If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Admirable film.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

This is a slow moving olden-days zombie movie. I wasn't that impressed because this was made before the stunning atmosphere of Rosemary's Baby (1968) and didn't take inspiration from the insane violence of Blood Feast (1963). The acting and direction is fine and I would say that it is impressive for the time but can't compare to modern horror. There are some cool scenes and sets but nothing memorable.

This was the one and only zombie movie that the British horror kings Hammer Films ever put out. It might seem quite odd to some modern viewers in that there are no flesh-eating ghouls to be found here at all. The reason for this is quite simple, this movie came out two years before George A. Romero's legendary classic Night of the Living Dead (1968) which effectively was a year zero moment for the modern, more grotesque zombie. In this one the undead are almost tragic beings who are slaves to an evil human. This isn't so strange, as Hammer had made a habit of going back to the 30's and making modern versions of the horror classics of that decade. To this end Plague of the Zombies could be considered a new version of the zombie films of those earlier years when the conception of the undead was wrapped up in Haitian voodoo, with the zombies themselves slaves to occult masters. A film that looks to have been particularly influential here is the Bela Lugosi poverty row cult item White Zombie (1932), which featured all those things plus the idea of the undead being used to work tirelessly in a mill, an idea revisited here also. What was also noticeable to me was that this one looked like a second-tier Hammer film financially, with none of their big stars in it. In fact, it seems to have been made as a support feature for Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), with the funny trailer for this double-bill saying that boys will be handed out Dracula fangs and girls will be given zombie eyes! It also seems to clearly have been made back-to-back with The Reptile (1966) which also shares the same filming location as well as some acting personnel. But the interesting thing is, that despite the lower profile that Hammer gave it, this remains one of their strongest 60's movies.A couple of physicians investigate a series of unexplained deaths and vanishing corpses in a small Cornish village. The local squire appears to be involved in some way. One chief strength is the atmosphere which is helped quite a bit by the great locations. The slightly odd looking antiquated village is very distinctive, while the old mill is quite haunting. The zombies themselves make only selective appearances but they make for interesting shambling creatures, dressed in sack cloths. One of the highlights of the movie as a whole has them rise from the earth in a graveyard and attack one of the central characters in a sinister dream sequence. Even better is a scene just prior to it where the doctor's dead wife comes out of her grave and advances directly towards him with an intense relentless look on her face. This scene was the highlight of the film for me. It was shot very well and acted perfectly by Jacqueline Pearce who also put in a very memorable performance in The Reptile. On the whole, this has to go down as one of the best Hammer films from its period on account of its more original material and well-crafted moments. It was maybe also the very last of the old-school zombie movies too before Romero changed the sub-genre forever more, and for this reason too it is worth seeing.

Good film about a professor who answers to a calling made from a previous student. This student is now the doctor of a small town, and he finds it bizarre that people in the dozens keep dying with no sign of a criminal act. The Professor played by Sir Andre Morell starts digging up bodies only to find out that the graves are empty. What can this be? where are the bodies? And why did the professor's daughter see a presumably dead person up and walking in the dead of night? All seems to point towards a rich man living in a castle after he in recent years have returned from Haiti. The Professor soon realizes that he is a practitioner of black magic or Voodoo if you will. I must say that this film had a way more intricate plot than at first glance. A recommended film and one of the better Hammer productions i have up to this point had the pleasure of seeing.

Known for being the first movie to introduce zombies as flesh eating ghouls (before Night Of The Living Dead did it), this low-budget Hammer movie doesn't really have a lot to offer. We start with a creepy underground voodoo ritual, unintelligible chanting and blood dropping on a doll, and a woman waking up and reciting the same chant. We learn later that the woman is an old friend of the protagonist, played with expression by Diane Clare. Her father and her go to a small British village, to visit the woman and her husband, a doctor (and former student of the old man) who is struggling with the skepticism of the village people on letting him perform an autopsy on any of the many recently deceased. The last noteworthy character is the Squire Clive Hamilton, a rich and mysterious man. Hamilton's men kidnap Ms. Forbes (Clare), and take her to his home, where they begin to torture her mentally, but the charming Squire comes to the rescue, and from there on, attempts to spark a relationship with her. Of course not everything's what it seems, and soon enough Mrs. Forbes' friend dies, murdered by a decomposing man. While her father and the doctor investigate, she learns that Mr. Hamilton might be the cause of her friend's death, and that she might be next. While quite original for its time, for me it didn't work as well, because, well, I've watched a lot of movies that pull the same tricks before seeing this. The look of the zombies is easily surpassed by that of Night Of The Living Dead, which was made only a year later, and the acting is average at best, the standoff being Clare and André Morell, who plays her father. The mystery is easy to figure out 30minutes in the movie, but it's still a very original movie for it's time, and you can see that it was made with a lot of love for the genre.