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Category: Haitian Vodou

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Plot: who or what is causing the dead to rise in a sleepy Cornish hamlet?

The house of Hammer could never be accused of not pouring their everything into whatever they were producing. If it has attained any kind of longevity these days it’s because The Plague Of the Zombies was the second in a double feature with the much more high-profile Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966). While that’s hardly the worst company to be in even Hammer’s secondary features always ooze with charm. The Plague Of the Zombies has the benefit of a lovable cast of reliable second-stringers headlined by one of Hammer’s unsung leading men, the always prim and perfectly groomed André Morell. The Plague Of the Zombies is a delightfully old-fashioned zombie movie and spiritually far closer to, say, something like Zombies of Mora Tau (1957) or Del Tenney’s I Eat Your Skin (1964/1971). As such it was likely the last of its kind before George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) would immediately and profoundly change the zombie movie as it was understood. Five decades and a half later it’s nigh on unfathomable to grasp what a stark difference these two years make. In good old Hammer tradition The Plague Of the Zombies is overflowing with atmosphere and even without any of their big stars it’s well worth checking out.

Great Britain, 1860. Sir James Forbes (André Morell), a retired doctor and respected medical professor, receives a letter from his friend and former student Dr. Peter Tompson (Brook Williams) who’s currently practicing in a sleepy hamlet in Cornwall. In the letter Tompson explains that his village has been engulfed by a mysterious plague in the last year and that the affliction has claimed the lives of twelve so far. He hopes that his old mentor might be able to shed some light on the disease given his decades of experience and breadth of knowledge. Tompson is married to Alice (Jacqueline Pearce), a good friend of Forbes’ daughter Sylvia (Diane Clare). At Sylvia’s insistence Forbes decides to travel to Cornwall and assist Tompson in investigating and combating the disease any way he can. In the village the Forbes carriage run into a group of mounted fox-hunters and draw the ire of their leader Denver (Alexander Davion, as Alex Davion) when Sylvia misdirects the hunters away from their prey. In town the fox-hunters surround the carriage, threatening life and limb of Sylvia and the chaos and confusion that follows is enough to disrupt a small funeral procession. Denver and his men knock the casket over the guardrail of a bridge spilling its contents, local man John Martinus (Ben Aris) into the water. The man’s brother Tom (Marcus Hammond) blames the Forbeses for Denver’s conduct and assures them that trouble awaits next time they meet. Their acquaintances with the locals made the Forbes hurry to meet the Tompsons. Sir James’ interest in the case is piqued when he lays eyes on young Alice.

Tompson has been unable to conduct any serious investigation into the affliction as the superstitious villagers don’t approve of autopsies and de facto town governor nobleman Squire Clive Hamilton (John Carson) has no intention is issuing him, or anybody else for that matter, the neccessary paperwork. Under the cloak of night the two men of science do what anyone in their position would and take to exhuming the dead Martinus brother themselves. Meanwhile Sylvia sees Alice skulking away in the darkness and decides to follow her. While Sylvia runs afoul of Denver and his gang Sir James and Peter are caught in flagrante delicto by sergeant Swift (Michael Ripper) and arrested for grave-robbing. The doctors are able to convince Swift to postpone proceedings for 48 hours and buy them some time to conduct their investigation. When Alice is found dead the following morning this leads to the arrest of the living Martinus as he’d been spotted where she was last seen alive. Tom explains that he last saw his brother carrying a woman in the woods and Sylvia agrees that the ghoul she saw bore enough of a resemblance to Tom’s deceased brother. Sir James seeks an audience with a local vicar (Roy Royston) to consult his vast library on the occult. From there he deducts that someone must be practicing Haitian Vodou. The next day Hamilton finds an elaborate excuse to procure Sylvia’s blood during Alice’s funeral ceremony and that night she’s summoned to his tin mines. While Peter follows Sylvia and Sir James investigates the squire’s dwelling the men of science conclude that they have identified the perpetrator at the root of the village’s apparent plague of the walking undead.

While he may have not been a Hammer leading man the way Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing were, André Morell was a beloved force in British cinema. Morell debuted in 1938 and crossed paths with Anita Ekberg twice. First in Terence Young's Zarak (1956) (wherein Ekberg did a bellydance that would make Bella Cortez, Nai Bonet and Diana Bastet proud) and then again in the Anglo-American thriller Interpol (1957). He had prominent supporting roles in everything from The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) to Behemoth the Sea Monster (1959), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), and the big budget peplum Ben-Hur (1959). For Hammer he was a reliable lead when none of the big names were available and for the company he figured into other John Gilling-directed romps The Shadow of the Cat (1961) and The Mummy's Shroud (1967) but also She (1965) and its sequel. He alternated his horror pulp with prestigious big budget fare as Julius Caesar (1970), Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975), and The First Great Train Robbery (1978). Diane Clare was hardly a screamqueen as such but she had appearead in The Haunting (1963) and Witchcraft (1964). Jacqueline Pearce went on to have a respectable career in television but at this early stage in her career she was nothing more than a Barbara Steele wannabe. John Carson would later star in Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974). Hammer’s secondary features never lacked in charm and The Plague Of the Zombies easily can match itself with The Kiss of the Vampire (1963) from three years before.

