Zombie Dearest: A Selective Look at Pre-Romero Zombie Movies

I’ve said it on this blog before and I’ll say it again: I’m not a big fan of the endless hordes of plague-spawned zombies that have shambled their way across movie and TV screens ever since George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead opened up the flood gates. For me, modern zombies are too abstract a threat, too numerous, and too interchangeable to be all that interesting after you’ve seen a handful of these shows.

I get it that apocalyptic zombies are just there to get the survivalist drama going, whereby we learn something about ourselves -- the good, the bad and ugly -- through characters desperately trying to get by in a desolate and dangerous world. But for me, the relentless survivalist thing with hardly a glimmer of hope gets awfully old awfully fast.

In contrast to the bleakness of a zombified world, I prefer my horrors to be more up close and personal and not quite so earth shattering. With more traditional horror, you can have your monsters and beat them too. When it comes to creating zombies, Voodoo practitioners and mad doctors are a lot more tangible and colorful than viruses or experimental gasses. And they make great foils in the eternal struggle of good vs. evil -- defeating a living, breathing mad person is so much more satisfying.

Zombies in the Great Depression

Voodoo-style zombies got their start in Hollywood around the same time that Dracula and Frankenstein debuted for Universal Pictures. In fact, it was Dracula himself, Bela Lugosi, as the enigmatic and aptly named “Murder” Legendre, who conjured up the first cinematic zombies in White Zombie (1932).

Legendre is the sinister foreman on a Haitian plantation owned by Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer). Legendre is worth his weight in gold to Beaumont, as he is able to create zombies out of the local population who are absolutely obedient and work for nothing (Jeff Bezos, take note). When Beaumont meets Neil and Madeline (John Harron and Madge Bellamy), an attractive young couple who are engaged to be married, he invites them to stay at his mansion and have the ceremony there.

Of course, the creepy old rich guy has designs on the beautiful girl, and he has his Voodoo-master henchman Legendre turn Madeline into a zombie so that he can have her for himself. Beaumont quickly realizes his mistake, as zombies are not exactly the life of the party, and orders Legendre to restore Madeline to life. When Legendre refuses, it becomes apparent who really runs the show (hint: it’s the guy with the platoon of zombies under his control). Legendre seems to be riding high, but Neil and a local missionary, Dr. Bruner (Joseph Cawthorn), may have something to say about that.

Although not well-received at the time, over the years White Zombie’s reputation has returned from the dead to be regarded as an example of the triumph of creepy atmosphere and moody black and white cinematography over stilted acting. According to Bela Jr., the film was a personal favorite of his father’s. But it was also an early indicator of bad career decisions that would haunt Lugosi throughout his life -- for years afterward he regretted taking a paltry sum upfront instead of a cut of the robust box office receipts. 

"Stick with me kid and you'll go places!"

Zombies go to war

While it was no Night of the Living Dead, White Zombie inspired more than a few imitators. Next out of the gate was Revolt of the Zombies (1936), which was not so much an imitation as a follow-up to White Zombie made by the same producers and director. Set shortly after World War I, Revolt switches locales from Haiti to the exotic temples of Cambodia, where an expedition sent by the Allied Command is rummaging around, looking for the arcane “Secret of the Zombies” (shades of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark!).

One of the eggheads attached to the expedition, Armand (Dean Jagger), stumbles upon the secret of making zombies, and uses his newfound power to intimidate the only female member of the group, Claire Duval (Dorothy Stone), who loves another.

The outbreak of World War II couldn’t stop the advance of zombies in the B movie units of Hollywood. Initially, the movie villains exploiting zombies shifted from evil plantation owners and Voodoo followers to Nazi operatives using their arcane knowledge to subvert the allied cause.

Monogram Pictures, King of the “Poverty Row” studios specializing in B programmers, made near-identical twin zombie pictures in the early ‘40s. King of the Zombies (1941) and Revenge of the Zombies (1943) share so many plot points and themes (and two cast members), that they’re easy to get confused with one another:

✔ Both feature suave doctors who turn out to be Nazi spies using Voodoo and zombies to further their sinister aims (Dr. Sangre in King, played by Henry Viktor, and Dr. Von Altermann in Revenge, played by John Carradine).

✔ Both doctors have beautiful wives who walk around in a catatonic state (I’ll leave it to you to guess why).

✔ Instead of just one rock-jawed protagonist, the films opt for a tag-team bro duo who for much of the time are maddeningly clueless to all the creepy stuff happening in front of their noses (Dick Purcell and John Archer in King; Robert Lowery and Mauritz Hugo in Revenge).

✔ Both feature an attractive female second lead for romantic subplot purposes (Sangre’s niece played by Joan Woodbury and Von Altermann’s secretary played by Gale Storm).

✔ Both Doctors’ households are run by Madame Sul-Te-Wan, who, according to IMBDb, was the first African-American actress to secure a contract with a major studio.

✔ And then there is the dubious comic relief of bug-eyed Manton Moreland, who plays a superstitious valet in both. Monogram could still get away with such stereotyped characters in the ‘40s. Manton’s routines were so popular that he was a regular go-to character actor for the studio, appearing in a recurring role in their Charlie Chan series (and often getting favorable billing). Even though Moreland jumps at every shadow that crosses his path, to be fair, he is far more perceptive than his obtuse bosses, who couldn’t sense danger if it walked up and slapped ‘em silly.

The biggest distinction between the two films, such as it is, is the scope of the villains’ ambitions. In King, Sangre, partnering with the Voodoo priestess played by Madame Sul-Te-Wan, attempts Voodoo soul transference (!?) on a Navy admiral he has captured in order to extract defense secrets. (This being 1941, shortly before the U.S. entered the war, the government Sangre is working for is unnamed...wink, wink.)

A couple of years later, with the U.S. fully immersed in the fight against the Germans and Japanese, Revenge ups the ante considerably, making Von Altermann into a mad Nazi doctor intent on creating an army of zombies to turn the tide of the war.

Will the dense protagonists get wise in time to foil the nefarious plots? Will the more handsome of the pair get the girl? Will Manton Moreland’s belief in zombies be vindicated? Take a wild guess.

War-weary zombies

As the global conflict ground on, movie-makers scaled back the war themes in their B programmers in deference to audiences who simply wanted to forget their troubles for a couple of hours at the theater.

Auteur B movie producer Val Lewton wisely set his 1943 film I Walked with a Zombie on a fictional Caribbean island, and borrowed liberally from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre in telling the atmospheric tale of a young nurse (Frances Dee), who begins to believe that the expressionless, sleep-walking wife of her wealthy employer (Tom Conway) is really a zombie.

Lewton carries on the tradition of having a beautiful wife under a zombie spell, but also includes one of the creepiest male zombies ever for good measure. And thankfully, there’s not a whiff of war or spies or mad Nazi doctors.

Darby Jones' zombie scared the snot of me when I first saw I Walked with a Zombie.

Lewton’s film is dark, moody, beautifully photographed, and includes some genuinely suspenseful moments. On the other end of the scale is producer Sam Katzman’s Voodoo Man (1944), which is as gloriously cheesy as Lewton’s film is somber and serious.

Voodoo Man has the distinction of being the first self-aware, meta-zombie movie in Hollywood history. Tod Andrews plays Ralph Dawson, a screenwriter working for Banner Pictures (the actual name of Katzman’s production company). The studio boss S.K. (uh-huh) summons Ralph to his office to assign him a horror script based on a ripped-from-the-headlines story of women who have mysteriously gone missing in the area. Ralph reminds him that he’s taking time off to get married and go on his honeymoon.

The hapless scenarist runs out of gas on the way to his fianceé’s house, and by chance is picked up by Sally (Louise Curry), who just happens to be the maid of honor and is headed to the house as well.

After they turn off on a detour in the middle of nowhere, Sally’s car dies. Ralph spots a nearby mansion, but is rebuffed at the door by a servant. When he gets back to the car, Sally is nowhere to be found. It seems that Ralph has stumbled into the missing girl mystery that S.K. wanted him to exploit.

At the center of the conspiracy is Dr. Richard Marlowe (Bela Lugosi), whose beautiful wife (Ellen Hall) is dead, but still able to walk around (you didn’t think they’d leave out the beautiful zombified wife, did you?). He needs healthy young women in order to transfer their life essences to his wife and restore her to the living. Marlowe is aided in his mad plan by Nicholas (George Zucco), the local gas station owner and Voodoo witch doctor (now there’s a unique skill set!), who identifies likely candidates and officiates at the transference ceremonies. John Carradine is on hand as half of a duo of mentally-challenged henchmen who do the actual kidnapping (a big comedown from his stint as the Nazi doctor in Revenge).

The ceremony is a marvel of B movie cheese, and it alone is worth looking up Voodoo Man. As master of ceremonies, the normally professorial-looking Zucco sports a feathered headdress, facial paint and a classic magician’s robe with stars and crosses. His dignity takes a further hit when he’s given lines like: “Ramboona is all powerful!” (All powerful, yes, but apparently Ramboona helps those who help themselves to unwary young women.)

Lugosi’s outfit is more restrained, but he gets the best lines of all as he facilitates the soul/life force transference. He summons up his best halting Dracula voice as he intones over and over, “Mind…to…mind, soul from body…to…body, emotion…to…emotion, life…to…death…” In the background, John Carradine's idiot henchman bangs on bongo drums (!?) with a vacant, almost zombie-like look on his face.

There’s not a chance of suspense in something this silly, but there is one notable scene in which Carradine releases several young women, the product of previous failed experiments, from their cells in the basement. Dressed in their long-flowing ceremonial robes and staring ahead, lifeless, yet still ambulatory, they’re reminiscent of Dracula’s brides.

The self-awareness comes full circle at the end, when Dawson delivers a script titled "Voodoo Man" based on his experiences, and he suggests to S.K. that Bela Lugosi play the lead (cue the laugh track).

Years later, Sam Katzman would try his hand with yet another zombie movie, The Zombies of Mora Tau (1957). That one is about a group of zombie sailors guarding a sunken treasure. Despite the unique nautical angle, Mora Tau is deadly dull compared to the madcap antics of Voodoo Man.

Zombies in the big city

In an era of total war, traditional movie monsters seemed lame and innocuous in comparison. So B movie makers embraced the lameness by increasingly mixing broad comedy with horror, often bringing together established comedic teams with horror icons. The result was pictures like Spooks Run Wild (1941) and Ghosts on the Loose (1943), in which Bela Lugosi serves as a foil for the comic pranks of the East Side Kids.

Several years before Universal decided to team up their stable of classic monsters with Abbott and Costello, RKO Radio Pictures jumped on the bandwagon by making a sort of sequel to the classic I Walked with a Zombie -- only this time featuring their own comic duo.

In Zombies on Broadway, two inept press agents, Jerry Miles and Walt Strager (Wally Brown and Alan Carney) are ordered by their gangster boss (Sheldon Leonard) to find a real living-dead zombie to appear at the opening of his new night club, The Zombie Hut. They travel to the Caribbean island of San Sebastian (the same fictional locale as the Lewton film), where a certain Dr. Renault (Bela Lugosi) has supposedly become an expert in creating zombies.

Needing help to find the elusive doctor, the boys team up with a beautiful nightclub singer, Jean La Dance (Anne Jeffreys), who in exchange wants a ride back to New York. Plans go awry when Jean is kidnapped by one of Renault’s zombies (Darby Jones, in the identical make-up he wore in I Walked with a Zombie), and Walt is zombified (but only temporarily) by the mad doctor.

By this point Lugosi, whose glory days were far behind him, was used to being upstaged by low-rent comedy acts in horror cheapies that exploited his name recognition. But just a few years later, Lugosi would have the last laugh (and the last big boost of his career) with yet another horror comedy, reprising his cherished Dracula role to wide acclaim in Universal’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). RKO, in recycling characters and locales from I Walked with a Zombie and bringing in Lugosi to share in the fun, provided a sort of dress rehearsal for Bela’s last big break at Universal.

Epilogue

As the Atomic Age dawned and the Cold War set in, supernatural zombies shuffled off the stage to make way for irradiated giant monsters and alien invaders. But you can’t keep the living dead down for long. Inevitably, zombies made a spectacular comeback via the imagination of an unassuming low-budget filmmaker named George Romero, and they’ve been overwhelming the earth ever since, powered by strange viruses instead of Voodoo.

Romero could scarcely imagine the endless zombie plagues that would be unleashed by Night of the Living Dead. But the old-time zombies are still around, waiting patiently on DVD and streaming sites for that special, nostalgic viewer to summon them.

Stone Cold Cultivated Killers

Now Playing: The Man Who Turned to Stone (1957)

Pros: Brave attempt to mix Gothic horror and "reform school girls" genres; Interesting plot and character touches somewhat redeem an absurd premise
Cons: Flat direction; largely mediocre acting; Some "slap your forehead" plot absurdities; Weak "monster" & makeup

Just like the Queen in Snow White, I have a magic mirror that flatters the heck out of me every morning when I manage to haul my aching carcass out of bed and stumble into the bathroom. It's one of those jobs with a row of warm-colored globe lights on top. The magical light flattens out most lines and wrinkles, hides my turkey neck in shadow, and even manages to soften the white, bristly old man hair sticking out in all directions. For just a brief moment as I stand there shaving, I can imagine that I'm 10, maybe even 15 years younger. (No, I'm not going to reveal my age, because then I'd have to track you down and kill you. Nothing personal of course.)

Unfortunately every other mirror that I encounter in that cruel world out there adds 5 or 10 years under the merciless glare of cold fluorescent light. And forget about photographs! Every time I see a photo of myself, I immediately think, who is that old wreck standing next to [fill in the blank]?

Yes boys and girls, it's no fun to get old. So it's no wonder that mythology, and modern mythology in the form of B movies, is filled with people trying to cheat death and find the secret of eternal youth. Quite often, seeking eternal youth becomes complicated… and deadly. My advice is to get a good vanity mirror. It costs less, is easy to maintain, and doesn't require you to sell your eternal soul.

The Man Who Turned to Stone tells the strange tale of a group of old men (and one woman) who ruthlessly exploit nubile young women to regain their youth and vitality (come to think of it, that's just a typical day in Hollywood!).

A newly hired staff counselor at the LaSalle Detention Home for Girls, Carol Adams (Charlotte Austin), learns from talkative inmate Marge (Tina Carver) that "somebody around here is playing for keeps!" From time to time, the girls hear screams in the night, and always the next day one of them turns up dead from a supposed heart attack. The girls are also afraid of Eric (Friedrich von Ledebur), a tall, cadaverous-looking mute, an assistant to Murdock, who is constantly skulking around the grounds. Carol is skeptical, but when she learns that another young woman has been found dead after a night of screams, she decides to look into the Home's death certificate records. Before she can learn much, she's intercepted by the sour, imperious Mrs. Ford (Ann Doran), one of the Home's senior administrators, who threatens to fire her despite her political connections (Carol is a friend of the Governor's daughter).

The arrogant Dr. Murdock (Victor Jory) questions Carol Adams'
(Charlotte Austin) counseling skills.

When the girls return from movie night to find another young woman, Anna Sherman (Barbara Wilson) hanging in the dormitory, an inquest is convened. Carol testifies that she didn't think the girl capable of committing suicide. The director of the Home, Dr. Murdock (Victor Jory) suggests that she's not qualified to make such a judgment. Dr. Jess Rogers (William Hudson), sent to investigate by the state prison commission, is sympathetic to Carol and suspicious of the eccentric, arrogant Dr. Murdock and his cronies. The inquest is concluded with a verdict of suicide, but Rogers is not done.

As Rogers waits for Murdock in a nicely furnished drawing room, he remarks to Cooper (Paul Cavanaugh), one of the institution's board members, that the painting above the fireplace looks like an authentic Rembrandt. Cooper proudly tells Rogers that he paid a shopkeeper a pittance for the Rembrandt in 1850… "er, 1950 of course," he corrects himself as Murdock, glaring at him, enters the room.

More suspicious than ever, Rogers demands background information on all the staff and decides to do a complete autopsy of Anna, whose body is being kept in the infirmary. Meanwhile, Carol and Rogers find out from Marge, who was in isolation when the rest of the inmates were watching the movie, that she heard screams before the girl was found hanging. "Who screams before committing suicide?" she asks them.

Rogers completes most of the autopsy before the administrative staff, headed by Murdock, comes storming into the infirmary. He lies to them that the autopsy confirms the finding of suicide. Rogers notices that Cooper is the most nervous member of the cabal and seems at odds with his colleagues. He gets him alone in a room to try to pry some information out of him, but is astonished at a couple of extreme biological anomalies-- Cooper's heartbeat can be heard clear across the room, and his skin has become so hardened that not even a sharp knife thrust repeatedly against his hand can break the skin. Cooper tells Rogers that he's arranged for information about the group's secrets to be sent to him in the event of his death or disappearance.

When Cooper turns up missing, Rogers sets out in the middle of the night to dig up a buried diary per Cooper's directions. With the cadaverous mute Eric shadowing him, he finds the diary and learns the deep, dark secret-- that the group had studied under a French expert in "animal magnetism" (?!?) in the 1780s and discovered how to prolong life indefinitely by transferring bioelectric energy from human subjects to themselves. They had found that young women of child-bearing age were the best energy sources (yeah, sure), and that the procedure was always fatal to the donors.

Recently, the group had discovered through Eric's and Cooper's bizarre symptoms that the treatments become less effective over time, requiring ever more frequent applications (and more heart attack victims and suicides at the reform school). Without the energy transference, the heart beats like a kettledrum and the outer layer of skin hardens to the consistency of stone as death approaches.

Eric (Friedrich von Ledebur) visits another
unfortunate detention home inmate.

Rogers fights off Eric (who takes a header over a cliff), then returns to the reform school determined to shut down the scientific vampirism for good. And the cabal led by Murdock is equally determined to continue preying on young women at any cost. The desperate crew kidnaps Carol and starts preparing to suck the life out of her. Meanwhile, at the base of the cliff, stone-faced Eric is dusting himself off. Rogers has his work cut out for him…

In 1957, when The Man Who Turned to Stone was released, American popular culture was riding a gnarly youth wave like some blonde southern California surfer dude. Rock and roll was riding high, Elvis was at the peak of his popularity, adults were hunkering down in their living rooms watching westerns like Gunsmoke and Have Gun Will Travel, and teens were flocking to movie theaters and drive-ins to make out while needle-nosed spaceships, atomic monsters, juvenile delinquents, and reform school girls filled the screens in the background.

The Man, with its unique blend of 200-year-old mad scientists and gum-cracking female delinquents, seems to want to appeal to every demographic, and can't quite decide if it's a creepy gothic horror from the 1940s or an up-to-date (for the times) reform school exploitation pic. But then, who am I to question (especially at this late date) the judgment of Sam Katzman, the legendary B movie producer who started out in the film business at the age of 13 as a prop boy, and who by this time had literally hundreds of titles under his belt in every genre (the one common denominator-- they were cheap). 1957 alone saw the release of 8 Katzman pictures, 4 of which where sci-fi/horror (Zombies of Mora Tau - released on a double bill with The Man Who Turned to Stone; The Night the World Exploded; and The Giant Claw, notorious for its ridiculous-looking monster). Only a year earlier, he had produced the underrated The Werewolf, executive-produced Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers, and even more importantly, introduced the first rock and roll movie featuring Bill Haley and the Comets, Rock Around the Clock. Like the Energizer Bunny, Sam kept going and going, producing movies right up to his death in 1973.

Perhaps because of its half-baked blending of gothic horror and teenage delinquent genres, overall mediocre acting, and rock-bottom (even for Katzman) production values, The Man Who Turned to Stone is not nearly as well known as some of his other titles from the '50s. It's not ground-breaking like Rock Around the Clock, doesn't feature a cool monster like The Werewolf, and isn't even unintentionally hilarious like The Giant Claw. The "scariest" effect is tall, skinny Eric with very theatrical-looking pasty skin and dark hollows under his cheekbones for a skull-like appearance. And the premise is weak even for a B movie of this sort-- how in the world did the cabal think they could take over a girl's home and periodically murder the residents without anyone noticing? Healthy young girls having heart attacks? Really?

Uh-oh! This is no spa, and that's not a jacuzzi!

Still, there are some nice touches that redeem even this stone-faced B production. Veteran actor Victor Jory stands out (among a largely mediocre cast) as the suave, intense and brooding Dr. Murdock. Even before we find out that he's much, much older than he looks, we get a clue in the way he wears his clothes "old style," with his loose cravat and turned up collar. He's definitely old school, only in this case, his school dates all the way back to the 18th century. Jory/Murdock is very good at the inquest scene when he's questioning Carol about Anna's suicide. On the surface he's polite and in control, but behind his black eyes something is smoldering. (By this point, Jory's career, like so many, had transitioned from larger budget features to TV and B movies; his other B sci-fi role of the '50s is the infamous Cat-Women of the Moon, 1953.)

Also good is Paul Cavanaugh as the anxious, conscience-plagued Cooper. In a nicely realized scene in which the other members of the group condemn Cooper to death for fear he'll spill their secrets ("We decided against your renewal," Murdock coldly tells the dying man), Cooper at first says that he's ready. His next lines are the best in the movie, a warning to his amoral cohorts:

"220 years is too long for any man to live. After a time, you think you're more than a man, you think you can make life… and take life."

Good advice not only for arrogant mad doctors, but anyone with power over other people's lives. However, with death just minutes away, Cooper recants his weariness with eternal life and tells the group that perhaps it's a mistake after all for him to die now and possibly lose all the work he's contributed to the project. He rationalizes that if allowed to live, he might be able to find a way to synthesize the energy transference formula so that no one else need die. It's a poignant and well acted scene.

And finally, I will go on record as saying that I both liked and appreciated the unusual ending. Suffice it to say that you will either find it the most preposterous, laughable and anticlimactic ending you've ever seen in a cheap B, or like me, you will find it strangely affecting and very much in keeping with the mindset of these villainous, yet very human, characters. If you're intrigued, check it out!

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Where to find it:

Oldies.com

Human monsters hundreds of years old!