The Valley of The Zombies (1946)

Its official, 1946 was the year the zombie officially joined the ranks among bloodthirsy monsters...finally!  I think, for this reason alone, I enjoyed this movie more than any others so far.  Although I didn't have to look away from the tv or hide behind a blanket, it still had some legitimately scary moments.  As the zombie walked towards the camera with a crazed look on his face, I got pretty creeped out.

The writing was good despite some really weird lines.  Ex: "Lets head over to Dr. Maynard's office and see if we can pick up a clue that will lead us to the peculiar party that has a passion for pickling" when a cop is talking about trying to find out who is embalming all the dead bodies that keep showing up.   One other piece of the movie I thought was great, and something I know I'll harp on over and over in this blog, is the music.  It was truly in the classic horror movie style and contributed to the scariness, as it should.  I really don't like to feel happy go lucky or bored to tears during a zombie movie and the music is mostly to blame in those situations. 

The directing also showed much improvement from earlier zombie movies.   During the Great Depression, an independent film production company called Republic Pictures gobbled us various other small companies including Monogram Pictures who brought us Revenge and King of The Zombies.  Thus allowing Monogram's people to continue their zombie movie work.  New in the Hollywood scene was director Philip Ford  who would go on to direct westerns, crime movies, and some episodes of Lassie.  His other genre specialties were pretty evident throughout the movie which included a car chase scene, shootouts, and mystery solving cops with very CSI-like one liners.  Unfortunately, though this was his only zombie movie.

The synopsis was pretty basic.  Theres a crazy guy, Ormond Murks (Ian Kieth), who somehow uses ancient voodoo to turn his own dead body into a zombie.  Or possibly just put himself into the trance-like state in order to reanimate himself later, it was a little confusing despite a very well executed flashback scene in the beginning to explain the plot.  Anyway, he keeps steeling bags of blood from a local doctor's office, gets caught, and is forced to go on a killing spree to get the blood he needs to sustain his zombie life. Then you've got your pretty standard, helpless, pretty nurse whos only role in the movie is to be the love interest to the brave and handsome doctor who is to eventually save the day.  Nurse Susan (Lorna Gray) and Dr. Evans (Robert Livingston) were just silly.  I could have gone for less nurse and doctor and more cops chasing the crazy zombie guy.

As for the zombies in the movie, well, there was only one.  He talks about a place called the Valley of The Zombies where he learned how to turn himself into a zombie using voodoo so he could "appear to be dead, but still be alive".  Why he wanted to do this wasn't explained well and I think he was just crazy.  Up to the late 40s, there hadn't been a zombie that acted on his own accord, they've all been under the control of a master of some sort.  So, when watching this movie all on its own, its not all that great as a zombie movie.  However, its contributed a lot to the evolution of the zombie story; the need for blood, the zombie operating without a master, (spoiler) the zombie actually kills people, and the scary flashes and music which provoked an adrenaline rush.  I'd say without a double this was one of the best, at least in my top two so far.  Definitely see this if you're into zombie movies, and whats better is its less than an hour comitment.

Stats for Valley of The Zombies...
Style of zombie: Classic
Threat to humans: yes
Dead or alive: alive
How they become zombies: voodoo
Other: first zombie movie with a zombie without a master
How to kill them: any way a human can be killed

The Face of Marble (1946)

Before I get started on The Face of Marble, which I had a good enough time watching, I'll explain why this post is so late.  This week I found out that there is a nightmare worse than a zombie apocalypse; the Atlanta Airport.  I was stranded there for a considerable part of my week and had a lot of time to contemplate whether I'd prefer to have my brains eaten by zombies or have an extended stay in the Atlanta Airport.  I decided on the zombies.  At least that death would be quick.

On to The Face of Marble...I must not have the best eye for good and bad film making yet because I was warned to expect something very awful out of director William Beudine but ended up liking the movie.  He was known throughout early Hollywood as One Shot Beudine for always using the first take of a scene, good or bad.  This efficient style gained him a lot of respect during the silent movie era when only one or two reels of film were used per movie.  However when "talkies" were introduced, directors started taking their time to improve the quality of the movie and stopped always using the first take.  In the name of profit, Beudine stuck with this method and it showed in most of his later movies.  This one was no exception but, up until the end when the story began to go haywire, I didn't have any complaints.

Similar to Voodoo Man, this is another zombie movie where the evil doctor is creating zombies for personal gain but he has a soft side that causes the audience to sympathize with him.  Now that I think of it, this movie was almost the exact same thing as Voodoo Man, for the record, I liked Voodoo Man a  lot better.  There is one advancement in zombie evolution when, at one point, the mad Doctor and his assistant experiment on the family dog and turn him into a zombie.  This zombie dog starts eating the neighbors' farm animals which suggests that maybe the human zombies needed to feast on flesh as well.  With no zombie features other than a slow pace and wide eyes, these zombies can also walk through walls in addition to craving farm animals.

John Carradine, who played the mad doctor, did an excellent job portraying an evil tyrant with the occasional soft side.  It was his obsessive love for his dead wife that caused him to experiment with bringing the dead back to life.  He was plagued with his own guilt over doing something immoral all through the movie.  Unlike Lugosi and Karloff, Carradine acted in more that just horror films.  The patriarch of a large Hollywood family (David Carradine's dad and Martha Plimpton's grandfather),  he was best known for playing in movies like The Grapes of Wrath.  He did go through a phase in the 40's-60's where he played in mostly horror films, acting in a grand total of 4 zombie films.

