Revolt of the Zombies (1936), dir. Victor Halperin, Victor & Edward Halperin Productions
The Halperin's had a most unusual trajectory in Hollywood. 1932's White Zombie was a hit and brought the concept of the undead to the American popular culture. 1933's Supernatural was groundbreaking in its own way and might be a review here at some point. So why not look at those two and ignore everything that made them work?
The Great War rages on and men are being turned into pulp by machinegun fire and other instruments of death. The French are so badly stretched across the Franco-Austrian front that they start drafting folks from their overseas colonies.
One unit in particular is worth mentioning. Hailing from Cambodia, the men are silent and sullen and only obey their commanding officer, Tsiang (William Crowell). He's an odd one, acting more like a priest than a proper CO. Interpreter Armand Louque (Dean Jagger) brings some startling news. Tsiang IS a priest-a voodoo priest to be exact.
Yup, those men are zombies. General Duval (George Cleveland) dismisses this as poppycock at least until he sees them taking an entire enemy trench by themselves, mostly by ignoring the bullets tearing through them.
This disturbs the general, so much so he contacts General von Schelling (Adolph Millard) of the German army for a secret meeting. The German is equally disturbed and so they both conspire against Tsiang. The plan is to secretly imprison the man forever. Colonel Mazovia (Roy D'Arcy), von Schelling's 2nd in command, opts to make that imprisonment more permanent than anyone assumed and kills the priest, opting to steal a very important looking scroll off the dead man's hands.
Both generals declare that such a secret can't remain in the world of man, so they opt out of the war and relocated to Cambodia to search for the zombie spell. Along with their troops and assorted natives, they are also bringing along the following:
Professor Trevissant (E. Alan Warren), the leader of the civilian side of things, an expert on Cambodia.
Clifford Grayson (Robert Noland), general adventuer and assistant to the professor.
Claire Duval (Dorothy Stone), General Duval's daughter, because we needed a female lead?
From there you can forget the zombies as Halperin opted for a soap opera. Claire only has eyes for Grayson so naturally she flirts with and dates Louque and accepts his marriage proposal. When Grayson decides he fancies her, so she dumps Louque like a bad habit.
The party gets run off by angry natives, but Loque ignores his heartache and slips back under the cover of night to infiltrate the temple and steal away the secret. Pity this gets him fired by General Duval. Can't have a man disobeying orders, you know.
By this point, Louque has had quite enough of the Duval clan and has in his hands a way to make a zombie army.
Pity that doesn't happen. They somehow make it a point that the people are hypnotized, not dead (then what about the troops?) and we're asked to hate Louque even though his grievances are pretty understandable. They also use Bela Lugosi's eyes for shots, even though Jagger looks nothing like him. Just a terrible, terrible film overall.
The zombie, at least the folklore version, would continue on through the 40's but purely regulated to the b side of things. It would take a miracle to makes the zombie a thing of terror after this...
No comments:
Post a Comment