James Baskett is not looking healthy in 1943’s Revenge of the Zombies. He would be a lot more lively three years later in Song of the South. Then again, there is a good reason the man looks dead tired here. He is, in fact, dead.
Or, given the title, undead. Y’know, not the type of zombie starting with Romero, but the classic kind from White Zombie or I Walked With a Zombie. Basically, they are undead, unpaid labor, doomed to work forever for some kook like a mad scientist played by John Carradine. You just know that, if such a thing were possible in real life, Amazon warehouses would employ them exclusively.
In this picture, the undead laborers on a decrepit southern plantation can be summoned with a gentle and melodic “ahhh-ooooo” call. The strangeness of this element seems better suited to something like a Jacques Tourneur production than something from Monogram Pictures, one of the saddest of the poverty row studios.
The film opens on Baskett summoning the workers, including human skeleton Robert Cherry. I found it interesting this supposedly mindless individual has enough sense to duck under a low doorway. Also, it is telling that Monogram didn’t simply provide a higher doorway from him to walk through undeterred.
Carradine has poisoned wife Veda Ann Borg, with the intention of making her a zombie as well. He has done this to prove to Bob Steele he can make any number of people like this to be unstoppable soldiers in Hitler’s army. The not-good doctor even takes a pistol and shoots her through the stomach as a demonstration. Why he didn’t use any of the five or so other zombies he has is beyond me. Also, I think he should be more careful with the demonstration model since, seeing as to how she’s dead, it isn’t like that wound could possibly heal, and there’s only so many holes you could put into a body. Wait, that sounded weird.
Borg’s brother Mauritz Hugo arrives with government agent Robert Lowery and they investigate Borg’s death and disappearance and reappearance and re-disappearance, and so on. Also with them is their driver, Mantan Moreland, who always makes a movie livelier and more entertaining by his presence.
I am adamant he’s the real star, even if he is fourth billed. He and Baskett, especially, have some good scenes together. Walking up to the car, Baskett says to Moreland: “I drove car like this for master—when I was alive.” You can imagine the inevitable double-take from the driver. Then there’s this exchange between Moreland and Baskett: “I got to go home. I forgot something.” “What did you forget?” “I forgot to stay there.” Algonquin Roundtable wit, it ain’t, but there are several decent chuckles like that to be found here.
There is also much weirdness here, whether by accident or design. There is a truly pointless complication where Lowery insists he and Hugo each appear to be the other in the course of this investigation. That ruse is just as abruptly dropped, with no change to the course of the plot whatsoever. Then there’s the unnecessary character second-billed Gale Storm plays, who is Carradine’s secretary. Yeah, I bet there’s a ton of paperwork to be done for a mad scientist performing his work completely in secret. At one point, she tells our heroes: “I shouldn’t show you this. It’s a breach of confidence.” What, did she sign a NDA? And for a guy who works out of his home?
The cast is entirely functional, with only Moreland putting in any real effort. Still, there is a kind of relaxed charm to the whole endeavor. It helps that he gets such lines as that concerning a zombie which steals the car: “he was in no condition to drive.” Borg makes a fetching zombie, and I bet the necrophiliac title character of The Horrible Dr. Hichcock would be into her if she could stop moving around so much for a dead person. Cherry, with his heroin chic frame, makes for a convincing zombie, but his rather longish hair had me thinking he’s missing from any number of grunge or emo bands. Lowery seems to be on the verge of falling asleep at times. I wasn’t tempted to while watching this but, if I had, his voice would probably had me mistaking him for Bob Cummings. There’s even a slight visual resemblance, if one squints hard enough to make all White guys of a certain type look similar.
Revenge of the Zombies is, apparently, a nearly identical remake of King of the Zombies from just two years earlier. As I had not seen that picture, this movie did not feel derivative to me, though I assume my feeling would be different if I had seen the earlier film. This is a slight entertainment, but a more enjoyable one than I expected from the threadbare Monogram. I also learned something from it, and that is I won’t be susceptible to becoming a zombie myself. The process here involves extracting a poison from the local “swamp lilies”, and the antidote is coffee. I’ve always heard black coffee has health benefits, and I drink a ton of it. I just never realized one of those benefits could be preventing me from being recruited into an army of undead Nazis controlled by David Carradine.
Dir: Steve Sekely
Starring David Carradine, Gale Storm, Robert Lowery, Mantan Moreland
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray