THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING (1964)

In an opening sequence, we see people dropping dead like flies, leading to cars wrecking, planes crashing, and people strewn about dead on the street. Jeff Nolan, an American test pilot for North England Aviation, lands in a small English village to find a ghost town. He heads for a local inn along with a handful of other survivors including Ed, a drunkard, and a pregnant woman and her cocky husband. Since all seven of them were isolated from the outside for a time (in the plane, in a hospital room, etc.), they surmise that they escaped a gas attack which killed everyone else, but soon giant robots begin striding through the streets, turning some of the dead into blank-eyed zombies (see picture at right for one of the sexier zombies).  The group struggles to survive, not just against the aliens and zombies, but against each other, thanks to internal discord. This B-film, only an hour long, seems like someone put VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD in a blender. It's not as effective as any of those films, but it has its moments. I would bet this was among the earliest of the "slow-walking zombie" movies (four years before LIVING DEAD), and they and the robots are generally effective, though the low budget hurts their look a bit. The acting is adequate with Willard Parker, a B-lead in Westerns and adventure films, stolid in the lead as Jeff (his real-life wife Virginia Field plays Peggy, Ed's mistress). The title overstates the drama—it’s more like "A Village Dies Whimpering"—but it's worth watching for horror and sci-fi buffs. [DVD]