul’s interpretation
is more skewed by his circumstances; explaining to Betsy how the flying fish
are not leaping for joy, but racing to escape larger predators at sea, while
the magnificent shooting star in the heavens is actually the remnants of a
dying ember streaking across the night sky into oblivion. “Everything good dies here,” he suggests. Paul, a proud sugar plantation owner, insists
nothing can revive or even reverse the effects of his wife’s catatonia. The
most he expects from Betsy is an unquestioning devotion to Jessica’s chronic
care; to know she is being looked after as he would see to himself, if only the
woes of running the plantation did not occupy the bulk of his waking hours.
San Sebastian
is managed by a small constituency of white settlers who, long ago, brought the
slaves to work their land. The story is recalled by the carriage driver who
takes Betsy to the Holland plantation house. She can only see the grandeur of
the place, describing its open airy rooms with all the exhilaration of a
strange woman in a faraway land. The mood remains light as Betsy meets Wesley.
His congenial start masks a more personal contempt for his half-brother. But he
diverts Betsy’s suspicions momentarily, talking about their mother, who runs
the local dispensary, despite having no professional training as either a
doctor or a nurse. As the sun sets, Betsy begins to feel the sway of the
island’s mystery take hold; foreboding drums echoing in the distance and later,
stirred from her bed chamber by the quiet whimpers of a woman. Following this
sound of tender tears to the nearby tower, Betsy is startled by the sudden
appearance of Jessica Holland. Concealed in half shadow, her visage takes on a
demonic impression that causes Betsy to forget herself and scream for help. Rushing
to her aid, Paul later suggests the position for which she was hired is not for
any woman who scares so easily. Betsy challenges his notions that she behaved
like a silly frightened child and Paul agrees to give her another chance,
introducing her to Jessica’s physician, Dr. Maxwell (James Bell) in short
order. Maxwell is a kindly sort, who nevertheless adds to Betsy’s mounting
dread by referring to his patient as “a
beautiful zombie”; a woman stricken by an incredible fever, causing
irreparable damage to her spinal cord: the net result, a listless, living
corpse, able to obey simple commands but possessing no free will of her own.
Paul coolly
asks Betsy if she considers herself attractive and charming. When she
erroneously replies she has never given either matter much thought, he curtly
suggests she keeps it that way to alleviate a good many problems. Sometime
later, Wesley escorts Betsy into town. He offers to buy her a drink. But the
mood between them turns sour when a local musician is heard warbling a gossipy
ditty about the Holland clan and Rand’s forbidden love of his brother’s wife.
Wesley admits he was drawn to Jessica, but suggests Paul was hardly a devoted
spouse, nor is his devotion to Jessica now as the grieving husband, anything
better than an act – and not of contrition. Betsy stays with Wesley as he
continues to drink himself into oblivion. At twilight, the musician returns,
having added a new verse and chorus to the song with which to taunt and almost
terrorize Betsy. “Oh woes, ah me; shame
and sorrow for de family.”
At this
juncture, Betsy is introduced to Mrs. Rand; kindhearted and comforting, she implores
Betsy to use ‘her influence’ on Paul to conceal the whiskey decanter during
dinner; a feeble attempt to dissuade Wesley from his perilous drinking habits.
Betsy assures Mrs. Rand she holds no sway over Paul and proves as much by
taking Mrs. Rand’s suggestion to him as her own; incurring a mild wrath from
her employer, who reminds Betsy she was hired to look after his wife – not his
brother. Even so, that evening Paul has the decanter removed, resulting in an
escalated argument with Wesley; the confrontation deflated only after Paul
suggests Betsy would be happier having dinner in her room instead. A few hours
pass. Bored and alone, Betsy is drawn to the sound of Paul playing the piano in
the parlor. She would like nothing better than to restore the peace between
Paul and Wesley. Momentarily Paul weakens and begins to explain how he
discovered Jessica having a torrid liaison with his brother. But the sound of
native drums causes him to revert to his former reserved self; sternly ordering
Betsy from the room.
The next day,
Dr. Maxwell and Betsy present a united front to Paul with the daring and highly
experimental option of shock therapy to revive Jessica. The treatment is risky
to say the least, and Paul is seemingly torn about signing off on it. He does,
however, and is wounded when, like everything else, it fails to produce the
desired effect. Jessica is alive, but the same as before. Betsy is distraught
and apologetic. But Paul reminds her that compassion is nothing to apologize
for; she, having brought him her sympathy and an unquestioning dedication to
the care of his wife; rare qualities that have since allowed him to go on for
the first time in a very long while in the hope of better days ahead. Wesley is
condescending; reeling against Paul’s kind words and even suggesting he is making
a play for Betsy. The next afternoon, the housemaid, Alma introduces Betsy to
her sister, Melisse (Vivian Dandridge) and her new baby. Indeed, despite Paul’s
prophesizing about San Sebastian being an isle of death, life appears to be
renewing itself in their midst, the infant taking an instant liking to
Betsy. Alma hints to Betsy that the Houngan
(Martin Wilkins) might be able to cure Jessica of her catatonia by performing a
ritual voodoo ceremony. Betsy is unimpressed by this superstitious counsel – at
first, but later, consults Mrs. Rand about the possibility of making Jessica
well through such unorthodox methods. Mrs. Rand tries to discourage her. But
driven by her desire to restore Jessica to Paul, Betsy skulks off with her
patient in the dead of night through the swampy marshes and dried sugar cane
fields, encountering the lanky zombie, Carrefour guarding the entrance to the
home fort where a voodoo ceremony is already in full swing.