There was a small element of voodoo in the very end which contributed the the whole story falling apart.  It really wasn't necessary to add this when the story line was strong enough with just the mad doctor.  I guess the creators thought it would help get the zombie point across although the word zombie was never actually used in the movie.  It could have been One Shot Beudine just not thinking it completely through because he was trying to be efficient.  The movie wasn't all that bad and, despite it being the first with an animal zombie eating the living, I'd recommend watching Voodoo Man if you're after a mad doctor zombie movie from the late 1940's thats not too incredibly scary. 

Stats for Face of Marble...
Style of zombie: Classic
Threat to humans: yes, and farm animals
Dead or alive: both
How they become zombies: electrocution by a Mad Doctor
Other: first zombie movie with a zombie animal, zombies ate the living in this move as well
How to kill them: any way a human can be killed

Zombies On Broadway (1945)

This movie was just plain delightful!  I didn't imagine myself saying those words at any point during this process and by now you may realize that I have the world's worst taste in movies.  Give me the benefit of the doubt though.  I'm a bit of a sucker for slapstick and this movie had Bela Lugosi doing slapstick with a small monkey.  Hilarious! We're quickly coming to the end of the 1940's zombie movies and I think this one really tops them off.  After a half decade of really awful, horribly rated zombie movies, Hollywood squeezed in a a few more, including a spoof, before taking a long break from the genre that would last into the early 50's. 

Zombies on Broadway opens with a very cheerful scene in a soon to open night club "The Zombie Hut", with dancing girls and gangsters onlooking as ragtime music plays in the background.  During the 40's, gangsters made believable bad guys because prohibition had been repealed in the early 30's leaving gangs to seek out other sources of revenue.  Much of this business would be very likely to happen in the back rooms of nightclubs like The Zombie Hut.  Enter the main characters Jerry (Wally Brown) and Mike (Alan Carney) who have come up with a fabulous publicity stunt to have a real zombie at opening night.  They then introduce to the gangsters their "real zombie" who is a very recognizable actor in gray makeup.  Not buying it for a second, the gangsters threaten Jerry and Mike and send them out to find a real zombie...or else... 

The movie then starts to play like a combination of I Walked With a Zombie and Ghost Breakers because of the setting, actors, and hilarity that the two get into on their quest to find a real zombie.  They head to San Sebastian (RKO's go to zombie destination) to meet Dr. Renault (Bela Lugosi) who is working to create a zombie similar to the local voodoo zombies.  Once they arrive on the island, they're greeted by a local playing a song on a banjo that is exactly the same as I Walked With a Zombie, same actor, same message of eventual doom and all.  None of the locals will acknowledge the fact that there are zombies but, much to their luck, a pretty young singer promises to help them find one if they'll take her back to the states.  All the while, Dr. Renault, with the zombie making hobby, sets out to turn them all into zombies!  It was completely inexplicable how he even knew they were there.

Jerry and Mike, who'd been teamed up in 5 other RKO films to mimic the comedy of Abbot and Costello, get into all sort of shenanigans as they, and their lady friend, enter the jungle to find a zombie.  Unfortunately they're being followed by one of Dr. Renault's zombie slaves who successfully splits them up and kidnaps the girl.  Thankfully, that funny little monkey I mentioned earlier, is there to save the day.  Not too soon though, Mike gets the short end of the stick and becomes Dr. Renault's unwilling test subject and is turned into a zombie.  It was nice of him to take the fall for the girl though.  They eventually escape and, in a scene similar  to Shaun of the Dead, the now foursome, monkey included, need to get past a group of zombies before they can catch their ship.  They act like zombies so they're not spotted and the monkey, with his arms out and eyes wide open, is the very best part of the movie.

Speaking of wide eyes, the actor that played the zombie in I Walked with a Zombie, Darby Jones, is in this movie as well, wide eyes and all.  I hadn't noticed it before but the wide eyes are completely fake (see picture above).  They finally make it back to the states with their real zombie who is unfortunately Mike.  The climax has to get squeezed into the last  minutes of movie which could have been done a lot better.  It seemed like the only reason to have that last 5 minutes was to say there were actually zombies on Broadway.  Up to that point I kept wondering what the title was all about.  All ends well for the group of slapstick gangsters, God forbid we have a zombie movie that ends with zombies still in existence! 

Needless to say, there wasn't much scary happening in this movie but it wasn't really a horror. Though, the same can be said of Zombieland and I couldn't make it all the way through that one in the theater.  RKO, like the genre, was hitting hard times and was about to call it quits forever. All in all, they made many B horrors and just 2 zombie movies.  One of which is still considered among the best of all time.  Its too bad because I'd like to have seen how an RKO movie would turn out today.  Well, heres to you, RKO, for giving us the zombie movie spoof!  As for Zombies on Broadway, I highly recommend you watch this one for yourself.  Not many people would agree with me, but its one of the best so far. 

