The Plague of the Zombies

I bought the double feature DVD "Mummy's Shroud/Plague of the Zombies" for Mummy's Shroud. I had never heard of Plaque, but hey, I get to see it for free. I wasn't expecting the zombies to eat people or anything, that wouldn't come to Night of the Living Dead, but I expected the zombies to do a lot more than they did. In a way it's a lot like "White Zombie" the early 30s Bela Lugosi movie. Where the zombies are simply free labor for the man who controls them. But this movie, like some other Hammer Horror movies, is painfully slow, and isn't until towards the end that things really start moving. The one good thing I will say about the movie is the zombie make up is really cool looking.

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.

When we think about zombie films, first titles that come to mind are George A. Romero's trilogy, the Return of the living dead series and maybe Peter Jackson's Braindead. All good films off course but this 1966 film should definitely be on this "top of mind" list.It contains all ingredients off the ideal horror film: suspense (only the George Romero films have that too, most others are more funny than scary). Several scenes just give you the creeps and you stare to them with your eyes wide open. Also, great acting performances by rather unknown actors. The accents are typical British and very appropriate in the atmosphere of the film (in my opinion, of course) the make-up effects and the creepy music just make the whole film complete. No negative remarks from my side !!! But perhaps what makes the film excellent the most is the very original story... Zombies rise from their grave and have only one mission : hunt the living !!...normally... In this Hammer production (of course Hammer... you gotta love 'em) the zombies are brought back by men, for whole other causes... The highly respected Dr. Forbes receives a letter from one of his former students. This man, Dr Peter Thomson, now is the doctor in a small village in Cornwall. A lot of young men died in this village and he's calling Dr. Forbes for help. Dr. Forbes and his daughter Sylvia go there to help him out, and they too soon discover that there's something very strange going on. they want to perform an autopsy on one of the bodies to find out more about the disease but this ain't possible because all of corpses disappeared. When Peter's wife becomes a victim of this disease too, both the doctor's do everything to discover what in God's name is going on. One man in town is a great mystery...Mr. Hamilton. He recently came to town and now own the old mine. This mine was very profitable in the past but it had to be closed because many worker lost their lives. Nobody knows much about Mr. Hamilton, except that spend many years in Haïti...the country of voodoo. Telling more about this film would be a real shame cause the it's definitely worth checking out. If you're in the mood to see a good zombie film, but a little more scarier than usual...this is your film

George Romero might have breathed life back into the zombie sub-genre with his classic 'Night Of The Living Dead' (1968), but I think he possibly owes a debt to Hammer's 1966 movie 'Plague Of The Zombies': his infamous flesh-eating cadavers bear a remarkable resemblance to Plague's (admittedly less ravenous) mouldy, shuffling corpses. In Hammer's effective little shocker, André Morell is Sir James Forbes, a professor of medicine who travels to Cornwall (in the company of his daughter, Sylvia, played by Diane Clare) after receiving a strange missive from ex-student Peter Tompson. Now working as a GP in a remote part of the West country, Peter is completely baffled as to why his patients have suddenly started dropping like flies. After investigating matters in the Cornish town, Sir James discovers that the victims are being killed and returned to life (through the power of voodoo) by nasty landed gent Squire Hamilton (John Carson), who is using the rotting automatons to work his supposedly abandoned tin mine. Although it was originally released as a support feature for 'Dracula, Prince Of Darkness', Plague Of The Zombies is easily one of Hammer's finest efforts and essential viewing for fans of the living dead. The talented cast give some excellent performances (Morell, in particular, is great as the open-minded man of science who is quite prepared to embrace the notion of witchcraft), whilst director John Gilling ensures that the film rattles along at a fair pace, managing some pretty chilling set-pieces in the process: a creepy dream-sequence that sets the standards for corpses crawling from their graves; a shocking scene in which we meet our first walking dead; and a truly memorable moment that features the decapitation of a zombie by spade (come to think of it, maybe Mr. Raimi also owes a little of his success to this film).