Betsy is even
more perplexed to discover Mrs. Rand working behind the scenes, offering
pragmatic alternatives to those who have come to ‘be cured’ by the Houngan.
While Betsy and Mrs. Rand confer in private, Jessica inadvertently becomes the
focus of the ritual; a local thrusting his sword into her arm and taking notice
the wound does not bleed. Jessica is
a zombie. Back at the Holland plantation Paul demands to know where Betsy and
Jessica have been all night. She confides the truth and Paul is sincerely
touched by the gesture; Betsy now revealing she is hopelessly in love with
him. Meanwhile, the voodoo ceremonies
begin to take on a more insidious tone; the creation of an effigy of Jessica
beckoning her to return to the woods. Carrefour appears the next evening,
intent on carrying Jessica back into the jungle. To what purpose? We are never
certain, as the moment is thwarted by Betsy’s quick thinking, Paul confronting
the zombie, and finally, Mrs. Rand shouting a stern command for Carrefour to
retreat into the forest without his victim. The next afternoon, Paul is
informed by Dr. Maxwell that the local magistrate intends to conduct an
investigation into the family’s past, sure to dredge up the sordid past between
Wesley and Jessica. Mrs. Rand intervenes, revealing it was she who caused
Jessica’s condition. Desperate to keep her family together after learning of
Jessica’s affair with Wesley, Mrs. Rand pleaded with the Houngan to turn her
daughter-in-law into a zombie as punishment. When she returned home, stricken
with her own shame and disbelief for having been so utterly wicked in betraying
the girl, Mrs. Rand was to discover too late how a mysterious fever had already
laid its claim to Jessica; her prophecy ostensibly fulfilled.
Naturally, Dr.
Maxwell thinks both this cause and effect a mere coincidence, ascribing no blame
to Mrs. Rand for her evil thoughts. As the Houngan’s hypnotic ceremonies
intensify, Wesley begs Betsy to put an end to Jessica’s suffering with a mild
poison. He really does care for Jessica. Remarkably, Betsy is not shocked by
this request, though she refuses to fulfil it. Wesley apologizes, but now
points to the fact Betsy is very much in love with Paul; a union that cannot
come to pass while Jessica lives, even in her semi-conscious ‘undead’ state. Realizing
now what must be done, Wesley kidnaps Jessica from her bedroom, carrying her into
the rippling surf. He is pursued by Carrefour but to no avail. Wesley and
Jessica are deliberately drowned, their bodies pulled from the rough seas by
local fishermen a short while later and carried back to Holland House where a
distraught Mrs. Rand, Paul and Betsy await them. A local cleric’s prayer is heard
condemning the evil done to Paul by the sinful lust Jessica and Wesley shared;
absolving Paul of any wrong doing and thus freeing him to pursue Betsy; the two
likely to depart San Sebastian forever for parts unknown.
The finale to I Walked With the Zombie is, at once,
one of the most apocalyptic and uncharacteristically hopeful of any featured in
a Val Lewton horror classic. Like the end of Cat People, the spell and reign of terror plaguing the lovers is
broken; set free of an eternal curse that has thus far wronged and kept them
apart. However, unlike Cat People, and despite its box office success, I Walked With A Zombie did not warrant
a sequel. The picture was a sizable hit for RKO, confirming for all that
Lewton’s deeply disturbing visions were right on the money in tapping into the
public’s fascination with the supernatural. In the few short years Lewton had left to
pursue such projects with near autonomy, he became increasingly morose in these
screen depictions. With each subsequent incarnation, the investment of Lewton’s
psychological horror began to wear even more oppressively on his own psyche.
When RKO head and staunch Lewton supporter, Charles Koerner unexpectedly died
in 1946, the studio’s upper management incurred a seismic shakeup in its
creative personnel. Believing the time had passed where the public would be
willing to accept any more bleak and apocryphal tall tales of the supernatural,
the new president effectively allowed Lewton’s contract to lapse without even
the possibility of renewal.
Bitter and unemployed,
Lewton would make several comebacks; first at Paramount, then MGM. But he no
longer held absolute dominion; his scripts, heavily revised and subservient to
the whims of executives who believed they knew better than he what would sell
to the public. By 1950, Lewton had had
enough of working for somebody else, entreating his one-time protégés,
directors Robert Wise and Mark Robson to join him on an independent venture. It
might have worked, except that a personal disagreement and creative differences
caused Wise and Robson to side together, effectively ousting Lewton from the
equation. Ultimately, the project languished until Universal elected to buy up
the property. Although Lewton would receive a producer’s credit on Apache Drums (1951), he did not
participate in its evolution beyond these preliminary stages. Lewton might have
gone on working, as producer, Stanley Kramer had tendered a lucrative offer to
employ him for a new film franchise over at Columbia. Alas, it was not to be; Lewton
suffering an attack of gallstones, almost immediately followed by two major
heart attacks. He died before year’s end at the unremarkable age of forty-two.