Stats for Zombies on Broadway...
Style of zombie: Classic
Threat to humans: only when commanded
Dead or alive: alive
How they become zombies: authentic voodoo and potions of a Mad Doctor
Other: first zombie movie to show people pretending to be zombies, first Zombie movie spoof
How to kill them: any way a human can be killed

Voodoo Man (1944)

I'd say this movie did the best job of making a suspensul thriller of any of the zombie movies so far.  However, despite the three big name actors that were in the movie playing the evil trio, it fell a little short of its potential in the end. Bela Lugosi plays Mad Dr. Marlowe (again...yawn) who employs a team of zombie makers, including John Carradine as Toby, the Igor like assistant, and George Zucco as Nicholas, the voodoo priest.  It was pretty clear that Toby was around becasue he was a few sandwiches short of a picnic and he liked to beat on the drums durning the voodoo ceremonies, but Nicholas seemed way too normal to put on a voodoo getup and take part in the madness.  I wasn't convinced they thought his role all the way through and it was probably just a way to get the three actors together in one movie. 

It starts out like any good horror film should; with a pretty girl trapped, all alone, out of gas, and in the middle of nowhere.  Then who should come along to pick her up...the bad guys.  It turns out that Dr. Marlowe is turning young women into zombies in order to transfer their life force over to his dead wife.  Its actually very sweet and Bela Lugosi did a good job making the audience feel sorry for Dr. Marlowe who just wants his wife back.  Too bad his experiment ends in failure and hes kidnapped enough women to make the local police suspicious.  The first victim, Stella, just happens to be a close friend of a Banner Productions screenwriter, Ralph, who is working on a story about the same string of kidnappings and hes determined to find out who took her.  Once this basic story line is out, the movie pushes forward revealing little clues to the characters at a good pace but the audience knows whats happening all along. This is much better than some of the other movies that dump all the information on you right at the beginning or end. 

The local cops were a bit of a joke. It may have just been bad writing though. They're just there to make you scream at the tv (in my case, the computer screen during my lunch break) in anger to try to help solve the mystery.  The sherrif complains at one point that the repeat kidnappings are making his job monotonous and his assistant says over and over that his wife is going to be upset if hes not home for dinner on time.  Yeah, thats exactly what I'd be complaing about if there were women being kidnapped in my jurisdiction!  Other than a last minute assist to the knight in shining armor, Ralph, they were pretty much worthless.  On top of that, the women all dissapear in the exact same location where Dr. Marlowe's house is the only one for miles...how hard is that to solve, guys? 

Although the movie was one of the better zombie movies, the actual voodoo ceremony strayed so far from zombie folklore that you can start to see how the zombie story already started evolving in the 40's.  First, it was a combination of hypnosis, which included close up shots of Bela Lugosi creepy eyes, and voodoo rituals.  The basement where the ceremonies were held also looked super cozy, like their little brother would be sitting on a big couch a few feet away telling them to keep the noise down becasue he was trying to watch tv.  Second, there was Nicholas in his wild voodoo headdress who kept calling out to Ramboona (apparently a voodoo god totally made up for this movie).  The chanting and drums go on and on in the background, especially during the hypnosis scenes and it becomes a bit irritating to the ears after a while.  The zombies, however, are very White Zombie like, with flowing white gowns, pale faces, and blank stares which is very true to the original folklore.   

Back to Banner Productions; they must have been hurting for marketing ideas because it was the weirdest thing that they plugged their name into the movie a good handful of times.  When the mystery is finally solved, Ralph hands his boss, an exec at Banner Productions, a screenplay for a zombie movie starring none other than Bela Lugosi.  wtf?  Hopefully that one would have a lot better music to help convey terror.  I suppose, either way it was worth watching.  Especially for the new ideas that start to play into the zombie story. 

Stats for Voodoo Man...
Style of zombie: Classic
Threat to humans: no
Dead or alive: both
How they become zombies: hypnosis and voodoo of a Mad Doctor
Other: first zombie movie to combine hypnosis and voodoo in the creation of zombies
How to kill them: any way a human can be killed

Revenge of The Zombies (1943)

Admittedly, I had to skip a movie, The Mad Ghoul, because I couldn't find it anywhere. I could, of course, pay for it but, if I wanted to pay to get over my ambulothanatophobia, I'd just throw in the towel and go to a psychiatrist.  Then ater months of yapping about myself and finally concluding that I shouldn't have watched Night of The Living Dead at 6 years old (I already know that) they'd somehow blame it all on my mother which would lead to many more years of therapy.  I'd rather just skip the movies I can't find for free!  The one thing I can tell you about the Mad Ghoul is that it was Universal Pictures first zombie movie and starred George Zucco as a mad doctor who, accidentally, creates a zombie that needs human hearts to survive.  As with King of the Zombies, The Mad Ghoul teeters on the point that zombies desire human flesh and never pushes the audience's limits but settles on a series of heart transfusions instead.

On to Revenge of The Zombies which was a quickly made follow up to King of The Zombies.  It sticks to the same basic storyline we keep seeing in the classics.  Mad Dr. VonAlderman decides to create an "army of the living dead that doesn't need to be fed and can't be stopped by bullets" to fight for the Third Reich.   This created a believable nemesis considering WWII was in full swing and the Third Reich was enemy #1 in the real world.  It plays out a little boring because it is so predictable.  There is no mystery to the Mad Doctor who reveals his intentions in the middle of the movie, spoiling any hope for a climax that existed up to that point.  The characters split off into 4 different groups creating too many sub plots to follow and making the movie a little confusing.  All while Jeff, the servant, is the only one to see any real zombie action. 

