Not Coming to a Theater Near You

King of the Zombies / USA / 1941

This World War II zombie picture tells the story of three Americans who crash land on a desolate Caribbean island (basically Haiti), meet a mysterious Austrian doctor with an affinity for voodoo culture, and are systematically set upon by the doctor’s zombie hordes. With a running time of less than seventy minutes, there isn’t much in the way of character development, and aside from Mantan Moreland as Jeff the doting servant, the players are universally bland.

What makes the picture fun, though, is its unique presentation of the zombies themselves. Far from the brain-munching, lurching undead we all know and love, the creatures in this picture are nothing more than helpless victims of hypnotism. As a result, they display a number of zombie traits largely unseen in other flicks. To wit, the zombies here (a) Cast no reflection in mirrors (actually, I don’t know how this connects to hypnotism, but there it is), (b) Eat a sit-down dinner every day, (c) Are controlled by the clapping of hands, (d) Are little more than wartime puppets employed to gather sensitive Panama Canal Zone information from captured American pilots, and (e) Are not actually dead. Worth watching more for its pre-Pearl Harbor representation of American wartime concerns (the fear of the enemy destroying the Panama Canal was at the top of the American’s list of worries) than for its story, King of the Zombies is nevertheless an intriguing chapter in the history of zombie horror.

by Thomas Scalzo | Source: Platinum Disc Corporation DVD
16 Apr 2005 12:59 PM | Submit Comment