Horrorfest 2010: The Beyond

Here's another Italian horror flick -- THE BEYOND. This time directed by Lucio Fulci. Back when I was obsessed with George Romero in high school I made sure to watch ZOMBIE, probably Fulci's most famous movie. I haven't seen it since, but at the time I was less than impressed. It had good makeup and a couple of memorable scenes but was lacking in almost every other aspect of good storytelling.

THE BEYOND is kind of the same way, unfortunately. Apparently a lot of horror buffs say this is Fulci's best flick. Well, if this is his best one, then I guess I'm just not a Fulci fan.

To be honest, it was difficult to even make heads or tails of the story. Fans of the movie will probably tell you that's because this movie is super deep and meaningful with lots of symbolism that outweighs such trivial things as plot, story, character development, dialogue. Hell, there are movies among my favorites I'd tell you that about. I'm NOT one of those guys who always needs a solid story, for instance. Sometimes it's cool to just sit back and let the images wash over you. In this case, I'm afraid there's just no "there" there. There's nothing to get. I'll tell you why in a minute.

Let me try to summarize: the story, what little there is, involves a hotel in Louisiana that sits on one of the seven doors of death (or gates to hell, they seem to be interchangeable). It has been abandoned for decades, but a woman Catriona MacColl) inherits the place and begins renovations, hoping to open it for business again. Unfortunately the renovations awaken the various ghosts and demons that lurk around the hotel, and pretty much everyone who goes in there to work on it ends up dead. Then, they rise from the dead. So, the undead tally keeps going up. My favorite was Joe the Plumber. Yes, there's a guy named Joe the Plumber. The movie was ahead of its time.

Other key characters include a blind woman (Cinzia Monreale) who says she has extra sensory abilities and seemingly knows a little bit of the backstory of the place, which we see in a pre-credits flashback. This chick may or may not be a ghost. Which, I guess, means her seeing eye dog may or may not be a ghost dog. There's also a square jawed, be-stubbled doctor (David Warbeck) who, aside from being a love interest, spends his time doubting all the supernatural goings on.

Okay, so I said most of the key elements that make a good movie are lacking in this one. What's good about it? Well, the gore. From what I've read, I'm pretty sure the amount of gore in the movie is its only claim to fame. There's a lot of it. Some of it is better than others, but it's at least always creative. The film spends so much time lovingly examining every single second of every single murder scene that it would actually be interesting to time them out and see just what percentage of the film actually involves what I'll call "story scenes" and what percentage involves "gore scenes." Unfortunately I'm too lazy to actually do that.

To give you an idea -- people get nailed to walls and melted with quicklime. One guy has his face eaten by tarantulas. Someone else is mauled by a dog. Almost every death involves eyes popping out of their sockets in one way or another. What with all the blind characters in the movie and all the eye balls flying around, you might think Fulci is trying to make some kind of point. Or, maybe he's just capitalizing on his most famous scare from ZOMBIE which involved a girl getting a splinter in her eye.

The sound design is also a strength, but it is so overdone it borders on being a weakness. One of the most fun things about the DVD I watched was the overactive Dolby 5.1 mix. It gave my stereo a workout the likes of which it rarely sees, which I appreciate quite a bit. But, since 5.1 didn't exist back when the film came out, this is kind of an "after the fact" change to the film. Still, the sound effects themselves are interesting, although sometimes so imaginative as to be totally incongruous. For instance, shots of tarantulas walking across the floor are accompanied with what sounds like vigorously cracking knuckles and mouse squeaks. Similarly, a scene where the doctor pats the leading lady on the head is accompanied by an overly exaggerated "thud."

Towards the end of the film, Fulci goes for kind of a last minute grasp at some kind of transcendental, or maybe existentialist, meaning. The dream-like, stream of consciousness energy of the editing and the visuals has hinted at something like this all along, but when we get to the big philosophical payoff, it's too little too late. You get the feeling Fulci is trying to rise above the material and make this the zombie equivelant of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY or APOCALYPSE NOW. Those flicks might leave viewers scratching their heads, but it's a good kind of head scratching. This one. . . I guess it's just kind of a cynical and empty head scratching.

Here's the reason this movie can't work the way it wants to. It's ABOUT gore. It's not a film that just happens to have gore in it. That's what the movie wants you to believe, and that's what the movie's devoted fans probably want you to believe as well. But unfortunately, that's simply not true. Everything in this movie is in service of just making sure there is one prolonged gore scene after another. Are the scenes good in and of themselves? Yeah, I guess they're about as good as you can make a gore scene. Does that forgive the rest of the movie's weaknesses? No.

While I was watching the movie I kept thinking about porn. No, not because gore is hot. Because the movie is similar to a pornographic movie. In a porn movie, everything is secondary to the actual sex. The sex takes center stage. If the movie has a story, or characters, or even special effects, the sex comes first. As soon as a sex scene starts, you drop everything and don't expect the plot to resume for another 20 minutes or so. When it does, it's more than ready to totally drop everything again for yet another sex scene. At a certain point you think, if all this story is getting in the way, why bother at all? Why not just wall to wall sex? I mean, the movie is ABOUT sex, right?

Even if the movie has ambitions (or pretensions) beyond just being another run of the mill porn movie, it still has to stop and be a slave to the sex. That's why whenever you hear people say stuff about how DEEP THROAT or THE DEVIL IN MISS JONES, or whatever, were actually good movies, you know they're full of shit -- most audiences, even fans of sex films, won't stop to watch these movies in their entirety, so they can go down in history as better than they actually were without opposition, simply because they were better RELATIVE to all the other crap out there.

Same here. Few filmgoers outside of horror buffs will sit through all this gore in the first place and the ambitions (or pretensions) of the movie are slightly more impressive than what you might find in a similar gorefest, so the movie goes down in history as being greater than it actually is when in reality it's just more interesting RELATIVE to all the other crap out there.

But, as long as the movie is a slave to its gore scenes and everything else comes second, it's only a matter of time before you say to yourself, "Why even bother with story?" And the second you ask yourself that, you know the movie's not working.

Horrorfest 2010: Misery

And now the newest movie on the list so far, MISERY. I remember seeing parts of this one when my mom and sister rented it back when it first came out, but I can't say I ever watched the whole thing until now.

The first thing that's interesting is the opening credits -- it's a virtual who's who of Hollywood royalty! Rob Reiner, William Goldman, Stephen King, Kathy Bates, James Caan, Richard Farnsworth, Barry Sonnenfeld. Even Lauren Bacall is in this thing!

Next, I was blown away that the premise was set up so quickly. Caan is in Bates' house with broken legs within minutes. Now that's movie-making, folks. No bullshit.

Anyway, quick synopsis -- James Caan plays Stephen King's favorite kind of protagonist -- a writer. He's sick of writing sappy period piece romance novels (the "Misery" series) so he's killed off his heroine in the most recent book and moved on to write something really personal. For the first time, he's looking forward to publishing something he's proud of. Unfortunately, the day he finishes his new novel (which he wrote in a secluded mountain resort just like THE SHINING), he ends up in a blizzard induced car wreck.

Kathy Bates comes to his rescue, pries him out of his car, and takes him back to her secluded mountain house where she conveniently has the means to take care of his horribly broken legs (and other injuries) because she's an ex-nurse. As he comes to, she reveals that she's his number one fan, absolutely loves the "Misery" series, and plans to get him to the hospital and contact his agent and daughter as soon as the roads clear up and the phone lines are working again.

Only, it seems like there's always an excuse why the roads are still blocked and the phones are still down. Eventually, Bates' character becomes completely cracked when she realizes Caan has killed off her beloved literary heroine Misery, and sets about not only holding Caan hostage until he writes an appropriate new sequel bringing her back to life, but also inflicts both physical and mental torture on the man as she fluctuates wildly between a sweet natured, innocent and almost sympathetic personality and an unapologetic sadistic beast.