Then we have Dr. VonAlderman's zombie wife who just doesn't like to follow orders and starts the  "revenge" part of the story.  It was nice to see the lady zombie as the hero because the rest of the film was pretty sexist.  Who is this writer Edmond Kelso; first racism and now sexism?  I'm not kidding, at one point the secretary states that her boss (VonAlderman) is very patient with her because shes not very competent.  It was completely unnecessary dialogue and who would employ an incompetent secretary when they've got a zombie army to create?  After a confused VonAlderman states "What greater destiny does my wife achieve than to serve me?", he's chased into a swamp by his zombie army led by his disobedient zombie wife to meet his doom.  I actually enjoyed the ending although you knew exactly what was going to happen.  Oh well.  On a side note, if you're ever being chased by zombies, its probably not the best idea to run into a swamp.

Similar to King of The Zombies, this flick included both Mantan Moreland and Madame Sul-Te-Wan as servants.  These two spent the majority of their careers playing the exact same characters they play in both of these movies.  To top things off for him, Mantan Moreland's characters were more often than not a servant named Jeff.  He was a very talented comedic actor but was, unfortunately, type-cast as the often hysterical servant. Audiences just wouldn't put up with that stereotype and his career came to a screeching halt during the civil rights movement.

The movie had some really funny moments when Jeff (Moreland) was in the scene.  It was full of creepy music and eery shadows cast all over the place.  There was a lot more zombie action in this movie than the others and I would have to say, probably the only one so far to make zombies the focus.  Although, there were some love matches in the final scene which were completely nonsensical.  The movie took place over the course of one evening and I have no idea how these people found time to fall in love.  I would say you could probably skip this one but, like I mentioned before, its the only one to really focus on zombies and had some genuinely creepy (not scary) moments that might make it worth your while.

Stats for Revenge of The Zombies...
Style of zombie: Classic
Threat to humans: yes, when they are commanded
Dead or alive: dead
How they become zombies: potions of a Mad Doctor
Other: the zombies howl at each other to communicate
How to kill them: they can't be killed, only released from their spell

I Walked With a Zombie (1943)

The 1940's perfected the mad scientist zombie movie and strayed from true Voodoo which was the focus in the 1930's.  I Walked With A Zombie got back to the roots though and kept strictly to Voodoo lore, more so than some of the movies in the 30's.  It was, perhaps, the most accurate depiction of true zombie/Voodoo folklore so far.  Voodoo ceremonies took place far out in sugarcane fields, freed slaves participated, and it was treated as a native religion rather than something to be afraid of for comic relief. 

I've wondered if it would be good to make a movie that got back to the classic Voodoo but often think its just not relevant to whats happening in the world today. Today, horror audiences expect suspenseful scenes with a terrifying payoff and while this movie could be remade with a lot of producer Val Lewton's suspenseful style, its not the same type of scary that would be captivating today. 

I Walked... is currently being remade by RKO and Twisted Pictures under the title "The Plantation".  The original was said to be based on the novel "Jane Eyre" but you'd have to be slapped in the face with that information to recognize the similarities.  The synopsis of The Plantation seems to be closer to Jane Eyre than it is to the original movie.  I wonder if RKO/Twisted Pictures is just trying to get a piece of the "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" pie.  Those involved in the remake are also known for Jason Goes To Hell and Conspiracy, neither of which did very well.  I don't mean to be critical; I'll definitely watch it but it seems like it'll leave classic voodoo zombie fans still hoping for a true, modern, voodoo zombie movie.

Originally, Voodoo was the religion of natives and/or slaves in Haiti which made zombies an easy monster to convey a negative message about slavery.  Much like infected zombies today are an easy way to talk to the idea of global warming, or capitalism, etc.  Although it is never explicitly talked about in I Walked With a Zombie, the theme of slavery was present right from the beginning.  The main characters were a family with a slave owning past who had fallen on hard times.  A fountain in their courtyard was made with a figurehead from the ship that brought slaves to the plantation in Antigua.  It is seen over and over in the film, every time someone wants to leave the plantation to go into the darkness where voodoo ceremonies can be heard in the distance.

It wasn't a bad movie, actually.  Released the same year as Casablanca, it was a pretty successful poverty row picture.   Lots of movie reviews out there will list this one among the best zombie movies of all time.  Betsy, the main female character is brought to Antigua to nurse the wife of plantation owner, Paul, back to health.  Right away, we can see that she has been zombiefied and know nothing the nurse can do will bring her back.  The movie then focuses on the torment of the family for a while and Betsy starts to come between Paul and his brother.  Later to find out that an earlier love triangle between the brothers and zombie wife, Jessica, has happened before, somehow leading to her current state. 

Because of her strange and unexplained, love for Paul, Betsy decides to find a cure for his wife once and for all and take her to a voodoo ceremony for help.  This leads to some of the most suspenseful scenes of the movie.  As the two young ladies walk through tall sugarcane fields, in the dark, with chanting and music quickly approaching, the camera is positioned above and behind them to make it feel like they are being followed by a large predator.  Very unsettling. 

After a few surprising scares involving zombies, the movie gets back to is focus of the tragedy that has befallen the family and the zombie wife.  I was glad to see the writers gave an explanation of what was really happening.  Like Bowery at Midnight, this story easily progressed from scene to scene and there wasn't a lot on nonsensical bs and comic relief.  I'm guessing this is why it was so successful compared to the other poverty row flicks.