The Plague of the Zombies was written by Peter Bryan who had written The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) and The Brides Of Dracula (1960) for the company as well as The Blood Beast Terror (1968) for Tigon and the piss-poor Herman Cohen-produced prehistoric monster slog Trog (1970) (legendary for its embarrassing drunken performance from Hollywood Golden Age leading lady Joan Crawford). Posthumously Bryan was credited with co-writing the Antonio Margheriti giallo Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye (1973) along with fellow Hammer alumnus Gilling. As was the money-saving tradition with Hammer by this point this was filmed this back-to-back with The Reptile (1966) allowing them to use many of the same sets, most noticeably the main village set on the back lot at Bray Studios. The score by James Bernard is his typical portent, pompous fare and nothing out of the ordinary as such. The special effects by Les Bowie and Roy Ashton are quite good, especially the ghoulish decayed zombie make-up is remarkable for the decade. Outside of one very obvious night-for-day section during the conclusion at the tin mine this is another Hammer feature that has aged quite gracefully. The costumes and locations are lovely as always and with someone like Morell standing in for Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee their absence isn’t really felt. Diane Clare is homely as Hammer starlets of this decade tended to be (nobody was going to mistake her for, say, Veronica Carlson or Susan Denberg) and the Jacqueline Pearce part could easlly been played by someone like Isobel Black.

What more is this if not a very British take on the Bela Lugosi monochrome horror classic White Zombie (1932)? By 1966 it was painfully clear that Hammer could no longer keep up with the rapidly changing European cinematic landscape and the latest Hollywood productions. The studio that once led to British horror through some of its greatest stylistic victories now had become a relic of a bygone era. In a desperate attempt to stay relevant in the wake of the explosion of erotic vampire horror following Emilio Vieyra's Blood Of the Virgins (1967), Jean Rollin’s The Nude Vampire (1970) and Jess Franco’s Soledad Miranda spectacular Vampyros Lesbos (1971) Hammer did the most logical from what they were famous for. Were before their productions were awash with heaving bosoms and gratuitous cleavage now they spiced up its gothics with an abundance of bare breasts and blood as models (nude and otherwise) took the place of actresses. And yes, this is where Norwegian black metal troublemakers Carpathian Forest took that songtitle for 2001’s “Morbid Fascination of Death” from, eventhough the song in question has no lyrical (or thematic) connection to the movie. For all intents and purposes, The Plague of the Zombies was about the last of its kind before Night of the Living Dead (1968) set the new standard and continental Europe (primarily Italy, and to a lesser degree Spain) dominated the genre by the next decade. As far as enduring legacies go, it’s hardly the worst thing to be remembered by.

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Plot: mad scientist is making zombies out of natives on Caribbean island.

What is I Eat Your Skin if not gloriously lunkheaded and outrageously hilarious Florida drive-in hokum from the Sunshine State’s foremost specialist of such things, Del Tenney? Arriving too late to be of any importance in shaping the zombie mythology and harkening back to the halcyon days of Coleman Francis, Harold P. Warren, Herschell Gordon Lewis, and Ed Wood I Eat Your Skin was a relic of a bygone era even back in 1964. Surpassed only in sheer incompetence by William Girdler and J.G. Patterson Jr., Del Tenney had made a name for himself with The Curse of the Living Corpse (1964) and The Horror of Party Beach (1964). I Eat Your Skin was his first feature before his acting as an associate producer on the epic Terence Young ensemble disasterpiece Poppies Are Also Flowers (1966), only for it to be released some five years later. I Eat Your Skin is a relic remembered for all the wrong reasons and loved for all the right ones. Even Mortician seems to acknowledge as much. Not that that is a good barometer for anything, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.

