• Directed by Jean Yarbrough
• Written by Edmund Kelso
• Starring
  • Dick Purcell
  • Joan Woodbury
  • Mantan Moreland
  • Henry Victor
  • John Archer

Thanks to White Zombie (1932) and Revolt of the Zombies (1936), the idea of zombies as the undead slaves of a voodoo master had entered the popular lexicon, though by 1941 they were not yet the played-out cliches they would later become. But already, the possibilities for menace were somewhat limited. I mean, these zombies were somnabulistic automatons. They could shuffle, and if you tripped or were caught napping, they could probably trap you by pure numbers. But they didn’t eat the flesh of the living, they weren’t infectious, and their balance and aim weren’t so hot. In short, zombies needed sexying up if they were to be more than atmospheric boogah-boogah men.

Thus, King of the Zombies attempted to give the genre a shot in the arm by combining antagonists, and bringing us what is (to my knowledge) the first example of what would become an intermittent subgenre: Nazi zombie films! (Of that even more restrictive sub-subgenre, the aquatic Nazi zombie film, we will not speak.)

Rest in peace — wake in terror! Welcome to Howard Johnson’s!

That the resulting feature is so lackluster cannot, then, be laid at the feet of the villains. Really, one would think that any movie involving both Nazis and zombies should be at least interesting, no matter how inept or ham-handed. Here, though, the combined menace of the walking dead and the National Socialist Party (during wartime, no less) generate a level of tension roughly the same as that felt in the presence of my Uncle Bob, the accountant. Out of some misguided sense of fairness, though, the white American protagonists are bland to a commensurate degree. We thus have a movie which could be likened to a bowl of oatmeal in terms of blandness and consistency, were it not for a single wildcard element: actor Mantell Moreland. Because he’s black.

We meet Moreland, along with his goodguy co-stars, in the cockpit of a model plane, flying through fog over the Caribbean; Moreland is Jefferson “Jeff” Jackson, valet to American agent Bill Summers (John Archer), aka “Mister Bill,” who’s travelling with pilot James “Mac” McCarthy (John Purcell), aka “Mister Mac,” on a mission to Panama. They get lost in the fog, and can’t make radio contact with anyone friendly, though they do pick up a fragmentary broadcast in some language that Mac doesn’t recognize. (Hint, Mac: That’s German. You know, the national language of Germany? The country your at war with? Might be profitable to be able to recognize something like that.)

Almost out of fuel, they follow the radio signal to an island, where Mac tries to put down in a “clearing.” This would be one of those newfangled clearings that has plenty of trees in it for a model plane to encounter. The next thing we know, Jeff is lying unconscious in the cemetery in which they crashed, just beneath a tombstone instructing him to “Rest in Piece.” You can just imagine the eye-popping and panicky proclamations which result when Jeff wakes up in such surroundings. He is black, you know, and thus is superstitious and believes himself to be dead until instructed otherwise by Bill. Bill as well was apparently thrown clear, as was Mac, and only Mac incurred any injury — a slight cut on his forehead. Don’t you wish every crashlanding were so gentle?

“I did not think to ask if you two strapping American men might prefer separate bedrooms.”

Not far from the cemetery is a huge plantation house, so they knock on the door, despite Jeff’s protestations that the place is probably full of “haints.” Inside, they find Dr. Sangre (Henry Victor, in a role which had originally been intended for Bela Lugosi), an impeccably dressed Viennese scientist who of course maintains most of the amenities of civilization in his remote household with the aid of his local butler, Momba (Leigh Whipper). He of course offers them what hospitality he can, though he can offer them no transportation off the island; there won’t be another boat for two weeks.

Bill and Mac show absolutely no inclination toward suspicion of an educated Austrian in a secluded location off the coast of the Americas during wartime. They don’t even remark upon his subtly dismissive attitude toward Jeff, offering him no brandy and assigning him a room in the servants’ quarters. But that’s pretty natural, as the two white men are fairly dismissive toward Jeff themselves, patting his head and pooh-poohing any of his suspicions. And he finds more than mere superstition to fuel his suspicions pretty quickly. Down in the kitchen, he meets Samantha (Marguerite Whitten), the Alabama-raised black maid, and in the course of their banter (because, as you well know, all intergender black relationships are characterized by sassiness), she proclaims casually that the whole place is crawling with zombies. Just to demonstrate, she claps, and two glassy-eyed zombies shuffle into the kitchen. (Not exactly the people I want around my food preparation area.)

