What a beautiful movie!

SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Don't listen to the negative reviews

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Fortune hunters try to recover diamonds from a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea off the coast of Africa. They don't have much luck thanks to the seaweed-covered zombies that guard the treasure. They spend most of the movie on the island of Mora Tau with an old lady who tells them that the diamonds must be destroyed to put an end to the zombies.Fun B movie from producer Sam Katzman. I don't see why it gets so much flack. Sexy Allison Hayes is always a treat to watch. One of my favorite B movie queens. She plays the trampy bad girl here and steals every scene. Marjorie Eaton is good as the old woman. Cutie Autumn Russell plays the bland female lead. The men in the film are mostly a forgettable lot but fine for the parts they play. For a 70-minute movie it's fairly effective. It's got a decent plot and reasonable atmosphere. It isn't going to scare you but it is entertaining as a time-passer. Don't expect too much and just enjoy it for what it is.

For reasons I would prefer not to disclose at this stage, I am embarking on a zombie movie marathon for the coming two weeks. This is the only title I had not yet checked out from Columbia's ICONS OF HORROR: SAM KATZMAN Box Set. As expected, being a pre-Romero zombie flick, the monsters in this one are of the voodoo (rather than flesh-eating) variety; still, their being guardians of the deep was an interesting novelty, looking forward to both the "Blind Dead" entry THE GHOST GALLEON (1975; albeit the least in the series) and John Carpenter's underrated THE FOG (1980)! Incidentally, the film proved an unintentional laugh riot, beginning with the very opening sequence as the veteran chauffeur transporting the heroine back to her ancestral African(?!) home nonchalantly runs a man over with the car, brushing away the girl's protestations by claiming that he's only "one of them"! Halfway through the next scene, then, when she gets to re-join her great-grandmother(!), the film's camera operator suddenly realizes the characters' position was not occupying the center-space of the screen and he simply tilts it upwards to show them to better advantage…without the director or producer apparently finding the shot in any way jarring and asking for a re-take afterwards! Into the picture now step a handful of adventurers after buried treasure: as it happens, the captain of the zombie conglomerate (who sleep in hidden coffins like vampires?!) happens to be the old woman's deceased husband (at one point, she almost takes pride in the fact that, unlike her, he has retained his looks – she does not seem to mind the skin discoloration that goes with death, not to mention the extra decomposition that inevitably sets in through the effect of sea-water on his flesh?!). She knows the monsters will not harm her or her relative since they are not interested in the treasure – indeed, she takes the new clutch of desecrators on a cemetery tour of their unsuccessful predecessors, while displaying the freshly-dug graves they are bound to be buried in themselves! Anyway, these are the usual mixed bunch: a wealthy macho financing the expedition (called George Harrison!), his boozy nympho wife (Allison Hayes before she became the 50-Foot Woman!), a young man expected to do all the dirty work and get peanuts for his efforts (whom the latter fancies but he would rather take up with the heroine!) and, of course, the elderly expert (who occasionally engages in pseudo-philosophical conversation with the old woman of the manor!). Hayes obviously does not suffer her landlady gladly and, on one occasion, even tells her that she is already dead, only she does not have the sense to lie down (and, by intimation, let the rest of them alone)! As some of you may know, I am not much of a fan of zombie movies and never found them scary: this load of ghouls, then, barely have any make-up on to suggest they are indeed the living dead – the film-makers simply slapped some seaweed on them, believing it would do the trick! Incidentally, they are seen walking both the earth and the sea-bed (they simply turn up in the water, never seen going in, swimming or anything, though they make efficient pirates, assailing boats and getting rid of meddling crewmen with remarkable ease!). The monsters even attack the mansion, are fended off by fire but eventually manage to abduct both leading ladies (in separate incidents!): while they do not harm the heroine, somehow Hayes is made to join their ranks (just what was the point of adding a new recruit to the protectors of the treasure?). In any case, she is taken back to the house and, realizing what she is (Hayes even proves impervious to a direct hit from a candelabra being thrown at her forehead!), is enclosed inside a bedroom with her passage barred by a number of lit candlesticks: this scene could well have evoked the poetic atmosphere of the Val Lewton horrors, or even Jean Cocteau, but journeyman director Cahn lends it no particular attention! Perhaps in keeping with the shuffling creatures themselves (by the way, though I may dislike the slow-moving zombie kind, I positively abhor the energetic ones that have become the norm of late!), the film maintains a fairly lethargic pace throughout – thus making its trim 69-minute duration feel much longer (especially by way of the repetitive and uneventful diving antics). Much is made of the conflicting views between the old lady and the hero on whether the diamonds should be sold (thus ensuring the heroine's future) or thrown away (in order to give the captain and his cohorts peace) – the latter, of course, finally has her way, though rather than scatter them to the winds as she had promised to do all along, she just dumps the diamonds in one spot!: in the meantime, the zombified Hayes beats her hubby to death with the empty(?) chest! In the end, the film is tolerable enough for the subgenre but certainly no classic; by the way, the copy I landed was accompanied by unremovable English subtitles!

