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
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