Even though this movie contained some of the scarier scenes of all the zombie movies so far, I wasn't really scared.  The classic voodoo is much more entertaining to watch than the mad scientist movies but it still doesn't pose a huge threat to random people, thus making it less terrifying for anyone who is not commanded to be killed; or the audience for that matter.  I can't really tell, yet, when zombie movies made that transition to everyone being attacked vs. specific victims, but I hope it happens sometime before 1968 in Night of the Living Dead.  We'll all start getting really bored if we have to wait that long.  How did zombie fans make it through the 50's? 

Stats for I Walked With a Zombie...
Style of zombie: Classic
Threat to humans: yes, when they are commanded
Dead or alive: alive
How they become zombies: voodoo
Other: nothing really new here

How to kill them: any way a human can be killed

Bowery at Midnight (1942)

If you're looking for a really great classic zombie movie, this is not the one for you.  If you're looking for a great classic suspense thriller/crime drama, this is right up your alley.  Bowery at Midnight has it all.  With murder, betrayal, damsels in distress, shoot outs, and, okay, a few zombies, it made its way to my top 5 of this project though it wasn't a zombie movie.  To its defense, not many of the early zombie movies focused on zombies, just mad men.  I've compiled a list of zombie movies based on lists from books, websites and Wikipedia that apparently have a very loose definition of "zombie".  Its okay though because this movie was actually very well made. 

It starts out looking a lot like a silent movie with exciting music and no other sound.  The prologue seemed to be shot with an old hand-crank camera; the ones where if you would crank it to fast while filming it would make the actors look like they were running a hundred miles an hour.  This was just the beginning of a very easy progression of scenes that kept me guessing right up to the end.  After seeing the mish-mash of scenes in The Ghost Breakers and some others on the zombie movie list, it was refreshing to see a little development for all the characters involved and none of them were ignored in the end just for the sake of squeezing in one last joke.  This is thanks to the director Wallace Fox who took the time to make sure all the stories didn't just finish but came together smoothly in the end. 

Wallace Fox, who was best known for directing westerns during the 20’s and 30’s, had recently started getting into different genres.  As far as I can tell, he only directed two movies involving zombies and only a few horrors.  He wasn’t much for comedies either although there were a few good one-liners in Bowery.  Unlike the Halperin Brothers (White Zombie and Revolt of the Zombies), Fox’s career didn’t plummet after directing 2 zombie movies.  After the mid 40’s, he got back into directing westerns through the end of his career in the mid 50's. 

The music in the movie could have aided in the horror feel a little more.  There were a few scenes that should have been extra creepy, like when a giant door rolls back revealing a secret cemetery in the Bowery's basement or when a coffin in that cemetery opens revealing a zombie infested, sub basement that, architecturally, made no sense.  I used to watch this old Don Knotts movie when I was a kid called The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, a comedy, but there was a scene where Knotts is walking through a cobweb invested secret passage way with piano music playing in the background and it always freaked me out.  Bowery was a poverty row flick for sure but how much could it cost to buy some cobwebs for the secret passageways?  The music director, Edward Kay, had just received an Oscar nomination for his work in King of The Zombies from 1941 and his music was great during the action scenes but it was too quiet during the horror scenes.  Maybe that got cut from the budget as well.  

Bela Lugosi was a great mad man as usual.  He plays a professor living a double life and proved to be quite a sociopath.  Any remake with today’s standards would probably clue us into an incident from his past that gave him such a disregard for human life but no such luck in this movie.  He killed people so unexpectedly that I believe the writers needed to add a few minor characters just so the professor could kill them and drive home the point that he was a crazy guy.  The cemetery I mentioned earlier, in his Bowery basement, actually contained the marked graves of his victims.  See…crazy.  If that doesn’t say don’t go in the basement, I don’t know what does.   The best part about this mad man, though was that he was a very likeable guy.  Lugosi seemed to be having fun in this role. He played a very versatile character and this could have been an opportunity for him to get into more serious roles but he was about to start taking any role he could get to support his pain killer addiction.  Unfortunately, he was only getting paid about $3,000 per movie in the early 40's and the small roles he was taking ruined his potential.

The movie didn't scare me much.  There were two zombie scenes that put me on edge and it was too bad they were so short lived.  They are definitely getting scarier as time progresses and I'm already starting to get used to not watching them from behind a pillow.  However, if it were to be remade with today's standards, it would scare the h out of me.  I kept focusing on how spooky this story actually would be if that were to happen.   The foreshadowing, character development, dialogue, etc really set it apart from the other zombie movies of its time.  However true this was, it wasn’t a hit in 1943 and its only saving grace was that Bela Lugosi was the star.  I really enjoyed this movie and would definitely recommend watching it.  Even if you need to use a pillow.

Stats for Bowery at Midnight...
Style of zombie: Classic
Threat to humans: only to their original killer
Dead or alive: dead
How they become zombies: mad scientist
Other: when their killer dies, they come back to life (for real)
How to kill them: they can't be killed although I'm not 100% sure of that

King of The Zombies (1941)

Early this morning, before dawn, I was awoken to my apartment building's fire alarm loudly blaring and had to go wait outside in the rain for 30 minutes while the fire department fixed the problem.  When I finally got to go back to bed, I laid there for about an hour realizing that there was a huge hole in my plan to barricade myself in my apartment when the zombie apocalypse happens.  If the zombies have any intellegence whatsoever, they'll know to pull the fire alarm in my building to get people out because no one can live with that noise and I have no idea how to disconnect a fire alarm.  The point of all this is that I spent an hour, wide awake, dreading a zombie attack and we're only on the third movie.  I imagine this will get worse before it gets better. That said, lets move on to the movie...

