User Reviews

This is a pretty chilling thriller from the Hammer studios that grabs your attention from the very beginning by having the drums beaten by obvious voodoo worshipers, and it happens to be going on in the very best country homes of jolly old England. Beautiful Diane Clare and her nobleman father André Morell arrive for a weekend with friends and find more than they bargain for. Clare makes the mistake of giving the wrong direction of a fleeing fox to noblemen chasing the poor creature and gets cursed out when they realize that she deceived them purposely. It wouldn't be so bad if these men were not into witchcraft, placing a voodoo spell on Clare's friend Jacqueline Pearce who bleeds to death as part of a curse placed on her. We see how all of this is done, with squire John Carson playing noble as he helps bandage up the finger of his victims after they've cut themselves picking up a broken glass. Pretty soon Clare gets the same treatment, and Morell and Pearce's widower husband Brook Williams must rush to save Clare from the same fate as Pearce whom Clare witnessed being tossed like a bag of compost into an open grave, bleeding and broken. As it is revealed that something much more bizarre than your random English countryside murder has occurred, it becomes a race of good against evil, and for some, they will find their fates leading to a road to doom that nothing short of Godly interference can stop.

Think of this as "Downton Abbey" meets "The Demon Barber of Fleetstreet", taking me back to all those Tod Slaughter 1930's mad melodramas where as the master of menace, he had something malevolent up his sleeve and would pay dearly for it at the end. Those films were made extremely cheaply and featured so much mustache twirling that the villain could easily rip out his own facial hairs. In this film, the villains are either completely clean shaven and noble, or under a spell of death and at the beck and call of the voodoo masters. Those creatures are the zombies, here with the sunken eyes, the look of rotting skin, and with no soul of their own but to do as is demanded of them by their evil master. It's suspenseful, colorful, elegant, and never once dull, yet because of all of the other Hammer horror films focusing on Dracula, mummy's, man-made Frankenstein monsters or wolf men, this one seems to have been forgotten. Morell is commanding as Clare's father, bemused by her antics at the beginning, and completely unaware of what the consequences of them will be. She is beautiful and charming, never one of those boo-hoo'ing heroines that would grate on your nerves from the start of a film. The ending has some spine tingling moments that might come back to haunt you in your sleep!

Left with my nerves torn to ribbons by 2012's ultra-creepy The Woman in Black,I felt that for October,I would take at one or two of Hammer Horror original titles.Searching round on Amazon,I was thrilled to discover that my interest in Hammer had hit at the perfect time,thanks to Studio canal bringing out new editions of the films,existentially remastered from the original negatives.

Carefully judging the prices,I decided that Plague of the Zombies would be my intro to the world of Hammer Horror.

Getting a letter from his former top pupil, (whose also married his daughter's best friend) about a mysterious illness that is leading to people dying in a very strange way,Sir James Forbes and his daughter Sylvia decided to go and pay Dr. Peter Tompson a visit,in the hope of helping him to stop the continuous spreading of the illness.Arriving to the village in Cornwall,James and Sylivia are horrified to discover that the town is controlled by upper-class gangs,who rule the area with an iron fist.

Attempting to make the gangs see reason,the Forbes and Tompson tell them that an autopsy has to be performed on one of the victims,so that the cause of death can officially be confirmed.Angered by their demands,the controllers of the village tell the Forbes and Tompson that it is simply "marsh fever" and is something which does not need any investigating at all.

Seeing signs of this being a cover up,James and Peter begin to relies,that they only have one,illegal option left,to find out what disease is really killing the poor people of the town:dig up a body. Repairing to carefully open the coffin,James and Peter are interrupted,when two police officers spot them,and get set to arrest them both on "grave robbery".

Fearing that this could possible be their only chance to see-what after effects the illness has had on the decease body,Forbes and Tompson quickly open the coffin,only to discover,that despite a person being buried in it,the coffin is now completely empty.

View on the film:

Feeling unsure about what I was about to witness,in my first ever,"classic era" Hammer Horror,I was relived to find Studio Canal giving the film a tremendous red carpet treatment,with the bonus making of on the DVD showing the painstaking work that the company had put in,to bring this terrific movie,truly back from the dead.

Opening with a lively,proto-Jaws like score from the great James Bernard,director John Gilling shows the events at the start of the movie to be "just another,typical day in Cornwall" as a West Indies Voodoo/Zombie ritual takes place deep within a tin mine.Despite being restrained by the studio to only use sets that would be used for the filming of another movie, (The Reptile) Gilling shows tremendous skills in not allowing the "boxed-in" restrictions from stopping him creating a wonderful,mysterious atmosphere.

