Blood of the Zombie (1961)

Posted on Oct 12, 2005 under Horror |

aka The Dead One

Written, produced, and directed by Barry Mahon
Starring
- John MacKay
- Linda Ormond
- Monica Davis
- Clyde Kelly
- Darlene Myrick

Normally, I don’t dwell upon the presentation of the films I review; I think of myself as a movie reviewer, not a DVD reviewer, and certainly not a packaging reviewer. In this case, though, I think the back-cover text from the Shriek Show DVD is telling:

A vengeful voodoo priestess revives and controls a hideous, rotting zombie to do her foul bidding and commit unspeakable, ritualistic acts of murder! Rarely seen since its original release in 1961, BLOOD OF THE ZOMBIE is a historically important missing link in the cadaverous canon of the modern zombie movie! Unearthed from a long forgotten film vault, BLOOD OF THE ZOMBIE has been revived and restored from its original camera negative- IN COLOR AND ULTRASCOPE! Directed by war hero Barry McMahon (ROCKET ATTACK U.S.A., Errol Flynn’s CUBAN REBEL GIRLS)- the true life inspiration for the STEVE MCQUEEN character in THE GREAT ESCAPE! Stars Monica Davis (1,000 SHAPES OF A FEMALE) and John McKay (CUBAN REBEL GIRLS).

What does this tell you? Well, when a chunk of the copy is taken up by telling you that this director’s claim to fame isn’t directing this movie — or in directing any movie — then you start to sense that they’re casting around for something positive or interesting to say. Anything positive or interesting. And it’s a further bad sign when the best thing that can be said about a movie is that it’s “historically important” (though how important it could be if it’s practically vanished without a trace since its original release is debatable.)

One thing our anonymous copywriting committee could not bring themselves to do (and they say that entertainment professionals are morally bankrupt!) is to say, indicate, or intimate that this movie is in any way good. Because to do so would be a lie. A baldfaced, remorseless, here’s-your-pitchfork-and-I-hope-you-like-the-smell-of-sulfur lie.

The movie starts with a voodoo ceremony, involving a bongo drummer and a bunch of black sharecroppers standing around a blonde chick (Monica Davis), whose wild-eyed, shuddering histrionics indicate a severe need for Metamucil. (Naturally, although the voodoo secrets on display are supposedly the heritage of ancestral black slaves, it’s the white woman who masters their power and rules the roost.) Her antics with voodoo dolls are meant to call out her dead brother Jonas from the grave! Come out! Come out! Come on! Out! Now! Move it! Rouse!

“I wonder how much these would go for on eBay?”

And eventually he does push open the lid of his stone coffin and wander from the crypt. And oh golly, what an impressive zombie he makes: A tall guy (Clyde Kelly) with pasty green-yellow makeup all over his face (there might be some appliance work as well, or maybe he just has bad acne scars), dressed in an immaculate tuxedo, topped with a well-combed shaggy black fright wig. He plods like the Frankenstein monster, complete with arms held out in front of him.

This is our singular zombie. This is our threat. Hundreds of these roaming suburbia, looking to gnaw the flesh of the living, I could fear. But this… a one-legged wino coming off a three-day bender should be able to take him.

The blonde chick (whose name, I’ll reveal prematurely, is Monica) gives instructions to brother Jonas when he manages to drag his sorry carcass into the site of the voodoo ceremony: When he hears the drums again, he’s to come forth, go to the main house, and kill the woman he finds there! Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill! (Reanimated corpses are a little dense, you know.)

Cut then to the end of a wedding in New Orleans, with new groom Johnny (John MacKay) and bride Linda (Linda Ormond) fleeing the chapel in search of wedded bliss. The first part of their honeymoon is to be a guided tour of Bourbon Street for her. And us.

And boy, they mean it: First Johnny takes her to a piano jazz club, where we get to listen to an entire song by Joe Burton (as himself), who is utterly snazzy for the time period: Black suit and tie, well-coiffed hair, black-rimmed glasses. He comes over to smalltalk with Johnny between songs, and his dialogue is nothing but a conglomeration of “Like, you know, baby, the scene, a gas…” You can’t even parody guys like that effectively. We sit through another whole song (Johnny and Linda respectfully watching) before we head to…

You need a caption here? Seriously.