The plague of The Zombies is the only zombie film that Hammer studios made,which is a shame but then i suppose they specialised more in vampire movies.Even though this was there only one it probably makes it more memorable as it was the last proper zombie film which stuck to the true definition of what a zombie was supposed to be,which were people turned into the living dead so that they would be slaves and very cheap labour workers for a wealthy master.Zombies can kill but they don't live on peoples flesh as seen in the later and current zombie films.This is what i like about plague of the zombies,and why it seems to have become sought after. It was made the same year as Hammers the Reptile and uses the same location and sets,and even some of the same actors.Also like the Reptile ,Plague Of The Zombies has a very cold atmospheric quality about it,ma by this is to do with the location and sets,i don't know but they are genuinely creepy films,and if you have seen one you may as well see the other.Although i would say that Plague Of The Zombies does seem to have a lot more people in it,so was probably made on a bigger budget.Also like all Hammer films its entertaining and times a bit silly but thats Hammer.

I have to say I have never read such ill-informed postings anywhere in my life as I have from those people who dislike this film. Normally, if people don't like films I like I don't care much. But your lack of knowledge has got to me and I have to let you know. To start with – those people who complain the zombies in this film don't eat people. Well, I'm afraid you're confusing ZOMBIES with GHOULS. Don't worry, you are in good company. George A Romero is apparently equally as stupid, because he doesn't know the difference either. GHOULS eat the flesh of human beings. ZOMBIES do not. ZOMBIES are people who have been put into a death-like state in order to fulfil the role of slave to those who have mastery over them. Here is the second mistake of the ill-informed – the George A Romero films and their ilk aren't really about ZOMBIES at all, but about GHOULS. OK, he doesn't know the difference and neither did you, but maybe you do now. I could go on (does anyone really think that `Night of the Living Dead' is superior to `Plague of the Zombies'? If so, they must be the kinds of people who find Ewok movies emotionally satisfying). However, I will just finish by advising anyone who has been stimulated to anything like a moment of would-be intellectualism to take a look into the religion of Voodoo. They will find a fascinating mixture of Catholic and ancient African religions. They may also realise that zombie-ism is merely a metaphor. A zombie has been buried in the ground, and dug up again and their soul now belongs to their new master. Zombie-ism is a metaphor for the slavery that turned Voodoo into a religion in the first place. The slaves who practised it had been buried (in the holds of ships) and when they emerged they were under the control of new masters and their soul was not their own. Voodoo emerges as a way the slaves explained (to themselves) what had happened to them and coped with their new state. People comparing this film with Romero's rubbish are not comparing like with like. There are few real `zombie' films. `I Walked with a Zombie', `White Zombie', and `The Plague of the Zombies' are three rare films that do explore the meanings and background of zombie-ism. "Plague" is thoughtful, intelligent and well acted and does not make an elementary confusion between GHOUL and ZOMBIE. Hooray, at least, for that.

Young workers are dying because of a mysterious epidemic in a little village in Cornwall. Doctor Thompson is helpless and asks professor James Forbes for help. The professor and his daughter Sylvia travel to Thomson. Terrible things happen soon, beyond imagination or reality. Dead people are seen near an old, unused mine. Late people seem to live suddenly. Professor Forbes presumes that black magic is involved and someone has extraordinary power. He doesn't know how close he is: the dead become alive because of a magic voodoo-ritual, and so they must serve their master as mindless zombies. A cool zombie flick, with a decent cast, gruesome special effects, good atmosphere...worth watching! Not in the same league as, say, "The beyond" or "zombies", but it's decent entertainment anyways!

Though I'm a big Hammer fan from first time around, incredibly I missed this when it came out (actually, I was a bit young), and never caught up with it on TV. A pal of mine , gave me the DVD, so I was finally able to see it. PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES isn't the front rank of Hammer movies. I saw THE MUMMY right after and it's plain that Hammer weren't spending much money on ZOMBIES, compared with the earlier film, but though it was obviously made by the Hammer B-team on a b- movie budget, ZOMBIES does everything that it was intended to do. Great to see a very young Jacqueline Pearce as the doomed friend of the heroine. I met Jacqueline a few times during the 1980s when she was in BBC's BLAKE'S 7, and she was a very funny, sometimes outrageous person. But you'd never know it from this fairly thankless role. Anyway, not Hammer's best, but fun nonetheless. Worth a look if you ever get the chance to see it.