I say almost sympathetic because part of the genius of Bates' performance is the way she's able to telegraph the complete insanity of this woman even when she thinks she's acting normal. That's what's most frightening about this character, to me -- she's so out of touch that she doesn't even realize how transparent she is. She's so entrenched in the passive aggressive world of keeping up appearances that it doesn't occur to her that she might come off as odd to others. Sure, she pays lip service to some self awareness, claiming she realizes her temper tantrums probably have forced her into seclusion over the years, but as we near the end of the film we realizes she has a lot bigger problems than a quick temper, so even this acknowledgement comes off as totally deluded.

A lesser performer, I think, would have literally swung between nice and mean. I could see the same movie being made where it's much more about a split personality -- where the character is 100% perfect one minute, and 100% evil the next. This wouldn't be as believable to me, and the less believable it is, the less scary it is, in my opinion. So, again, that's why Bates is so good. When she's acting "sane" she's psycho, and when she's acting psycho, she's psycho. Kind of like Anthony Perkins in, well, PSYCHO.

The script uses little character details to underline this behavior, my favorite being Bates' character's aversion to swearing. She reads part of Caan's manuscript that he's so proud of and all she can do is say how disappointed she is in the language. Later, in other scenes, when she becomes enranged, she can't bring herself to use any actual profanities and instead uses half baked semi-polite substitutes like "Cock-a-doody." Not only is the contrast between someone willing to put another human through so much pain and someone who won't even say a bad word insane in and of itself, but it has the benefit of reminding us of people we actually meet in day to day life. There's something disturbing about those types, you know the ones -- who seem to care more about the moral implications of their appearance rather than the moral realities of their every day lives.

This is purely anecdotal, but I even met a guy once, who, without a hint of irony explained to me, "God doesn't care what you do. He only cares what you say."

I kind of apply to the other school of thought, the one that makes Atticus Finch such a good guy in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD -- he's the exact same guy out in public as he is behind closed doors.

But, I digress:

Even though the plot sounds pretty grim, what with all the hostage taking, torture and madness, the movie is also light enough to offer moments of comic relief and in fact is so slickly produced that it never quite reaches the heights of depravity that a lower budget production might go for. Richard Farnsworth, in particular, is good in his scenes as the local law enforcement, always effortlessly projecting friendly charm. Like most Stephen King works, there's enough quirkiness here to keep us out of the reach of cookie cutters.

Aside from Bates' performance, I guess the best thing about this movie is the way King is able to create a unique story from common nightmare elements shared by most everyone at some root level. There's the fear of doctors and medicine, the fear of an "evil mother" figure, the fear of pain itself. Caan is betrayed by the woman who at first seems to be taking care of him, and also betrayed by his own body which rages with pain at every escape attempt.

Overall, it's the fear of being helpless that is so expertly exploited in this movie. And when you're helpless you don't want Kathy Bates looming over your bed.

Horrorfest 2010: Les Diaboliques

This is another one I've heard of a bunch but never actually watched until now, another French horror film: LES DIABOLIQUES. It turned out to be one of those film experiences that are sometimes a little too rare, where you really don't know exactly what you're getting into as the movie unfolds. All I knew going into it was that it was about two women who conspire to kill a man who has wronged them. After that, I had no idea where it would go.

More specifically, the two women are Christina (Vera Clouzot) the fragile, weak and religiously obsessed owner of a boarding school and Nicole (Simone Signoret), a teacher at the school who seems to be tough and street wise. Christina is married to the headmaster of the school, Michel (Paul Meurisse) and Nicole is having an affair with him. The affair is no secret. Neither is the abuse Michel deals out to both women. Rather than being enemies, the two women bond over their mutual hatred and desire to escape from Michel, who runs the school with the same iron fisted sadism he uses against his wife and mistress. They hatch a meticulous plan to lure Michel away from the school and murder him, securing alibis for themselves and ultimately making the death look like an accident.