…Another club! A burlesque club, in fact. So Johnny and Linda sit and watch respectfully as one dancer finishes her gyrations, and then bellydancer Bella Bella (Darlene Myrick) comes out and performs her full number, and she…uh… what was I saying? Oh. Right. I guess “respectfully” isn’t the best word to describe Johnny’s viewing style, but at least he refrain from hooting and drooling in front of the woman he married not two hours before. Were this movie made a couple of decades later, I would by this point have suspected that Linda’s pleasant demeanor in such surroundings hinted at a later-to-be-revealed propensity to swing both ways, but here it just means that she’s as boring as hell and is content just to sit around not talking to her groom on their wedding night. (Not long after this movie, director Mahon turned his efforts toward a string of nudie-cuties.)

But wait, we’ve got one more club to hit! In this one, a black Dixieland band is drowned out by their loud red-and-black checked jackets. And finally, at the end of their number, twenty minutes having elapsed, the plot belatedly decides to rear its tardy head: Johnny and Linda need to drive a few hours tonight to Kenilworth, Johnny’s ancestral home, to conduct some legal affairs. Seems that, with his marriage, Johnny is now the heir of Kenilworth, a fact that is frowned upon by his cousin and current mistress of the house… Monica!

All coming together for you, is it? Then we’ll throw just one more element into the mix: On their way out of town, they meet Bella Bella, whose car died on her way to Baton Rouge for a gig. Johnny, being A Man, paws around under the hood for a good two minutes before admitting he has no idea what he’s doing; and since there aren’t any towns or service stations for quite a ways around (since, you know, the only routes between New Orleans and Baton Rouge are dark, untraveled back roads), Johnny demonstrates southern hospitality by inviting her along to Kenilworth for the night. (Once again: A couple of decades later, and a little light in my head would be flashing, “Hot girl-on-girl action real soon!!!”)

Monica is, naturally, cold to Johnny and Linda, and upset that they’ve brought along a third wheel. Zombies are easily confused, after all. So while everyone else wastes time in conversation, she slips out to tell the voodoo congregation, Ixnay on the ombiezay onighttay.

“Oh good, I thought I had forgotten my nightie. Thanks, hon.”

The next morning, the local mechanic says he needs a part that he can’t get from New Orleans for another day, so Bella Bella remains as their guest. Johnny, meanwhile, does his best to keep the sparks burning with Linda by giving her a guided tour of the old slaves’ quarters, and the family crypt. You’re a tiger, Johnny. Oh, and there’s talk of voodoo among the sharecroppers, which Johnny of course dismisses as superstitious nonsense. The warm cuddlies of slavery and death past, Johnny tries to talk some sense into Monica, who insists that no matter what the lawyers say, Kenilworth still belongs to her and brother Jonas. She also makes not-terribly-oblique threats about the terms of Johnny’s inheritance: “And what if your wife should die before you get possession of the deed?” No, Johnny doesn’t pick up on the obvious threat.

Another night comes, and after another evening of idle chitchat (thrill to Bella Bella’s game of solitaire!), Monica decides that they’ve got to get the deed done tonight. They start beating the drum to summon Jonas, but before he can haul his old bones from the crypt, Johnny and Linda have heard the drums and gone outside to investigate. Which means that, when Jonas goes up to the house to kill “the woman,” the only woman left is the wrong one. And how dangerous is our zombie? After shuffling through the entire house looking for Linda (thrill as a zombie negotiates a set of stairs!), he finds Bella Bella brushing her hair in her bedroom. He shuffles forward… she stands staring at him… he shuffles forward… she stands staring at him… he shuffles forward… she faints. Why is it that Monica thinks this a better idea than simply whacking Linda herself? (This, by the way, happens just over the 50-minute mark. Well over halfway through this movie, and we’ve FINALLY had a damned zombie attack, such as it is.)