I Eat Your Skin was filmed in and around Florida (South Beach, Miami and Key Biscayne, to name the most prominent) over a three-week period in 1964 on an estimated budget of $120,000 under the working title of Caribbean Adventure to hide from investors that it was a horror feature. Tenney had brokered a distribution deal with Twentieth Century Fox who stipulated that he use a union production crew or otherwise the deal would not be honoured. Tenney was none too happy with the elongated production schedule (a week longer than his usual two) and he would end up describing the union crew as, "slow and uncooperative." Second unit direction was handled by that other veteran of Florida exploitation bilge, William Grefé. That Tenney insisted on black-and-white all but ensured that the deal with Fox would not go through. Endearing in its naivité but brazen enough to be exploitative I Eat Your Skin never lives up to the promise of its premise. By 1964 filmmakers across genres were boldly charging forward and pushing the envelope on any number of fronts. I Eat Your Skin does or has none of that. As for more recently, a drive-in theater sign for it can be briefly seen in the long-delayed Orson Welles film The Other Side of the Wind (which began production in 1970 but wouldn’t see release until 2018) advertizing it alongside I Drink Your Blood (1970). As is age-old tradition, it’s our solemn duty to report that there is no, and will not be any, skin-eating whatsoever in I Eat Your Skin.

At the Fontainebleau resort in South Beach, Miami pulp novelist Tom Harris (William Joyce) is about to engage in his umpteenth poolside affair with a willing bikinied socialite (George-Ann Williamson). Just before Harris can put the moves on her and her irate husband can put hands on him Tom’s escorted away by his publicist Duncan Fairchild (Dan Stapleton) and his golddigger wife Coral (Betty Hyatt Linton). He's to embark on what’s to be an expedition to Voodoo Island in the Caribbean. There Harris is to research the native customs for his next best seller on the estate of European nobleman Lord Carrington. Having landed on the island Tom is attacked by a bug-eyed zombie but manages to escape intact thanks to an intervention by Charles Bentley (Walter Coy), the man in charge of overseeing the estate of the absent heir, and his armed posse. That evening Harris makes his acquaintance with Jeannie Biladeau (Heather Hewitt), the virginal daughter of scientist Dr. Auguste Biladeau (Robert Stanton). Biladeau informs him that the locals partake in rituals involving a plant-based narcotic that puts them in a zombie-like state. Plus, they descend from an earlier tribe who engaged in human sacrifice to appease their god, Papa Neybo. Apropos of nothing, Biladeau has been working in the jungle on a possible cure for cancer based upon snake venom. When Jeannie is kidnapped by the natives for a blood sacrifice to their god the question arises of who’s the graver threat: the superstitious savages and their tribal customs or the god-fearing man of science?

Make no mistake, this is the umpteenth 50s safari adventure enlivened slightly by golem-like zombies and mod-fabulous curvaceous bikini babes. Sporting a breezy soundtrack that is equal parts calypso as it is jazz I Eat Your Skin is about as schizophrenic as its score. Alternately obnoxious and exploitative it never quite manages to settle on a tone. While the suave playboy shtick was timely with the ascension of James Bond in popular culture the Fontainebleau opening feels like one of those bikini comedies with John Agar from a decade earlier. Not that it gets any better once the action moves to the Caribbean. Once there it becomes evident just how much of a relic of a bygone time I Eat Your Skin truly is. The Voodoo Island second half oozes Liane, Jungle Goddess (1956) from its every colonialist imperialist pore. Square-jawed males, mad science, racial stereotypes, and damsels-in-distress abound in cheapo fifties horror tradition. The zombie make-up is schintzy at best but not any worse than, say, Hammer’s The Plague of the Zombies (1966). I Eat Your Skin is not well remembered, and to the extent that it’s remembered at all is that it probably went on to inspire the much crazier Filipino, Spanish, and Italian variations of the form. For one, it’s a shlocky drive-in precursor to The Mad Doctor Of Blood Island (1968). The voodoo aspect would be further explored in Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979), and most of the plot would be kindly recycled in Zombie Holocaust (1980) and Jess Franco’s Devil Hunter (1980).

By the time it was finally released theatrically in 1971 I Eat Your Skin had been outdone in every respect by George A. Romero’s gritty Night of the Living Dead (1968) on the horror side of things. On the other hand by the time the Sexual Revolution of 1968 and the Summer Of Love rolled around it was a completely different time. A year later Top Sensation (1969) and Zeta One (1969) both capitalized on said newfound freedoms. The dawning of the seventies heralded the decade of free love and German, French, and Italian sex comedies were racier than I Eat Your Skin could ever hope to be. It was hopelessly chaste and charmingly old-fashioned by the de facto standard of the day - or even by the standards of 1964. That it was filmed in economic black-and-white probably didn’t help its case either. That it was paired with I Drink Your Blood (1970) (one of the most violent drive-in hits prior to the marquee year of 1972) by Jerry Gross (who paid Tenney $40,000 for the rights) for his Cinemation Industries’ infamous “Two Great Blood-Horrors to Rip-Out Your Guts!” drive-in double feature must have led to some interesting reactions. In the end I Eat Your Skin is barely remembered for anything other than its larger-than-life publicity campaign. Or that it was sampled by Mortician. You decide what’s more important…