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