Seeing nothing more outside than a Monica presiding over a voodoo ritual with a bunch of sharecroppers, (”Huh. Well.”), Johnny and Linda head back inside, just missing Jonas on his way out with Bella Bella’s body in his arms. They realize Bella Bella is missing, head back outside calling for her, see her body on the lawn where Jonas dropped it, and exchange some priceless dialogue:

Johnny: She’d dead.

Linda: But can’t we help her?

They immediately call the police, who of course can’t arrive for a while due to their distance from town. Johnny then gives Linda his gun and leaves her locked in their bedroom while he runs back outside to investigate some more. This, while Monica starts the drummer up again to send Jonas in for a second try. (There’s a particular corner of the house at which Johnny and Jonas keeping missing each other every time someone goes outside. After about the fourth time, the whole routine starts to take on a Looney Toons quality.) So while Johnny is outside puttering around, brother Jonas breaks down the bedroom door and advances… haltingly… slowly…

Monica, I just love what you’ve done with the place.”

Johnny still doesn’t believe this voodoo nonsense, but he’s determined to break up the ritual nonetheless, so after fighting his way free of Monica’s right-hand man George (that’s right, we’ve got a Johnny, a Jonas, and a George to differentiate in dialogue), he throws the drum through the window. Which means that Jonas, about to wrap his hands around Linda’s neck, loses interest and wanders off.

When Johnny gets back to the bedroom (again missing Jonas at that same corner of the building), he finds Linda almost hysterical with fear. Of course, he’s deep in the Rational Explanation For All This mindset, and so to convince Johnny that it really was cousin Jonas, Linda takes him off to the family crypt. Even the open, empty coffin doesn’t convince him. In fact, nothing convinces him until Jonas himself (having taken the long way home) shows up, and this time exhibits some hostility without the benefit of the drums. He shrugs off Johnny’s bullets, but then Monica shows up and tries to get Jonas to go back to his coffin before the sun rises and destroys him. (Hey, a new contribution to zombie lore. Boy, the DVD cover was right — this movie is historically important!)

At that moment, the cops show up, and hearing the gunshots, they head over to the crypt. They of course start shooting at Jonas, and Monica manages to get in the way and catch a bullet. Then Jonas shambles for the door to chase the cops, but in the thirty seconds since the policecar parked, it’s gone from full night to full morning (imagine the sun coming up with a “boing-g-g!” sound), and when Jonas steps into the sunlight, he vanishes in a puff of smoke.

I’m guessing the local cops see this kind of thing all the time, since they don’t even ask any questions as the survivors all file out into the sunlight. Nevertheless, Johnny experiences one of his moments of Male Answer Syndrome, and thus provides the following summary for our doughty gendarmes:

Now, the girl I called you about, she’s up behind the house. And the girl in there was my cousin Monica. That creature you saw disappear was a corpse that was brought to life by voodoo ritual, but couldn’t stay alive in the sunlight. Is there anything else you want to know?”

Sure. Two minutes ago he was a skeptic; now he’s an expert. Then there’s a single scene of him planting a FOR SALE sign on the front lawn of Kenilworth as the newlyweds leave, and the movie is over. At 68 minutes, our penance ends.

You’d better not be here to pick up my daughter for the prom.

Because I’m a story-focused kind of guy, that’s what I mostly talk about. But I wouldn’t want you to come away believing that, because I only pointed out the deficiencies of the story, that every other element of the movie achieved adequacy. Far from it. Acting rarely approached the heights of mediocrity, with John MacKay acquitting himself as Johnny better than the rest of the cast combined (which explains why he had a four-decade career)… though to be fair, Darlene Myrick as Bella Bella demonstrated that she’s at least not self-conscious about performing in front of people, as her real-life burlesque career would dictate. And it’s not as if a cadre of Academy award winners could have done much with this script. Even at a truncated 68 minutes, even with the unrelated Bourbon Street intro material, the pacing is more leaden than Jonas’ gait. And the camera was a stationary observer in just about all scenes, staying in the corner and watching the action occur in a single take — because, you know, moving the camera and editing multiple shots are just so hard.

There are a few obscure gems in the hidden annals of cinema, but the more I track down these “forgotten gems,” the more I come to realize that when movies are forgotten, it’s usually because they’re overwhelmingly forgettable.