Most of the first half of the movie deals with the women putting this plan into action and the suspense and thrills come from wondering if the women will be able to go through with it, whether or not the plan will work out the way they want it to, and of course, whether or not they'll get caught. But by the time they've carried out the plan, only half of the movie has gone by, so you begin to realize this movie must have something else up its sleeve.

That's when the body disappears.

So -- I don't want to give away much more than that, other than the fact that the rest of the movie deals with the women spiraling into feverishly paranoid and guilty states as they attempt to figure out what's going on. Is this something supernatural? Did they not kill him? Is someone trying to blackmail them? At one point a retired detective (Charles Vanel) shows up, claiming that he's voluntarily looking into the case. Is he really trying to help, or does he have more sinister motives? And how much does he know?

Anything is possible up until the last few seconds of the movie, which is part of what makes this film so great. That last half hour or so builds so much tension and keeps so many questions unanswered and so many possibilities alive that even when you see some of the final chilling imagery, you're still not sure what's going on -- even if you know enough to be scared.

LES DIABOLIQUES has the interesting honor of being both inspired by Hitchcock while also having been said to inspire Hitchcock himself. You can see why, while watching the movie -- the themes Hitchcock loved are all there: the messiness of crime and murder, the fear of the unknown, characters building their own paranoid and guilty prisons in their heads. Like Hitchcock's characters, the characters in LES DIABOLIQUES simply too wrapped up in their own heads to be able to carry off a perfect crime.

Horrorfest 2010: Witchfinder General

For most of the short running time of WITCHFINDER GENERAL, I kept thinking, "Is this really a horror movie?"

I even double-checked my list to make sure WITCHFINDER GENERAL was on there. Maybe I was confused and had it on some other mental list of movies to watch and decided it must be a horror movie based on the title? But no, it was on my list. Definitely part of Horrorfest.

It seemed like more of a swashbuckler to me, at first, as the hero rode to the rescue -- yes, it deals with witch hunts in the mid 1600s in England. But, not from a supernatural angle. In fact, there's nothing supernatural in this film at all. It takes the firm stance that none of these people were actually witches and that the witch hunters were full of shit and motivated by money and power rather than any desire to do God's work.

As I read up on the movie, I see that it must be considered a horror movie because of the torture scenes. Self-titled "Witchfinder General" Matthew Hopkins (Vincent Price) travels the English countryside with his demented assistant Stearne (Robert Russell) torturing and killing accused witches in exchange for money and favors. The film lingers on the torture scenes, but they didn't seem too sensational to me until I considered the fact that the film is from 1968 and although it wasn't unusual at the time to feature blood and violence, it was unusual to focus specifically on the torture aspect for entire scenes. So, the film is a horror film when considered in context.

Hopkins and Stearne torture and kill a priest (Ruper Davies) whose niece (Hilary Dwyer) is engaged to be married to a soldier (Ian Ogilvy) who is fighting for the parliamentary side of the English civil war. The chaos and unrest caused by the war itself has partially given Hopkins and Stearne their opportunity to take advantage of local villagers in their witch hunt.

In the process of executing the priest, Hopkins coerces the niece into sleeping with him in exchange for sparing her uncle's life. The out of control Stearne rapes the girl, Hopkins goes back on his word, and the engaged soldier is blinded with rage at what has happened to his bride to be and vows revenge on the witch finders.

The movie reaches a little more depth than might be expected by avoiding any forays into the supernatural realm and steering clear of a heroic, happy ending. Hopkins is seen as nothing more than an opportunistic, evil charlatan preying on the weak and the young soldier, Marshall, starts out heroic but descends into bloody madness as he realizes there's really nothing that can satisfy his desire for revenge. This is a little more philosophically complex than your average revenge fantasy in which we all agree to look the other way and pretend an eye for an eye actually does some good.