Sir James Forbes (André Morell) and his daughter, Sylvia (Diane Clare), are out of the blue requested to travel to a Cornish village by Sir James' former pupil, Dr. Peter Thompson (Brook Williams). The village has become a haven for mysterious deaths and Peter's believes that Sir James can shed some light on the matter. No sooner do they arrive when another victim surfaces and it's quickly becomes evident that something far more sinister than medical problems is at work here. Hammer Horror tackles the zombie sub-genre with no little amount of success. Directed by John Gilling, The Plague Of The Zombies was filmed back to back with the equally entertaining The Reptile. Filmed out of fortress Hammer that was Bray Studios, the same sets that were used for The Reptile were also used here. With Bernard Robinson's Cornish Village again a treat for sore eyes. 1966 was the last year that Hammer used Bray Studios and it's fitting that it was a year that saw efficient and varying creepers filling out the Hammer Horror cannon. Peter Bryan's story, aided by some interesting imagery, delves into the dark world of witchcraft and voodoo, thus giving this particular "zombie" piece an extra dimension. This is not merely about zombies roaming the countryside and killing indiscriminately. Evil they are of course, but they have a purpose and being that comes to light as the story unfolds. There's also nods to tyranny and exploitation, wryly observed by the makers here, cheekily cloaked in a cloud of rotting flesh. Technically it holds up rather well too. The effects are strong enough to carry the story, with the zombies eerie personified as they shuffle around all green flesh and grumbling away as we know they should. All captured in deluxe colour that comes out nice in High Definition. The cast are fine, with Morell standing out as he gives his usual classy and professional performance, while James Bernard's score is suitably at one with each and every change of pace. This is not just a fine and under appreciated part of the Hammer Horror output, it's also a worthy and most notable entry in the "zombie" genre. See it if you can. 7/10

Look, the British have given us some pretty good things, like golf, tennis, Monty Python, Blackadder, and the like, but Hammer is not one of them. There are some people who simply should not try to make movies, and Anthony Nelson Keys and his Hammer friends definitely fall into this group. I've now seen Plague of the Zombies, The Witches, Moon Zero Two, Rasputin, and The Reptile, and I've noticed these defining characteristics of Hammer films in each: 1. A flimsy, vaguely defined plot 2. All the tension removed and replaced with long, drawn out, pointless scenes and convoluted subplots 3. A baffling, confusing denouement, usually supposed to convey irony, but leaving the audience's heads spinning 4. Then, before the closing action is completed and before the plot has had a chance to resolve itself, the end credits elbow their way in. Plague, however, is one of the most sustained examples of this. (1) The "plot" wanders around from Hamilton's sexual witchcraft fantasies to Alice becoming a zombie to Forbes doing research on rituals in "Heidi." (yeah, I know what he said, but it came out weird.) (2) The tension is removed by revealing almost immediately that Hamilton is the zombie priest, and then replaced by the interminable scenes of Forbes sneaking around the house, Martinus being grilled by the cops and both Sylvia and Alice being lured to the mine. (3) Do they ever explain in the film exactly how the zombies would be affected by burning the dolls? And why wouldn't Hamilton just run back to the secret passage to his house? I'd also like to ask why he needed ZOMBIES to work that mine. They did say that he was loose with his money, but nobody ever said he was running out. (4) Then, just as the tension in the final scene comes to a head, the film ends, just as befuddlingly and cryptically (no pun intended) as it began. Not to mention, THERE'S NO PLAGUE OF ZOMBIES! England should just go back to the things they're good at, like guillotining random people and producing drug-induced literary works. Horror is not for them. 3/10