There's nothing particularly remarkable about "Zombies of Mora-Tau", but it isn't the worst way to pass about an hour of your life. Fans of Eddie Cahn will see the resemblance to his voodoo-themed "Four Skulls of Johnathan Drake" which are a strong contrast to his more modern (and influential) zombie/apocalypse films "Invisible Invaders" and "Creature with the Atom Brain." This places this film in the older tradition of zombie movies, some kind of descendant of "White Zombie" and "I Walked with a Zombie" (both of which are superior to the film in question). The zombies in this film are reanimated sailors who must guard a cursed treasure (remind anyone of any recent mega-hits?). They look pretty silly in their striped shirts; it doesn't look like anyone even thought to make them look a bit aged or anything like that.The film's best asset is Allison Hayes and the scenes involving her character, including the memorable scene where she's clearly a zombie but nobody wants to believe it, so they lead her back to the house and surround her with candles at the old lady's (Marjorie Eaton) insistence. Shades of the old vampire movies and their garlic cloves here. Hayes is lovely and her acting adequate. None of the other leads are particularly memorable.There are a few scenes that will draw unintentional laughter from a modern audience but not all that many. Probably the atmosphere in the film was intense enough to scare some young kids who saw it in the '50s. We have scenes of graveyards and so forth – I think it's quite a nice effect when the old lady shows the group all those graves and when asked who they are for says "they're yours." But I can hardly imagine any person older than 5 who would be scared by this film in the 20th Century because it really doesn't even try that hard. Once you get to the scenes with the underwater treasure search you realize this is, like "Invisible Invaders", more of an action/adventure film than a horror film.It's not nearly as inept as some posters here have said, but it's clearly a movie that didn't have high ambitions. Within the scope of its own goals I would say it is reasonably successful.

Some amateur reviewers will excuse anything in a movie and give 5 stars minimum simply for the crew having been able to load film-stock into a camera without exposing it to sunlight. After sitting through all 69 minutes of Mora Tau (that I will never have back) I began to really wish that this bad movie had somehow become a 'lost film' instead of films I'd actually like to see -- such as "London After Midnight" starring Lon Chaney or the original 9 hour version of von Stroheim's silent film classic "Greed".As a devoted fan of zombie films who has seen more than 70 films in the genre from the brilliant to the downright awful, even I must admit that most voodoo zombie movies aren't very good -- aside from Halperin's White Zombie and Gilling's Plague of the Zombies (for Hammer Studios) and to a lesser extent, the entertaining if somewhat offensive 1941 Mantan Moreland minstrel show that is King of the Zombies. Even by that guideline for diminished expectations, Mora Tau is probably one of the worst of the voodoo zombie genre and might make me think better of Halperin's 1936 followup disaster Revolt of the Zombies. Zombies of Mora Tau is so insultingly stupid and lame that it almost made me long for the 'good ole days' of the 1940s when Abbott and Costello were busy ruining the Universal Monsters franchise (though A&C enthusiasts still refuse to admit how unfunny those films were). If you want a good underwater horror film from that era watch any of the three 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' films instead or maybe even (horror of bad TV horrors) the Godzilla Power Hour cartoon with Godzookie. If you want underwater zombies, try Wiederhorn's 'Shockwaves' instead. This film is a reminder that not all old black and white films are 'classics' and I can think of any of a number of cheesy 50s horror films that are 10 times more entertaining. The atomic age sci-fi silliness of Invisible Invaders is another better recommendation than Zombies of Mora Tau. Maybe the 3 stars out of 10 that I gave Mora Tau was too generous. I'm now glad there wasn't a DVD of this for me to buy and that TCM showed it to me for free.PLOT: The basic plot sounds like something the "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" might have pilfered some basic ideas from: There is a sunken treasure of $1 million of uncut diamonds that has attracted treasure hunters for decades and lead to the demise of many a diver. It seems that the original thieves of the treasure all met an untimely demise and 10 zombies now guard said treasure (though why they live in 10 lined up coffins in a cave like Snow Whites dwarfs is anyone's guess) and will not rest until said treasure is 'destroyed' as the old lady says. The sailors dream of riches and ignore her warnings and try to get the treasure anyway...These are also among the least scary voodoo zombies I've seen in a movie. If all the reels of this film were at the bottom of the sea, I think I'd voodoo up some zombies to guard them and ensure that they were never retrieved so that movie audiences would be spared the horror of seeing this film.**SPOILERS**I have several issues with this film and its lazy writing:*The dive crew/sailors are too dumb to realize that the woman is not 'ill' but now has become one of the zombies and is exhibiting all the same traits. These characters are obviously much dumber than your average horror movie morons.*Sure the old lady claims the zombies are indestructible, but that doesn't stop the sailors from using knives and other weapons on them ineffectively. None of the sailors/divers ever thinks to try lighting a zombie aflame after they display an obvious fear of fire? You've gotta be kidding me. Maybe it wouldn't destroy them, but you'd think someone would at least try it.*Don't establish rules for the zombies and then proceed to break those rules later in the film when it seems convenient to do so.*So the diamonds must be 'destroyed' for the zombies to rest, right? So why does dumping the diamonds into a couple feet of water not 10 feet from the shore of old lady's property count as 'destroying them' and end the curse? It's as if the writers forgot that someone could just bend down and pick retrieve the diamonds 5 minutes after the 'zombies' dematerialize out of their clothes.