Most of the strength of the film rests on the shoulders of Vincent Price's authoritative and arrogant performance as the titular character, but Robert Russell also deserves some credit for his performance as the twisted assistant, Stearne.

Again, reading up on the movie, I was surprised how much of it is based in actual fact -- there really was a guy named Matthew Hopkins who traveled around with an assistant named Stearne. He called himself the Witchfinder General and used many of the methods of torture and execution depicted in the film.

Of course, the real Hopkins and Stearne retired peacefully and were not murdered in the name of vengeance. They weren't hunted by a vigilante soldier but were denounced by prominent citizens, politicians and clergy men throughout their careers.

When it comes to the movies, I prefer the ax wielding soldier out for revenge.

Horrorfest 2010: White Zombie

I tried to watch WHITE ZOMBIE for Horrorfest last year but I couldn't get past the poor sound quality of the print used on the version I was watching. I gave up about twenty minutes in and wasn't happy about it, because it had looked good so far.

This year I decided to give it another try and just stick with it regardless of the sound quality -- I figured it was good enough to at least get the basic point of the movie, and the movie itself is only a little over an hour long.

Anyway, it was good -- I've read several negative reviews of the movie mostly mentioning how bad the acting is. I didn't really notice because I was busy paying attention to Bela Lugosi, who plays the villain, and he was great.

This flick came out about 30 years before PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES but they have a lot in common. While PLAGUE featured a voodoo master who had recently returned from Haiti, WHITE ZOMBIE takes place entirely in Haiti. Lugosi plays a voodoo master with a badass name: Murder Legendre. Decent. Aside from being a voodoo master, he also runs a sugar cane mill. So, his voodoo powers come in handy as he makes people rise from the dead, enslaves them, and then puts them to work in the mill. Again, kind of like the dude in PLAGUE who had the zombies working in his tin mine. I think modern zombie movies should go back to that theme of using zombies as slaves. It's a nice angle.

The plot involves a young couple who are about to be married (John Harron and Madge Bellamy). They've been invited to have their wedding at the Haitian plantation of the wealthy Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer). Beaumont has ulterior motives, however -- he's in love with the bride to be. In a last desperate attempt to win her, Beaumont turns to Legendre in the hopes that some voodoo love spell can be used on her. Legendre's suggestion is much more sinister: why not kill her and bring her back as a zombie slave. Then, she'd be Beaumont's to do with as he pleases. Beaumont reluctantly agrees.

The rest of the plot involves putting this plan into action, and the efforts of the groom and a local missionary (Joseph Cawthorn) to rescue the bride to be from Legendre's creepy castle stronghold.

The movie is interestingly shot and has some pretty sweet music selections. The visual compositions can be a little confusing at times, maybe because of the not so great source material. It's my understanding WHITE ZOMBIE was considered a "lost" film at one point, so I guess DVD manufacturers are working from whatever battered prints they can find instead of original source material. This might be partially because, unusually for the time, WHITE ZOMBIE was actually an independent production made outside of the studio system. A lot of times it gets lumped in with the classic Universal horror films, for a few reasons -- it's from the same time period where Universal horror was at the height of its popularity, it stars Universal horror icon Bela Lugosi, it was made on several left over sets from Universal classics like DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN, and Universal legend Jack Pierce did the makeup.

The zombie stuff is definitely creepy. Again, they're not exactly the zombies we're used to today. They're brought back from the grave with voodoo magic, and don't seem to have a hunger for human flesh. They're able to perform menial tasks as long as their master commands them to via mind control. They have creepy blank expressions but don't seem to decompose and rot like modern zombies.

The whole dynamic of zombies walking and operating along with normal people is disturbing. In one scene, Beaumont goes to see Legendre in his sugar cane mill, and he's picked up by a horse and buggy. He gets in the passenger seat, and then is creeped out when he looks over and sees the coach is being driven by a zombie. From the front steps of the plantation, the bride and groom can look up into the hills and see the zombies walking along at dusk, going about their business. And when Beaumont arrives at the mill, we see the zombies in action, dumbly going about their routine. One falls right into the machinery and no one cares, because they're all zombies.

