Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Directed by Victor Halperin
• Written by Victor Halperin, Howard Higgin, and Rollo Lloyd (all uncredited)
• Starring
  • Dorothy Stone
  • Dean Jagger
  • Roy D’Arcy
  • Robert Noland
  • George Cleveland
• Produced by Edward Halperin

Usually, a movie will provoke enough of a reaction in me, good or bad, that I can generate some witticisms either on its behalf or at its expense. Revolt of the Zombies, though, is so perfectly bland in its content and execution that I can’t even manage some sort of overarching introductory statements. Hell, I barely can keep the boring little flick in my memory long enough to write a review.

Let’s see if we can at least get the premise to make sense. During the Great War, a Cambodian priest named Tsiang (William Crowell) journeys from French-held Cambodia to the French-Austrian front to try to convince General Duval (George Cleveland) that he holds the secret to turning soldiers into zombies, rendering them unstoppable by bullets. Of course, the general dismisses the notion out of hand; the only person who believes Tsiang is Armand Louque (Dean Jagger), a Cambodian-language interpreter in the French Army, and a wishy-washy sort of academic fellow.

“We monks maintain our posture by imagining a rabid chipmunk gnawing on our buttocks. You should try it.”

(Note: Yes, most of the important characters are French. However, this gross misstep is immediately corrected by not allowing any of the actors to attempt a French accent. And what few French words they use are hideously mispronounced. Thus, whatever appeal this movie may have held for American audiences was safeguarded.)

However, Tsiang is soon murdered by the mysterious Col. Mazovia (Roy D’Arcy), a cartoonishly fiendish individual with a wicked smile, simpering voice, and all-black wardrobe. All that’s missing is a cat to stroke. (Actually, he may have had one. I mentioned that this movie’s fading all too fast from my memory…) And suddenly, the entire French leadership is convinced of the reality of Tsiang’s zombie claims, so an expedition is mounted to Angkor, to ferret out the secret of zombie creation. Along for the ride are all of the characters we’ve met so far (minus Tsiang, of course); also coming is Louque’s best friend, the British soldier Clifford Grayson (Robert Noland). Grayson’s the counterbalance to Louque’s shy and retiring personality, always telling his friend to be ruthless in the pursuit of his desires. Such advice usually comes to no good in movies such as these.

“Oh gee. A dancing girl. To celebrate my engagement. You shouldn’t have. Really.”

Also along is Claire Duval (Dorothy Stone), the general’s blonde bombshell daughter. Louque immediately falls for her, though of course his pursuit is very proper and decorous. Claire’s fine with being pursued so gently, but she herself falls in love with Grayson at first sight. But because he doesn’t seem interested (or maybe he’s just showing that characteristic British reserve), she resorts to feminine wiles: She allows Louque to continue courting her straight to engagement, hoping to incite Grayson’s jealousy. It’s a love triangle designed by Rube Goldberg!

Outwardly, Louque is the perfect milksop gentleman about it, stepping aside and commending Claire on operating with Grayson-like determination in pursuit of her goal. Inwardly, of course, he’s falling apart; in fact, he’s going stark raving mad. In other words, he’s the last person we want stumbling upon a clue to the zombie process. And that’s really how it is — he looks at one of the photos, exclaims something about it all being right under their noses, goes back to one of the Angkor ruins, literally falls down a hole and observes some mysterious priests doing mysterious things, follows one of them through a poor rear-screen rendition of a tropical swamp, and accidentally discovers a secret panel in the wall with “Zombie Recipe” written on it in big relief letters.

“Nuh-uh, I am SO totally walking in a real jungle!”

What the process is, isn’t exactly clear. When he first tries it on his houseboy Buna (Teru Shimada), it involves smoking ingredients in a brazier. After that, it just involves Louque concentrating, causing Bela Lugosi’s eyes from Halperin’s earlier White Zombie (1932) to appear superimposed over his target. And the zombies? They’re not zombies. It’s more just a mesmerizing mind-control thing. And that’s not the only falsehood we’re going to encounter in the title.

Just for fun, Louque decides to zombify every dang person in the movie — the general, the fellow scientists, the various Cambodian military staff… Everyone except Grayson and Claire. (And the sinister Col. Mazovia, who’s also seeking the zombie recipe for personal gain; him, Louque just kills.) Louque makes Claire a deal: He’ll send Grayson back to England without harm if Claire will marry him. And because their love is just that strong, Claire agrees.

Beakers? Of (supposedly) colored liquids? But that must mean — there’s SCIENCE going on here!

Which brings us to the climax of the movie, such as it is: When Louque sees what Claire was willing to do for Grayson, he expresses his unrequited love for her by releasing his mind-controlled minions. Whereupon said minions gang up, storm the castle (the most orderly such storming ever — soldiers sauntering single file, with nary a torch or pitchfork to be seen), and kill Louque dead. That’s right, the zombies (who aren’t zombies) don’t actually revolt; they just get uppity once he releases them. (I guess the “of the” part of the title is still fairly accurate.) The end.

Obviously, the foregoing is a summary of the movie; what you can’t tell from that is that the movie itself seems like a summary of a longer work. Not that it’s trimmed down from a longer running time (though halfway through I did check the IMDb to see if my dollar-store DVD were missing any footage), but it just seems so intent on skipping through the story, touching here and there on plot points and beginning every scene with an expositional catch-up of what’s happened offscreen since the last scene.

“I didn’t want to join up, but the recruiting poster — it wouldn’t stop staring at me!”

And what exposition it is. The characters speak not so much in “dialogue” as in leaden, declarative blocks. How often have you realized that you can actually hear semicolons in the actor’s performances? And we get to hear Grayson’s little precis on Machiavellian ruthlessness, either from his lips or from Louque’s repetitions, at least for or five times. Maybe six. Or maybe twelve, honestly; after a while, it all starts to blur together. Gotta pad out that 65-minute running time somehow, after all; thus we get small talk (in huge chunks), a thoroughly uninteresting dancing girl, and plenty of walking around ruins (or pretend-walking in from of projection screens). It’s a half-ounce of story idea stretched to over an hour, and the extent to which it just isn’t there is almost palpable.

A Notable Quotable:

“It’s an established fact, Cliff, that in the Orient, the last of an ancient race lives for the laws of telepathy.”

- Louque

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 3
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 16
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0