The opening of this film was great; I can imagine sitting in a movie theater in 1941 watching in nervous anticipation as the pages turn revealing the opening credits.  It was perfectly like a classic movie should be. In the opening scene,the two main characters are piloting a plane and a servant, Jeff, is cartoonishly flipping out in the back seat as the plane starts to go down.  They crash land in a cemetery and I start flipping out right along with him.  You don't know what the types of scares are going to be, they're in a cemetery, there is a spooky house in the background, and our caricature, Jeff, is still losing his mind.  Once they move on from the cemetery and meet some of the other characters, the scariest parts of the movie were the stereotypes and racism.

I know it was 1941 and a very different time, but seriously, Jeff, the main character's black servant just won't stop freaking out; his very white eyes are almost perpetually wide which look nuts amidst the dark scenery.  My jaw dropped quite a few times throughout this movie after seeing some of the things they had the guts to show.  The zombies themselves, classic voodoo servants, were all black.  Refer to picture above, remind you of Roots at all?  This leads me to wonder if they didn't do this on purpose.

Maybe the black zombie servants symbolized the exploitation of the African Americans in the Untied States.  The zombies could not walk freely among the rest of the characters, but were made to stay in the back of the servants quarters, even the non-zombie servants had to stay in the basement.  In the early 1940's, with WWII behind and the industrial revolution ahead, there was a considerable shift in employment among the African American population from agriculture to industry.  This required more skills and responsibility but African American men and women were be compensated only 43%-44% of what their white counterparts were making.  This was also only about a 3% raise in compensation compared to 1900.  That's speaking of compensation alone, not social, educational, housing equality, etc.  So, I theorize that the zombies lack of life was a metaphor for the lack of equality in America at the time.

After a while, the movie became more of a comedy than a horror.  Jeff kept getting drug into horror scenes against his will, saying at one point, "Eyes, if you look, I ain't responsible for nothin' you seez!"  Main character or not, he was the best part of the movie with the brilliant execution of all his silly one liners; exaggerated facial expressions and all.  He ends up with the most scenes, the best lines, and you identify with him the most because of his hesitation to get into situations where you'd potentially run into a zombie.  

Strictly speaking of zombies now, this was the very first one in which zombies wanted to eat human flesh.  You don't see them taking any bites out of people but Samantha, shown in the picture, warns Jeff to keep an eye out at night because the zombies like soft meat.  The story sticks to the Haitian Voodoo by adding that if a zombie eats or touches salt, it will come back to life.  The very end suggests all the zombies have been freed  and are able to go back to their lives before they were hypnotized.  Even if that meant they took several gun shots to the chest in the mean time.  This goes back to that theme of abolishing slavery and promoting equality.

A lot of times what scares me the most in recent horror films is the use of music to build suspense before flashing a scary monster in your face.  This is the reason I have a hard time watching old episodes of Scooby-Doo without getting a little nervous about whats going to jump out from around a corner.  The music was a big part of the scares in this movie as well.  You knew when the drums started pounding at the rate of a heart beat and the trumpets started blaring that the zombies were coming.  Fun.
The writer teamed with Mantan Moreland (Jeff) again in 1943 for a followup to this movie called Revenge of The Zombies and I'm looking forward to comparing the two.  I enjoyed this movie a lot for its witty satire of equality in the US at the time.  Also, for the couple of really likable characters, creepy uncertain feel, and scary looking zombies.  If you can look at this movie from the perspective of someone in the early 1940's and not get too caught up in the racist remarks, you're likely to enjoy it as well.

Stats for King of The Zombies...
Style of zombie: Classic
Threat to humans: yes, they enjoy soft meat
Dead or alive: alive
How they become zombies: voodoo
Other: these zombies eat regular bland food as well
How to kill them: any way a human can be killed

The Ghost Breakers (1940)

We finally made it to the 40's!  I recently watched a Boris Karloff movie called The Walking Dead because one of my trusty internet lists suggested this was a zombie movie.  I disagree.  It was a Frankenstein movie.  Karloff played the original Frankenstein's monster in 1931 and it seems he played a number of similar roles afterwords where a man has been brought back to life to seek revenge on his killers.  I'm pretty open to the idea of adjusting the zombie to keep things interesting, but I just can't wrap my head around the idea that bringing a guy back to life makes him a zombie.  Especially if you're not going to use voodoo.  More on Boris Karloff later because I think he and Bella Lugosi deserve some attention for their contributions to early zombie films.

In the 30's, after the hugely successful Frankenstein and Dracula were made, doors were opened to tons of other horror flix.  It seemed like Warner Brothers were putting out horror flix every 5 minutes but then the 40's began and men were going to war and the audience became mainly women and children who aren't known for being horror film fanatics.  Warner Brothers and other studios might have been a little burned out by that point as well, with over 100 horror films made in the 30's, I would have been bored as well.  As a result, a lot of horror films made in the 40s were horror-comedies.  The first of which was The Ghost Breakers, starring the entertainer of the troops Bob Hope.    

