Powerful

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

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!

Alongside 'The Reptile', a film made back-to-back with this, 'Plague of the Zombies' is widely considered something of a diamond in Hammer's crown. And it is. Whereas 'Reptile' was infused with a rich Cornish atmosphere on which to base its tale of terror, only the realisation of the titular creature let things down. No such trouble here - in fact, the appearance of the zombies depicted in this John Gilling directed production went on, coincidentally or not, to influence many of the living dead productions to this day. Milky eyed, rotting, stumbling creatures, they are truly a sight to behold, especially in their first appearance: Diane Clare's Sylvia Forbes stumbles through the night after her fragile friend Alice (the mighty Jacqueline Pearce) only to find her presumably dead, and in the arms of a shockingly revealed, grinning dead man. It is sterling stuff.Peter Bryan's screenplay sets the ball rolling immediately with a fox-hunt being carried out across countryside and village by a handsome troupe of violently arrogant upper-class young bloods. We immediately despise these cowards, and therefore hold Squire Clive Hamilton in both fear and high regard, as he appears to be their master. Hamilton is played by one of my favourite actors, John Carson, a superbly spoken gentleman who seemed to specialise in well-bred rotters. Had Christopher Lee not been available, I am convinced Carson would have made an equally well-received Dracula.Andre Morell, another Hammer stalwart, is also a great presence here, as he is in all of his appearances. He plays Hamilton's nemesis Sir James Forbes, a stuffy but very appealing professor. Brook Williams is also very good as the harassed young Peter Thompson. A word too, for the formidable Denver, Hamilton's lackey and first class bully - Alexander Davion plays him wonderfully.Apart from some unfortunate day-for-night sequences not quite convincing (a common problem from filmic productions of this time), the Cornish location is magnificently used. Superstitious villagers, scared locals, a charmingly manipulative and evil aristocrat, Michael Ripper, something strange going on in the mines - all terrific horror staples. And that dream sequence celebrated by Hammer fans, deserves all the accolades it gets.

***SPOILERS**** After it's huge success with former 1930's horror films about Frankenstein & Dracula Hammer Films took a crack at Zombie movies with "Plague of the Zombies" that predated the far more popular "Night of the Living Dead" by some two years. The movie takes place in a Cornish village circa 1860 where a number of villagers died of a mysterious illness and were buried without even having been examined-autopsy-to find out what killed them. With the village boss or Squire Clive Hamilton, John Carson, refusing to have Dr. Peter Thompson,Brook Williams, check out what was the cause of the villagers strange deaths he gets in touch with his former medical teacher Sir James Forbes, Andre Morell, to help him out in finding what killed the villagers. Only to have the local police, on orders From Clive Hamilton, to have them both arrested for body snatching.With the graves of those who died opened and finding them empty it becomes apparent even to the police that something fishy is going on and that Clive Hamilton is behind it. It's when Hamilton overreaches himself in trying to make or turn Thompson's wife, whom he seems to have the hots for, Sylvia, Diane Clare, into a member of his Zombie slave work force. That's working around the clock in 24 hour shifts-at minimum wage-at his deserted salt mine outside of town that things really start to heat up.***SPOILERS*** The end for Clive Hamilton couldn't have come soon enough when the zombies under his control started getting hot in the pants as well as their entire bodies. Learning about the black arts as well as voodoo while on a trip to the Caribbean island of Hyatiee, or Haite, Hamilton became obsessed with the thought of creating a Zombie workforce as well as army to do his evil bidding. That with the help of a number Haitians that he brought back to England as well as local villagers to fill its ranks. With Sir James Forbes uncovering William's sinister plan he had Williams' entire Zonmbie army let loose on him. That only to have them together with Williams go up in flames when the salt mine was set on fire during a life and death struggle between Forbes & Williams. That put an end to Williams plans that went up in flames as well as Williams and his entire Zombie workforce .

I caught this unexpectedly on TV one afternoon and was surprised by how good it turned out to be. I was expecting it to be rather campy and melodramatic but it just wasn't. Rather, an intriguing story, taut direction, a foreboding musical score and some fine acting all held my attention to the very end. Andre Morell is particularly outstanding and Brook Williams is excellent too (especially in the decapitation-scene and dream-sequence), Diane Clare makes for a spirited, no-nonsense heroine, Jacqueline Pearce is suitably languid, and John Carson displays just the right amount of villainy as the diabolically scheming Squire. Visually, too, the film is very strong, with great camera-work and stunning use of location. Perhaps the single most notable aspect of this film is the dream-sequence which succeeds in being truly eerie and disturbing. What really makes it so, for me, is not just the zombies themselves but also the reaction of the dreamer: he doesn't exhibit the kind of terror that you usually find in such scenes, he just appears kind of puzzled and almost as if he's in a trance himself. And it's daylight, which makes the scene even more unsettling. It's interesting to consider the nature of the zombies featured here. On the one hand, these are just poor, subservient mine-workers (the film touches upon themes of capitalist/colonialist-oppression), which makes them somewhat akin to the original concept of the zombie as a mindless slave. But they are also very much like the shuffling decaying corpses of the Romero films (and it is noteworthy that Night of the Living Dead came out just a year or two later). Altogether The Plague of the Zombies appears to be rather unjustly overlooked in zombie film-annals, but Hammer's only excursion into the genre is one of its very best productions.