Well Deserved Praise

Gripping story with well-crafted characters

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

You had better be a fan of Mantan Moreland's clownish behavior not to mention racial stereotyping in order to sit through King Of The Zombies. In the days of the studio system this could only come from the mind of Sam Katzman at Monogram who probably just wanted to get use of the jungle set on the Monogram lot for a dirt cheap picture.Dick Purcell and John Archer looking for a lost admiral get fooled by a false radio signal and crash on the island of Dr. Sangre, second cousin to Dr. Moreau. Henry Victor is the good doctor and when he's not working for German Intelligence he's conducting experiments in hypnosis and voodoo with the natives. He's convinced a lot of them that they're zombies.Mantan as Archer and Purcell's manservant is with his employers and he does the whole Mantan shtick during the film while one of them is taken captive. It was the usual claptrap up to the very end.But when one of our intrepid heroes, now convinced he's a zombie, keeps coming for Victor as he fires point blank into him without any effect and knocks Victor into a flaming pit. And then in the explanatory postscript we are told he's just ailing a bit and he'll be up and around good as new in a bit, I throw my hands in the air.As did I'm sure many who saw this travesty on the big screen in 1941. It's not even decent wartime propaganda.Unless you just Mantan Moreland, stay away from this stinker.

For those who thought that RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD was the first real zombie-comedy-horror, think again. A good forty years before that film, a movie came along that portrayed the undead menace with an equal number of laughs and chills. That film is KING OF THE ZOMBIES, and it's a great little movie. Now, I may be biased, seeing as how the last zombie film I watched was the god-awful REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES, made five years before this. That movie was a boring, zombie-free mess. KING OF THE ZOMBIES, by comparison, is a tightly-paced little thriller set on the confines of a tropical island.Essentially it's one of those 'haunted house' type movies, as our protagonists find themselves trapped in an eerie building and menaced by mysterious figures and the walking dead. These 'zombies' are of the classic variety, the hypnotised-workers group, and the make up, although simple, is more than effective. There's a lot of running around and voodoo ceremonies going on in the basement, and it all seems rather quaint and dated by today's standards. The majority of the cast are fairly wooden in their roles, especially the stiff-upper-lip 'heroes', but Henry Victor does a passable imitation of Bela Lugosi and Joan Woodbury wins points on her sheer loveliness alone. And then there's Mantan Moreland.You see, this is a COMEDY horror, along the lines of the classic Bob Hope type 'old dark house' comedies popular during the 1940s. And the presence of Mantan Moreland, a black actor typecast in this genre for his wide-eyed terror, means that we're in for a very funny ride. The type of humour seen here might seem racist and highly dated to a modern audience, but this is what passed for top comedy back in the 1940s and there's no point putting modern political correctness on an old, creaky black and white flick. Moreland shivers with terror, screams, runs and makes wisecrack after wisecrack in his various run-ins with the undead, and he's easily the best thing in the movie: he displays sound comic timing, great acting, and is a sheer likable personality. He also gets a huge amount of screen time, making this a very painless film to watch.

You might want to dismiss this as a low budget horror film, but you would be wrong on two counts.First, the film garnered an Oscar nomination for it's music.It also features the famous Mantan Moreland who, when he wasn't sniffing after the lovely Marguerite Whitten, was engaging in the oft criticized stereotypical behavior that he was famous for.The presence of Moreland changes this from a zombie horror film to a zombie comedy.The rest of the film, which included Admiral Arthur Wainwright (Guy Usher) was just what you would expect from the 40's.

The best thing about this movie is Mantan Moreland. The plot is silly but that's okay because everybody involved with it surely knew it was silly as did the audience – but it was also fun. Our two heroes with their man servant (of course that has to be Moreland) are forced to land on a spooky island. They are searching a for a missing admiral. There are two especially funny lines – although for different reasons because one was meant to be funny and one was not. Upon hearing voodoo drums, Moreland says to his confederate who asked what that sound was replied that: "It sure ain't Gene Krupa." The second funny scene is when Purcell, while in a zombie-like state, is shot up close five times by the bad guy. When Purcell is recovering (?), the doctor says "Those bullets sure didn't do him any good." Purcell and Archer did fine in this movie as did Joan Woodbury – a much underrated actress. But Moreland had all the best lines. This little movie is very entertaining and I know I'll be watching it again.