I enjoyed this all around silly movie.  Lawrence Lawrence Lawrence, Larry for short, (Bob Hope) and his sidekick/servant, Geoff (Richard Carleson), were pretty funny.  Their jokes reminded me of jokes your dad would tell you at the dinner table.  Ex...the two are peering into a tomb containing the long dead body of Mary's (Paulette Goddard) great great grandmother and this is the dialogue that follows...
Geoff: Boss, is that a mummy?
Larry: Yes, its Ms. Carter's great great grand mummy!
I'm a sucker for stupid jokes like that and this one cracked me up.

The story is pretty typical. Over-confident Mary inherits her family's plantation in Cuba and is warned by multiple people that she will die if she goes there.  Ignoring the warnings, she sets sail for Cuba.  I don't want to give anything away here because its a good movie to watch but basically the first half of the movie is dedicated to the hilarious way Larry mistakenly gets onto the same boat.  The movie starts to set the stage for the spooky second half with all the warnings and talk of ghosts and death on the island, but the complete lack of music left a feeling of safety.  The first half is full of atmospheric noises like glasses clanking, phones ringing, and chit chatting in the background, but no music.  When they finally do reach Cuba, the background music starts and I took this as a signal to the audience that the characters were no longer safe.   One other element this horror film did that I hadn't seen in other zombie movies, up to this point, was to cast big, heavy shadows on the walls which were especially creepy in the stage setting first half. 

Larry is a self-described Ghost Breaker which means he finds skeletons in closets and uncovers old family mysteries.  Convenient because Mary has a family mystery to solve.  Sparks start to fly between the two after a few close encounters with someone trying to murder Mary.  Larry and Geoff don't seem to be much help despite their profession and it was Mary's supernatural sense that solves the mystery.  Geoff, who was pretty level headed in the first half, turns into mush as soon as he sees a ghost who just climbs out of a tomb in the foyer.  Who buries a guy in a foyer?

Of the multiple dangers they encounter throughout the movie, a zombie is one of them.  It is pretty creepy and I imagine it was even worse for the audience in the early 40's who weren't used to seeing so much makeup on a zombie.  This was the first movie to add that element though they did keep the blank, wide, staring eyes as he moves slowly toward the camera.  I was on edge during these scenes but it wasn't too bad, I made it through.

In true classic movie style, this one ends abruptly with an unexpected hero, a kiss, and a joke.  I guess I'll take that over some of the movies today that end in the middle of all the action.  I'll even take it over those that want to explain every little detail for the last 30 minutes.  The Ghost Breakers was one of the first successful zombie movies and one of Bob Hope's funniest roles.  Like I mentioned before, I recommend watching this silly movie if for no other reason than experiencing Bob Hope's ridiculous "dad jokes".

States for The Ghost Breakers
Style of zombie:  Voodoo, although they're in Cuba
Threat to humans: only when commanded
Dead or alive: alive
How they become zombies: voodoo
Other: First zombie to be heavily made-up
How to kill them: any way a human can be killed

Revolt of the Zombies (1936)

A lot of the reviews you'll read for this movie all agree on one point, it was a horrible movie.  I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that because I shouldn't waste any more space on the web detailing what made it so bad.  The Haleprin brothers, who directed White Zombie just 4 years before making Revolt, didn't have as talented a team to work with and that alone made it less entertaining.  I think it must have started off with a lot of potential and I can see it being remade for today's audience .

The Halperins took a lot of liberties in the zombie story considering their first movie stuck pretty closely to the Haitian Voodoo style.  We've got our next big step in zombie movie evolution here.  In Revolt, the lead character, Armand, finds out the ancient "Indo-Chinese" method of creating zombies (not Haitian at all).  This basically starts with a potion, a command and then he can turn whomever he likes into a zombie.  They don't even have to be near him, he just thinks about it, holds his hand to his forehead, Bela Lugosi's eyes flash on the screen, and you have a zombie (actually, the eyes were pretty creepy).  Armand ends up creating what seems to be hundreds of zombies which would be scary if they weren't all just standing around.  It goes on to explain that they will be used to achieve great things but they never get that far.  Once they're let out of the trance, they go after him for revenge.  It was very anti climatic.  I wanted to see scary zombies breaking the door down and ripping this evil sociopath to pieces (maybe not that would be really scary) but they seemed more interested in taking a coffee break to chit chat.

The movie itself was actually a love story and, strangely enough, I have an irrational fear of those as well. Though I definitely won't be watching every chick flick ever made in chronological order any time soon.  Being forced to live on a zombie farm, awaiting my turn to become zombie food is one thing, but watching a montage of Kate Hudson picking out wedding dresses may push me over the edge for good.

Zombie movies these days may have the social commentary but for the most part, they are about a group of people trying not to be eaten.  They don't often stray from that simple idea.  Back in the 30's the zombies all seem to be a secondary piece of the overall story.  White Zombie was about a guy trying to steal another guy's wife, The Ghoul is about a guy trying to steal a dead guy's jewel, and Revolt is about a guy trying to steal another guy's girlfriend.  These movies are about thieves!  Seriously, though, with so many other new and  interesting monster types to compete with in the 30's it would have been a difficult task to make zombies interesting.  They've always represented something else, some other social problem, and Hollywood just hadn't gotten the handle of the zombie just then. I'm glad Romero finally showed up to tell those guys how its done.

I may regret saying this later but I'm looking forward to watching scarier zombie movies. I thought the classics would be scarier based on my traumatizing experience with Night of the Living Dead  in a basement over 20 years ago.  They're likely to get a lot better in a few weeks after moving past the awful 30's, comedic horror 40s and the paranoia of the 50s. We'll see...I'm going to go make deviled eggs now...

