Horrorfest 2010: Plague of the Zombies

I went into PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES knowing nothing about it. As soon as the credits popped up and revealed it was a Hammer production, I got excited. How can I not get excited after the awesome Hammer production HORROR OF DRACULA? I mean, based on one flick, these dudes seem to have their shit together.

And guess what? PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES was good.

Now. . . here's the thing. I read a review online that said George Romero must have gotten some of his inspiration for NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD from this movie. I guess that's a possibility. Most credit NIGHT with giving the life to the zombie genre that it still has to this day, but some of the articles I read online seemed to point to PLAGUE as the real beginning.

Here's my two cents:

One crucial difference between the zombies in PLAGUE and the zombies made famous by NIGHT who are still famous today is the fact that PLAGUE makes a lot of use of the whole Haiti thing -- there's voodoo involved, magic involved, all that stuff -- and, the zombies do not eat people. Modern zombies are either created by science gone wrong or have no explanation at all and they looooove eating people. They're not created by magic spells. So, sorry, PLAGUE, but you're not the granddaddy of all zombie flicks.

Still, PLAGUE is a good flick -- it's the story of a small town plagued with mysterious deaths. The young doctor in town (Brook Williams) can't figure it out and his wife (Jacqueline Pearce) is on the fast track to being the next victim. So, he summons his mentor (Andre Morell) who travels to the small town with his daughter (Diane Clare) to try to figure stuff out.

The first hour is pretty slow -- there are a couple of good scares, including a scene where a zombie utters an inhuman scream, but for the most part the plot moves along slowly as Morell's character methodically investigates the strange small town. The place seems to be overrun by young men in red coats riding horses through town, hunting foxes. They're bullies and douche bags, this century's answer to the Cobra Kais. When they're not hunting they're disrupting funerals and threatening to rape people. They're great guys.

The Squire is in charge -- as played by John Carson, he's a cold, stern guy who seems to be just a little socially out of touch. He's also recently returned from travels abroad to Haiti and likes to dress up in ceremonial robes and play with dolls. Voodoo dolls. Yeah, that's right -- he's a villainous high priest of a zombie cult. Spoiler alert. He's got these guys rising from the dead and digging in his tin mine -- for free!

Morell, as the mentor doctor who comes to town to figure things out, is about as bad ass as Cushing is as Van Helsing. He doesn't bat an eye at any of the weird shit going on. He just sucks it up and fights some zombies. He even has the courtesy to confront the evil Squire face to face before he's forced to attack covertly.

There are some classic zombie scenes -- one female zombie gets her head lopped off with a shovel, there's a dream sequence where the living dead surround the young doctor, and, as all zombies do, the ones in this picture eventually get out of control and overrun the living.

But, most of the movie is about suspense. It's not an all-out zombie attack from the first frame. In fact, the first hour of the movie is pretty slow. But when that last half hour kicks in, it gets insane. The movie strangely began to remind me of both TEMPLE OF DOOM and LAST CRUSADE -- as the tin mine was infiltrated by our heroes and the zombie slave labor was brought to light, I thought of TEMPLE, especially with the villain specializing in voodoo. Meanwhile, as the villain's study erupted in flames and Morell's character attempted to escape, LAST CRUSADE came to mind.

I wonder if Spielberg has seen this flick?