Zombies

 

Revolt of the Zombies (1936)

With proof of the existence of a secret, Cambodian, zombie-creating ritual, soft spoken Armand Louque (Dean Jagger) and his bold friend Clifford Grayson (Robert Noland) travel with a team to the ancient city of Angkor.  After Armand loses his fiancée (Dorothy Stone) to Clifford, he uses the secret rite to turn anyone in his way into a zombie.

The second zombie film, following 1932’s White Zombie (or the third, if you count The Walking Dead, also in 1936), Revolt of the Zombies is Up Stairs, Down Stairs, with zombies.  The upper crust Brits sit around politely chatting while they are served by Cambodians (some as zombies, some not). After a brief attack by zombie soldiers, the film becomes a romance, which isn’t a bad thing if I was watching a romance.  It’s decently acted, mid-30s low budget fare.  Eventually, the romance plot fades a bit and the horror-plot takes over…and not much changes.  Only in a Monty Python skit about British officers at war have I seen more civilized, stiff-upper-lip folks.  Their reaction to Armand becoming a megalomaniac zombie master?  “Well, old man, this controlling people’s minds just isn’t very cricket of you.”  He’s enslaving and murdering people (generally bad people) and no one is all that emotional about it.  When he betrays his friend and forces his ex to be his bride, she can’t even bring herself to be cross with him.  I want whatever these folks are smoking.

None of the acting is horrible, nor memorable.  They just play out the time till the film winds down. The ending is amusing, and suggests that this could have been a more exciting film.

Made long before the brain-eating, decaying corpses of Romero, anyone expecting blood and body parts is going to be disappointed. These are old time mesmerized zombies.

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