As something of a homage, MGM would release The Bad and The Beautiful one year later with Kirk Douglas playing
a B-unit producer, the parallels in Charles Schnee’s screenplay transparently inspired
by the follies that had dogged Lewton’s own life and movie career.
Today, I Walked With A Zombie continues to
hold a hallowed place among horror aficionados; voted the 5th best
zombie movie ever made in a recent poll and frequently in the top ten since it
was rediscovered on late night television by a whole new generation in the
early 1980’s. Lewton would likely have taken great pride in knowing his legacy
has remained in tack and very much grown in reputation in the 70+ years since.
Regrettably, the Lewton classics have not fared well on home video. In 2002,
Warner Home Video gave us a box set containing all 9 of the Val Lewton RKO
horror classics on DVD. The results were far from stellar. In fact, virtually
none had been given the necessary restoration and clean-up. In the interim,
age-related debris and damage had taken their toll on these masterpieces. But
Warner’s efforts were, to put it mildly, deplorable. Not only did most of the
features suffer from telecine wobble and a greenish tint, but the age-related
artifacts built into these prints were compounded by some truly hideous digital
anomalies. In the case of I Walked With
A Zombie, severe edge enhancement marred a good many scenes, wreaking havoc
on all horizontal shadows created by the bamboo blinds and adding an overall
image instability that rendered a goodly portion of this feature distracting and un-watchable.
Now, comes yet
another wrinkle with the release of I
Walked With A Zombie on Blu-ray; no, not from Warner Home Video, but a
little known Japanese distributor, IVC – the discs only available through
Amazon.co.jp and at a hefty price tag of roughly $45 (that’s well over $60 for
Canucks like me). It is difficult, if not downright impossible to justify
spending this much on single deep catalog titles, particularly as the IVC
release of I Walked With A Zombie is
not anywhere near up to snuff for what any hi-def release ought to be. For lack
of a more complicated understanding of how the RKO video library has fallen
into ‘public domain’ overseas, we refer to Warner’s own counterintuitive
disavowing of these region free Blu-ray releases, citing that “Distribution rights to RKO films in Japan
were sold off years before we ended up owning that library. We have no
knowledge of what is being released there. We can only state that it does not
involve the use of our original elements.”
Fair enough, I
suppose, except that even using less than perfect reference materials to cull
this new HD master, the IVC Blu-ray release of I Walked With A Zombie easily bests Warner’s embarrassingly sub-par
effort. So for die hard fans of this Lewton masterpiece, and others soon to
follow it from Japan, this newly created - and 'region free' HD master will have to suffice. In
actuality, I was modestly impressed by how good this disc looked. Not only does
it eradicate virtually all of the aforementioned digital anomalies that plagued
the Warner release, but the greenish tint and telecine wobble are gone. This
new remastering effort also offers us a fairly clean image with minimal
built-in dirt and scratches and some mild water damage. But overall the image
is considerably sharper without having been artificially enhanced. Too bad,
like IVC’s earlier release of The
Magnificent Ambersons, I Walked With
A Zombie’s biggest flaw is its less than perfect contrast.
Everything here
falls into a mid-grade register of B&W tonality. Shadow delineation is poor
to non-existent. As such, there is an anemic quality to this HD presentation,
although certain scenes do impress, most are flat and uninspiring.
Interestingly, the image does not appear to suffer from boosted contrast and
overall, fine detail is superior to anything yet seen. I am fairly certain I Walked With A Zombie on Blu-ray does
not look anything like it did when the movie had its premiere, and yet, with so
much basic improvement over the old Warner SD release, I am more than a little
ambivalent about discounting it entirely as a viable alternative to the mess
that is Warner Home Video’s DVD. The
audio on the Blu-ray is 2.0 PCM and actually quite solid with minimal hiss and
pop. Of course, we lose the commentary track that came with the Warner release;
the IVC’s only extra, a double-sided fold-out poster printed in both English
and Japanese.
Like The Magnificent Ambersons before it,
this disc was a test run for me. I do not know if I will be committing to
others for two reasons – first, the stifling cost to import them over here, and
second, because the quality isn’t exactly setting the world afire. Yes, I want Cat People, Suspicion, She Wore A Yellow
Ribbon, and, the host of other RKO deep catalog titles already advertised
by IVC as part of their upcoming lineup to add to my hi-def home video
collection; but not simply to own them in another disc format; rather, to
improve upon the overall quality of the editions I already own. In all honesty,
I Walked With A Zombie has not
looked any better on home video. Even with all its flaws, the IVC edition is
the one to own. That isn’t saying much and I would sincerely encourage Warner
Home Video, or the Warner Archive to get busy reissuing these Val Lewton
classics in hi-def on this side of the pond. Since they own better archive
materials the resulting discs could only be an improvement, n’est pas? Bottom line: recommended for now, but with
multiple caveats.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
4.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
3.5
EXTRAS
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