“That’s right, ‘Prozac.’ I’m sure it will be very popular in the future.”

I think it will come as no surprise to you that when Jeff runs to bring Bill and Mac (and Sangre) back to the kitchen, there are no zombies to be seen, and both Samantha and old Tahama the witch-woman/soup cook (Madame Sul-Te-Wan) disclaim any knowledge. You just know that’s comedy gold, so the motif will be repeated several times through the course of this 67-minute feature. Because nothing’s funnier than a couple of white men who should know and trust a black man, but who will nonchalantly ignore and explain away anything he says in the most smirking, condescending fashion. Especially when the black man opens his eyes really wide.

Seems to me that the white characters should be grateful to Jeff, for without his reactions to the goings-on, all the rest might drift into a stupor. Henry Victor as Dr. Sangre is no Bela Lugosi; his gentility manifests in a quiet reserved demeanor which, though it might be hiding a menacing interior, is probably only stifling a small yawn. His wife Alyce (Patricia Stacey) is entirely stoned, drifting through the house with a glassy stair, unable to speak. Dr. Sangre claims they moved to their island location to search out a cure for her, because as we all know, remote and isolated locations always have the best natural medicines. There’s also Barbara (Joan Woodbury), Alyce’s niece, who thinks there’s something sinister in Alyce’s hypnosis-like trance, but until our heroes crashlanded on their doorstep, never had the gumption to do anything about it. So as boring as the movie might be, just imagine how stultifying life was on this island before the crash.

Two zombies and a zombet.

It’s only once physical evidence appears to support Jeff’s claims — in this case, a dropped earring from the “ghost lady” Jess claims he say — that Bill and Mac finally concede that maybe their trusted and dependable manservant isn’t just spouting superstitious nonsense off the top of his black head. So they demonstrate white superiority by splitting up. Which means that, still, Jeff’s the only one who sees anything worth noting. In fact, Sangre catches him while snooping and hypnotizes him into being a zombie. Which only serves to bring up the question of what, exactly, the zombies are in this movie. Jeff is the only one of the zombie horde (all half-dozen of them) who can speak, but all of then need to eat. When they troop in for mealtime, Samantha convinces him that he’s not a real zombie because zombies can’t eat salt. But as no salt is then served to the other zombies, we never get to compare and contrast their reaction. Later on, Mac takes sick from an infection in one of his wounds from the crash, and the local doctor declares him dead; he subsequently becomes a zombie under Sangre’s control. But in the final reel, when everyone’s rescued, Mac is said to be “recovering well,” which leads me to believe that none of the zombies are anything but hypnosis victims, perhaps merely by exposure to Dr. Sangre’s sparkling personality.

By the end of the movie, yes, there’s a plot of sorts; see, a general had crashed on this island in the previous weeks, and Dr. Sangre, under orders from Berlin, has been trying to break his will through voodoo in order to extract secrets from him. Voodoo chanting and butt-shaking hadn’t done the trick, so he’s moved on to attempted transmigration, moving the general’s mind into the more easily controlled form of Alyce. This trick, we find out, is one practiced by the ancient Druids while wearing paper-mache masks, which only makes me wonder why exactly we’re in the Caribbean to begin with.

To be charitable, I’ll say that he’s TRYING to look up at her eyes…

The movie’s only sixty-seven minutes from beginning to end, and even then seems padded. Take out Jeff’s antics, and not only have you lost a full half-hour of running time, but you’re left with nothing but reserved and unimaginative white people to look at. While I can only assume that Jeff’s role as comic relief was an unexamined fallback to the racist tropes of the day, in retrospect Jeff comes off as a far more interesting character than his so-called betters: he’s intelligent, imaginative, and intuitive, in contrast to the staid and hidebound white guys whose bags he carries. What was meant as a pop-culture character at the time can be re-signified as winking and almost subversive today.

Or at least that’s what you’ll be telling yourself to maintain your attention through a pretty boring hour of cinema.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 2
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0