 The Plague of the Zombies (1966) As with most Hammer movies, this one features awesome photography and lots of moody atmosphere, though it's a bit slight on the kitsch factor that drives some of Hammer's more over-the-top offerings to backhanded greatness. Mostly it's a good little horror film with no huge scares but with enough paint-by-numbers oogum-boogum to get the job done. Plus, as I've said many times before, any movie in which a fox hunting party crashes into a funeral procession is bound to be at least very cool. Produced back-to-back with the Hammer film Reptile, Plague of the Zombies does reflect the mere 28 days that went into it, but it can't be said that it's a "bad" film on the level of Ed Wood. Really, if it has any negative characteristic, it's just that it comes off like the production-line creation that it is—still, being a 1966 Hammer film, it's automatically going to be visually exciting and worth some attention. Watching these films is like seeing a beautifully designed car from an era when cars were all pretty good and the really good ones were great. Visually, few movies today can touch the cinematography of a Hammer film from the 60s, notable for beautiful colors and interesting set decoration. Many are so enticing on a purely visual level that you don't really notice how stock most of the situations are. This one centers around a rural English village where twelve young men have mysteriously died in the past year, much to the chagrin of the town's new general practitioner, whom the townspeople blame for not saving their loved ones. But more nefarious things are afoot, and every morbid clue seems to lead back to the town Squire and his cronies. It takes the general practitioner's mentor to come to town to shed some light on the demonic forces at play in the countryside—and soon enough, it is revealed that the Squire is practicing voodoo witchcraft!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hokey plotline aside (especially the revelation that the Squire is making all these zombies to staff an underground tin mine—sort of like hiring Lou Ferrigno to be your gardener), Plague is a good zombie movie with lots of atmosphere and great make-up (the zombies are ridiculous, sure, but they look damn cool) and even a few genuinely chilly (not as far as "chilling") moments. Zombies rank fairly high on the list of the Top 25 Monsters with Highest Inherent Comedic Potential, and it's movies like this one that contribute to that idea. I say the zombies should unionize and try to get the media to be more sensitive to their community. "Respect the Undead—For You'll Be One Too Someday" might be a catchy bumper sticker for the movement. Plague was filmed a couple years before Night of the Living Dead redefined the cinematic zombie, but for its old-school depiction it is certainly at the top of its class. Performances range from good (Hammer mainstay Andre Morell as Sir James Forbes, the mentor who comes to save the day) to flat (Diane Claire as his daughter) to laughable (Brook Williams as the town doctor, notably bad especially in the scene where he learns of his wife's death) to zombified (various zombies). The video edition (produced by Anchor Bay Entertainment) is in beautiful widescreen, and adds two trailers at the end which emphasize the voodoo aspect of the film. There's nothing more boring to me than voodoo, except maybe Vietnam veterans, but this movie uses it more as an excuse to have zombies than as a scary element in and of itself. A cool little movie, not "funny bad" or "scary good," but truly enveloping anyway on its own terms, and in any case there's worse ways to spend 90 minutes—like farting.
Review by William W. Joel |