REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES (1936)

This has a reputation as one of the worst horror movies of the classic movie era, and it is pretty bad, though I found it somewhat pleasurable on a "so bad it's kinda good" level. I'd love to see what the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 guys would have done with this. A plot summary makes it sound much more exciting than it is. During WWI, a Cambodian priest leads a zombie brigade for the Allies, but refuses to give up the secret for making and controlling the zombies, so a group of British soldiers and archaeologists heads to Angkor to see what they can find. Nothing much comes of the trip, but the single-minded Armand (Dean Jagger) manages to stumble on the secret formula, creates a horde of zombies he enslaves for his own use--to get the girl of his dreams--and is eventually killed by his slaves. The single best moment is very early on, when we see the zombie soldiers in action; it's all downhill from there. Most of the movie consists of choppy dialogue scenes (we're almost always told rather than shown what's happening) that are badly set up and end awkwardly as though the director forgot to yell "Cut!" (One scene fades out as an actor is still speaking his lines.)

Jagger is pretty good, giving an eccentric but effective intensity to his role, but the rest of the acting is terrible, done almost entirely by non-professionals who didn't make many (or any) other movies. Jagger's romantic rival, Robert Noland, gives one of the worst acting performances I've seen, with Dorothy Stone as the girl coming in a close second. The story gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "plot loophole"; in the war scene, it's implied that the soldiers are actually the dead returned to life, but Jagger's zombies are just people under a strong hypnotic spell. How they get that way is unclear--it involves the smoke of some powder being wafted their way, but also some ambiguous ability on the controller's part to activate his "third eye" to bring the zombies under his power. There is one potentially interesting theme in the film: Nowland points out to Jagger that he is a soft, passive man who lets others ride roughshod over him, and suggests that Jagger needs a bit of ruthlessness in his personality. When he gains the power to "zombify," he does indeed become ruthless, but this idea doesn't really get developed. There is a long trek through a swamp done in front of rear projection--at first, it just looks miserably phony, but as it goes on and on, it takes on a sort of surreal atmosphere (I'm being generous here). The director, Victor Halperin, did the earlier low-budget WHITE ZOMBIE, which had two things that helped it transcend its grade Z budget: a creepy atmosphere and Bela Lugosi. Neither of those things are present here, although according to reference sources, it's shots of Lugosi's eyes from the previous film that we see when Jagger starts commanding his zombies. Lovers of bad Poverty Row cinema need to see this one; all others, beware! [DVD]