Although the film does feature a number of good,surprisingly dream-logic style Zombie scenes,Gilling unexpectedly makes the most chilling moments in the film,ones which involve psychological fear rather than gore,with one of the most terrifying scenes in the film,being a character fearing that they may be about to get gang Raped.

Showing a strong influence of Arthur Conan Doyle,screenwriter Peter Bryan, (who,in 1959 wrote the screenplay for Hammer's version of Doyle's The Hound of the Baskerville) combines Tompson and the Forbes increasingly dangerous, amateur sleuthing with a wonderful,cleverly handled underlying subtext,which shows,that even after becoming dead & buried,the working class,is here literally used as slaves by the upper-class of the village,to do all of the "dirty work for them,even after death!

Despite great performances from the whole cast,with the charming Diane Clare, (whose other credits include Ice Cold In Alex,Whistle Down the Wind and 1963's The Haunting) as Sylvia Forbes,and the wickedly good,James Mason-sound-alike John Carson as the boo-hiss Squire Clive Hamilton being two of the main highlights,Bryan sadly struggles to give the film the knock-out punch that it feels to be building towards in the first hour,as the ending leaves behind any sense of atmospheric, mystery horror behind,to instead end on a poorly done, Disaster movie-like note .

Before zombies became flesh eating creatures it were slaves driven by voodoo rituals from witch doctors. Even though a much better effort than the overly boring "I walked with a zombie" this one focuses on the greed of a magistrate (and he has a few other important professions) using voodoo not only to cause death upon young people (mostly men). Again with voodoo he brings them back to life as zombies who are forced to work for him as slaves in a mine digging I guess for gold or other precious things. It has a few nice scenes such as the rising from the grave from Alice and turning into a zombie and than the dream sequence where we see other dead people digging themselves up from their resting place. Unfortunately that is not enough to save the movie. Not saying the story is bad and it's OK in the visual department but it doesn't come across as very atmospheric. There are no stand out performances. I feel this one would have been better had it been in black and white. For me it lacked soul and felt overly long to reach its goal. A rather weak finale too. I think White Zombie did a much better job even though the story was very simple.

Sylvia Forbes receives a letter from her school friend Alice who lives in a village in Cornwall , a village that has been struck by a mysterious illness that is killing the inhabitants . Since her father is the eminent doctor Sir John Forbes she suggests they visit the village to get to the bottom of this mystery

If you've been brought up on the post Danny Boyle super fast zombie era then don't build your hopes up . In fact if you're ages with me and remember catching all these George A Romero movies on home video in the 1980s where a zombie sinks its teeth in to someone and bite a chunk out of someone , again don't expect any gore . In fact don't expect any zombies because its not that type of movie . In many ways it plays out like a period mystery set in the late 19th Century and uses most of the sets used from the other Hammer movie from 1966 THE REPTILE one of the best most atmospheric films the studio produced . If you're expecting something along the lines of THE REPTILE again you're going to be disappointed The problem lies in the way the story is told . We're shown a scene where black extras thump on some bongo drums ( Films in those days did play up to stereotypes a bit too much and Hammer were worse than most at it ) where a Shaman gives an incantation . If you've no knowledge as to what might be happening here the title of the film gives a very big clue . What this means is that the audience are one step ahead of Sir John Forbes as he tries to solve the mystery , a mystery that is rendered redundant to the audience . The Shaman's plan for the undead when it is revealed is faintly ridiculous when given any thought , but I guess those nasty mine owners don't believe in a ( Pun alert ) paying their employees a living wage

Not to be totally negative there is a plus point in the film's favour and that is the casting of Andre Morell as Forbes . Morell is best known for his portrayal as the eponymous Professor in the original BBC production of QUATERMASS AND THE PIT . Every time I give a loan of my DVD of that show to anyone vaguely interested in television science fiction they always comment that one of the best things about the show is Morell's performance . He effectively plays the same character in exactly the same way which is in no way a criticism . Forbes is an intellectual studious man with a hint of both arrogance and open mindedness and he's very easy to buy in to as being a real person who is on a mission to solve something which makes the film slightly better than it possibly deserved to be

Set in the year 1860, a rural Cornish village has been struck by a mysterious sickness which is killing off members of the community at an alarming rate. Baffled, the local GP Peter Thompson (Brook Williams) calls in his old university mentor Sir James Forbes (Andre Morell) to help him find out what the disease is and to destroy it. Forbes and his young daughter Sylvia (Diane Clare) arrive to find that Thompson has lost all confidence in his ability and the locals have lost all faith in him too. Two more deaths follow in the village including Thompson's beloved wife Alice (Jacqueline Pierce) before it finally transpires that the laird of the community, Squire Hamilton (John Carson), has been practicing witchcraft in order to kill off certain people before raising them from the dead as zombies for cheap labor in his tin mine. Forbes and Thompson have to fight their way through the superstitious and narrow minded ways of the locals in order to stop Hamilton before he eliminates the entire community and his next intended victim is Sylvia!

The Plague Of The Zombies was shot back-to-back with Hammer's other Cornish shocker, The Reptile, by director John Gilling at the legendary Bray Studios, Berkshire, England during the summer of 1965. Both pictures shared the same sets and these were redressed accordingly to their required use. But if you watch The Reptile you will recognise the same village and graveyard sets! It is worth noting that The Reptile is also rich in atmosphere despite the low budget and the limitations that back-to-back shooting would suggest. Both Plague and The Reptile were released as supporting features to two of Hammer's main features the following year. The Reptile supported Rasputin The Mad Monk (March 1966) and The Plague Of The Zombies went out with Dracula Prince Of Darkness in January 1966. Yet despite their second feature status, both of Gilling's films outshone the main feature.

When I first saw The Plague Of The Zombies some seven years ago when it was shown late one Friday night on Channel 4, I didn't think that it was going to be very good judging by the plot synopsis in my film guide. But when the end credits rolled, I was astonished by just how good it really was. During the fifties, John Gilling had directed a number of quota-quickie pictures and some of them were very mediocre, but here he takes a rather dubious storyline and gives it a lot of weight by emphasising the distinct contrast between the superstitious country folk and the more forward thinking men of science and the lengths that the latter have to go to in order to solve the mystery. For instance, they have been refused the right to perform any autopsies so it isn't until Alice dies that Forbes has to persuade Thompson to allow him to perform an autopsy to try and find out the cause of death. In addition, there is an imaginatively staged green-tinted nightmare sequence, which is still talked about by horror buffs and it has been suggested that it inspired George A Romero when he made his Night Of The Living Dead only a few years later. In this memorable sequence Thompson sees the dead rise from their graves. This turns out to be a premonition as after he awakens, Forbes and the local police sergeant (Michael Ripper) exhume all the graves to find them empty.

The Plague Of The Zombies also features fine performances from Andre Morell as Sir James Forbes portraying him as a charming, intelligent and resourceful man of science who is prepared to do anything for the benefit of good even though the superstitious locals don't always understand his methods and can't understand that what he's doing can only ultimately save them. Morell's performance is strong enough to rank among the best of Hammer's screen heroes such as Peter Cushing's Sherlock Holmes and Christopher Lee's Duc De' Richeleau. Brook Williams offers good support as Peter Thompson whilst Jacqueline Pierce is standout as his wife whom has to be decapitated by a shovel in order to save her from being enslaved to the cult of the undead forever. John Carson is suitably suave as the evil Squire Hamilton and ever present is the reliable Michael Ripper who played virtually everything for Hammer over the years including pirates, old soaks and pub landlords and here he is equally versatile in the role of the sympathetic Sgt Swift.

In summary, many people agree (including myself) that The Plague Of The Zombies is John Gilling's finest hour as a director as this assignment gave him more opportunities than the quota-quickies to exploit the setting and place emphasis on the class structure of the time thus giving more weight to the plot. In addition, Bernard Robinson's sets are excellent and Arthur Grant's cinematography is suitably atmospheric.

Quality zombie movie? Yep, this is such surprise, beautiful-looking and well-made costume Gothic instead of repulsive gory garbage and trashy production values. Group of spoiled young rotters, led by over-aged but well-acting John Carson, cause outbreak of zombie plague (and exploitative capitalism!) in 19th century Cornwall. Storyline and characters remind - maybe intentionally - about Dracula. For example, André Morell as the old Professor who is trying to solve what is behind these strange wounds and mysterious blood disease turning Victorian Brits as monsters, is like elegantly heroic, Very English version of Van Helsing.

Let's not pretend that this film is some kind of masterpiece-it's Hammer and you know what your in for.Like most of these movies it takes an eternity to get going but when it does your just about glad you stuck with it.Acting is above average for the genre-Morel is excellent as the hero and plays the upper class gent with aplomb.Never did understand why the Squire wanted a crew of zombies in the first place.It seems he was only using them as cheap labour for the tin mine situated underneath his house-an extreme measure to go to.Suppose zombies don't need lunch breaks or ask for pay rises but by the look of them they make pretty crap workers for a tin mine.Not in the least scary-but good hammy Hammer fun.