In the end, the real reason to watch this movie is for Lugosi's performance. Like most movies I've seen him in, he overshadows almost everything else. His character is also the strongest in the script, even though he's basically just completely evil and doesn't have much going on. Still, it's great to watch him recite his lines as he carves a voodoo doll right in front of his next victim, who is slowly undergoing the change from living human to zombie, unable to do anything but sit dumbly at the table and watch Lugosi plot his doom.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, there's a supporting character who I found particularly intriguing -- Beaumont's loyal manservant and butler played by Brandon Hurst. The first time I heard Beaumont say his name in the movie I did a double take -- Silver. His butler's name is Silver. Seriously. I wonder if it's a nickname. After all, the butler's an old guy with white hair. Maybe Silver is a reference to his hair? Or, maybe it's literally his last name. I mean he wouldn't be the first guy in history with the last name Silver. Still, it's funny to listen to Beaumont summon Silver. Especially later on in the action when Legendre is attacking Beaumont and Beaumont needs Silver to save his life. Loyal to the end, Silver grabs a serving tray and goes in for the kill. I loved Silver so much, at the end of the movie as the action was hitting its peak, I was kind of hoping Silver would pop up out of nowhere and save the day like R2-D2 or that carpet from ALADDIN.

Horrorfest 2010: Eyes Without a Face

I don't often think of French films when I think of horror films, so I was surprised to find out EYES WITHOUT A FACE is a French production. Apparently inspired by the success of those kick-ass Hammer films in England, EYES was France's answer to the resurgence of horror in the late 50s and early 60s.

EYES is the story of a doctor (Pierre Brasseur) who is obsessed with his attempts to restore the face of his daughter (Edith Scob). She was injured in a car accident that he caused, and he's using his experimental surgery techniques to try to graft a perfectly good face onto her almost totally obliterated one.

By day, the doctor looks like an upstanding physician on the cutting edge of his profession, lecturing to enraptured audiences about the potential of his experimental surgery ideas. By night, he experiments on a room full of caged animals (mostly dogs) and sends his assistant (Alida Valli) out to capture young women to use as face transplant subjects. Meanwhile, he keeps his daughter locked up in the house and insists that she wear a creepy, featureless mask that only has holes for her eyes.

Most of the plot deals with the doctor's attempts to fix his daughter's face and what all that entails -- all the dead bodies have to be disposed of somehow, and fresh victims have to be picked up. It's a tough job. Meanwhile, his daughter is getting more and more disillusioned with the whole thing and starts to think maybe she'd rather be dead than a constant victim of the doctor's obsession.

Of course, there are some good scares and a lot of suspense -- probably the most spellbinding sequence is the extended surgery scene where we see the doctor perform the transplant in graphic detail. It's not as gory as some stuff that's out there in movies today, but it's turned my stomach to watch the doctor carve into the face with his scalpel and peel back the skin. The movie also plays coy when it comes to showing the deformed daughter's face, so every scene she's in for the first half of the movie has you wondering if they're finally going to do it. When they do, it's not disappointing.

A couple of the people involved in the production went on to become the best in their field. The first thing I noticed about the film was the offbeat music -- ironically a little too "happy" for this kind of film, reminiscent of the famously disjointed score for THE THIRD MAN. Sure enough, when the music title carred popped up, the name listed was Maurice Jarre -- the guy who went on to become famous for movies like LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and DR. ZHIVAGO.

Similarly, the cinematography is beautiful and crisp -- a great use of the contrasts of black and white, with several great scenery shots revealing many background layers to the action. Reading up on the film online, I found out the cinematographer was none other than Eugene Schufftan, famous for later shooting THE HUSTLER, another great example of what you can do with black and white.

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?