Highly Overrated But Still Good

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

King of the Zombies, is a comical piece; in the long list of classic horror film. The opening score, in the sounds of tribal drumming; gives the film an adventure theme.The mood of the film, is that of a mysterious island. The continually playing drums, hint at the presence of black magic: voodoo. The movie plays out similarly to that of an Abbot and Costello movie.The story is a little slow moving, but the combination of humor and mystery; makes the film worth watching. The gathered cast, is worth many a respects even today. King of the Zombies, may not actually be classic horror, but it is a good movie, and is not your average every day zombie film.

Horror comedy from Monogram starring Mantan Moreland and a couple of forgettable bores. I'm not a big fan of Moreland but I'll admit he outshines these two guys by a country mile. It's basically an old dark house film with the three men stranded in said house on an island with a mad scientist (Henry Victor in a role originally meant for Bela Lugosi).There's a lot of stuff about voodoo and zombies, which is just an excuse to let Moreland do his bug-eyed double-takes and "afraid of spooks" routine. This is the part of Moreland's comedy shtick that I have never enjoyed. And it's not because of the offensive racial element of it, but rather because I'm not enamored with comedians who rely heavily on goofy facial expressions for laughs. I've voiced the same complaints about the likes of Red Skelton and Huntz Hall. But there is a part of Moreland's act I do like and that's when he falls back into his vaudeville routine of having a snappy back and forth with another actor. We see a bit of that here when he shares scenes with the maid (played by Marguerite Whitten). Those scenes were my favorite parts of the movie.Anyway, the horror isn't all it's teased to be as there's an espionage plot that's a lot less interesting. It was 1941, after all. It's not a great movie but it's not terrible by Poverty Row standards. It moves along quickly enough, which helps. But the entire film rests on Moreland's shoulders. If you love him, you'll probably laugh your tail off watching this. If you don't, this will go over like a lead balloon.

During World War 2, a small plane off the south coast of America is low on fuel and blown off course by a storm. Guided by a faint radio signal, they crashland on an island. The passenger, his manservant and the pilot take refuge in a mansion owned by a doctor. The easily-spooked manservant soon becomes convinced the mansion is haunted by zombies and ghosts. Exploring, the 3 find a voodoo ritual in the cellar, where the doctor is trying to acquire war intelligence by transferring personalities into his zombies. But the interruption causes the zombies to turn on their creator.There is another review on this site by an uninformed toe-head who says this movie was made for an urban black audience. He knows nothing. The film was originally supposed to star Bela Lugosi and then Peter Lorre, but neither were available. It was made explicitly to reach the same audience as Bob Hope's The Ghost Breakers! Does that sound like an urban black audience. What a jerk.The film is made very well, and even tho it's in the public domain, the prints of it are pristine which makes watching more enjoyable. It made money on release. Enough that a sequel was made. (Revenge of the Zombies.)

The snickers outnumber the screams in "Devil Bat" director Jean Yarbrough's comic chiller "King of the Zombies." The only reason to watch this lightweight, low-budget, 67-minute, black and white hokum is Mantan Moreland. Mantan delivers the best lines, while our heroes tangle with a well-dressed gentleman from Vienna and zombies on a remote island in the Caribbean. Zombies in this movie are nothing like those in a George Romero flick. They don't munch on people and drink their blood. They merely shuffle about and they don't take salt in their food.James "Mac" McCarthy (Dick Purcell of "Captain America") is flying a propeller-driven plane through a nocturnal storm somewhere between Cuba and Puerto Rico. McCarthy's friend Bill Summers (John Archer of "White Heat") and Summers' African-American butler, Jefferson Jackson (Mantan Moreland of "Gang Smashers"), are on board when McCarthy flies them into an area roughly equivalent to the Bermuda Triangle. McCarthy cannot establish contact with anybody. He catches some gibberish on the radio. Ultimately, McCarthy has to crash their aircraft on the island in--of all places--a graveyard! No sooner have they regained their wits from the disaster than our heroes hear drums throbbing in the distance. Initially, Jeff believes that his heart is being when it is really the drums of jungle tribesmen. They wander through the jungle to an ominous mansion. Bill rings the door bell and they enter of the mansion without awaiting an invitation. Viennese Dr. Miklos Sangre (Henry Victor of "Freaks") descends by the stairs from the second story with a candle and welcomes them to his house. Candles are conspicuous in each room as if electricity doesn't exist. They explain that their aircraft crashed. Sangre already knows. "Very little happens on this island that I do not know about," he assures them and provides them with room and board for the evening. Sangre notices a large cut on Mac's scalp and treats it. "The slightest injury on this island often proves fatal," he observes. Sangre warns McCarthy that the island's climate and "evil spirits" prey on the injured. He ushers his guests upstairs to their rooms. Sangre makes an exception in the case of Jefferson. He sends Jefferson with his hatchet-faced butler Mumbo (Leigh Whipper) down to the kitchen. He informs Mac and Bill that it won't look proper to his servants if he lodged a servant in the same luxury that he installs his guests.In the kitchen, Jefferson meets not only an attractive maid from Alabama, Samantha (Marguerite Whitten), but also a hideous crone, Tahama (Madame Sul-Te-Wan), the Cook and High Priestess, who is stirring a concoction in a huge vat. They tell Jefferson that they are conjuring up a magic potion to scare away evil spirits. Samantha assures Jefferson the estate is crawling with evil spirits as well as zombies. When the ignorant Jefferson asks her what a zombie is, she replies, "Dead people what walks around." She claps her hands, and two zombies appear. Jefferson bugs out and scrambles back upstairs to warn his companions. Sangre assures our heroes than not only is there no radio transmitter on his island, but also he takes them downstairs to show them that zombies do not exist. Later, one evening when they are prowling the Sangre household, Bill meets Barbara Winslow and they agree to collaborate.As it turns out, an important American military official, U.S. General Wainwright (Guy Usher of "The Devil Bat"), has been captured by Sangre--who may be working for the Nazis--and Sangre wants to learn everything from the general about the defenses of the Panama Canal. Wainwright's plane crashed a week before McCarthy had to crash-land his own plane. During the short stay on the island, Jeff is tried into--or at least he imagines that he has been turned into--a zombie. Monogram Pictures released "King of the Zombies" on the eve of World War II. Like most pre-World War II movies, the Production Code Administration prohibited the studios from identifying the nationality of the enemies for fear that it might provoke controversy. Nevertheless, it is fairly obvious that Sangre works for Hitler. Not only is he Austrian, but he also speaks in German over a short-wave radio. Indeed, he has the radio removed from Mac's plane. Henry Victor looks sinister enough to be the villain. Meanwhile, Mantan has a field day, especially when he mistakenly believes that he has been turned into a zombie. Dr. Sangre is prepared to do anything to extract the information from Wainwright. At one point, Sangre calls on a voodoo priestess to try to get the information out of the reluctant Wainwright and into another person. Dick Purcell plays the rugged one of the two who tangles with Dr. Sangre and becomes a quasi-zombie. Expect racial stereotypes.