Stats for Revolt of The Zombies...
Style of zombie: we'll call it classic although it wasn't Haitian Voodoo
Threat to humans: only when commanded
Dead or alive: alive
How they become zombies: hypnosis
Other:
How to kill them: any way a human can be killed

The Ghoul (1933)

As we get further along in this process and the movies start showing zombies attacking humans for food and when they're able to take over the entire world, I think I'll start getting more scared.  Probably because this makes it possible for them to show up at my front door.  If some guy, somewhere across an ocean has zombies in the basement doing dishes or if its just one zombie that can't spread a disease, then they're not really a threat to me, thus not really scary. 

This ended up being the case in The Ghoul.  It was the least scary zombie movie I've seen so far.  I'm really not sure if it can even be considered a zombie movie but it was listed on the web as a zombie movie so I had to watch it. The scenery is always dark which lends to the eerie mood as Boris Karloff's character, a rich old professor, comes back to life. Hes lucid though he can't talk and is only concerned with the other characters if they have his prized Egyptian jewel which switches from person to person about ten times throughout the movie.  

The first half, mostly filler, included a lot of overacting.  There were alternating scenes with too much dialogue to explain what was happening and scenes made entirely of what seemed like interpretive dances.  I think it could have used more balance in the dialogue.  Although, at times, some very blunt dialogue was pretty funny.  A train station attendant loudly blurts out "the moon is full!"...really?...I can see its full...but thanks for making dually sure I knew it...I wonder how much you got paid to recite that line...

I did enjoy watching Dorothy Hyson play Betty, the sometimes helpless girl, sometimes powerful heroine who is given the opportunity to execute the quintessential horror movie scream.  She reminded me of Audrey Horn, one of my all time favorite characters from Twin Peaks, whatever happened to her?  Betty's friend Kaney, by contrast, was almost constantly in a state of terror.  I was surprised to see her take a slap in the face by a man and I almost shut the movie off but wanted to see what happened to the dead guy. 

What I really didn't like about this film, is the lack of closure.  The clan splits up mid-movie to either chase after the dead guy, run away from the dead guy, chase after a jewel, or run away with the jewel. I know a lot of old movies are notorious for quickly closing up the story in the last 30 seconds but this movie didn't even bother.  We were left to wonder what happened for three sub stories, while the main story ended with an explosion and a silly joke.  It could have used another 5-10 minutes to bring everybody back together and give it a clean closing.

As for the scariness, it definitely doesn't invoke the same reaction as when I watch The Walking Dead, the AMC show about a band of survivors getting by after zombies have taken over the world  (awesome show by the way).  When that show is on, I'm only able to watch the top 2 inches of the screen because I'm hidden behind a pillow.  Also involved, is a lot of frantic running around the room, screaming at the tv "GET THE H AWAY FROM THERE, HERE COME THE ZOMBIES!".  So, I wouldn't recommend watching The Ghoul even though its not very long and you can watch it for free online.  Maybe if you're having a classic, bad movie night in which case I highly recommend it.

Stats for The Ghoul...
Style of zombie: not really a zombie...hes a ghoul/ghost
Threat to humans: not unless you have his jewel
Dead or alive: dead
How they become zombies: Egyptian curse
Other: he was pretty creepy due to a pre-death skin condition
How to kill them: any way a human can be killed

White Zombie (1932)

Diving into a new project can be daunting and this is going to be a big undertaking but I think its off to a great start. I remember having to watch 13 Ghosts in pieces because I was too scared to watch it all at once.  I do this a lot with horror films.  However, this was not one of those movies.  White Zombie was comparable to a Simpson's halloween episode but for me this means I have to look away from the tv when the story starts to get intense (its a phobia...don't judge).  This is the first in a line of over 300 zombie movies so I don't mind if we don't jump right into the frightening stuff. 

The movie itself was fairly entertaining. The zombies were the classic voodoo slaves brought back to life by Bela Lugosi's character, Murder Legendre.  The story is set in Haiti and the style of zombie is based on the Haitian myth zombies.  Most of the zombies through the 50's were based on Haitian myth until space travel changed them forever; more on that when we get to Plan 9 from Outer Space, another of Bela Lugosi's classics.  There is one scene where the zombies become violent but this is because they are commanded to do so.  Most of the time they just stand around with wide eyes looking very creepy in black and white.

What makes this movie relevant to its time?  Victor Halperin, the director, may have read William Seabrook's 1929 book "Magic Island" which was based on his travels to Haiti and experiences with voodoo. He may have had an interest in making a horror film about the same subject because horror films were a huge hit at the time.  This movie didn't take long to film and reused the set and props from the original "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" which had both recently been made.  Maybe he just wanted to get his feet wet in the horror genre.  Whatever the reason, and even though the movie didn't end up being a hit, I say thank you Mr. Halperin for starting it all!  I look forward to watching the sequel in a couple of weeks.

So far so good, I know there are a lot of really BAD movies to get through before moving on to Night of the Living Dead, eat your brains, zombies but stick with me, it'll be a lot of fun.

Stats for White Zombie...
Style of zombie: voodoo servant
Threat to humans: no, only when commanded to be violent
Dead or alive: dead
How they become zombies: voodoo spells awaken dead bodies
Other: they're able to be turned back into humans if their souls return to them
How to kill them: this can only be done by the voodoo master or if the voodoo master dies