Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Revolt of the Zombies (1936), Victor Halperin.

We're so lucky someone had this picture of Angkor Wat handy!  
Let's walk past it and pretend we're actually in Cambodia, again and again and again and again!

Did you know zombies come from Cambodia?

Revolt of the Zombies is so bad, it doesn't even make the cut in a book dedicated to crappy Bs, Poverty Row Horrors.  Author Tom Weaver describes it as "not only crude but an excruciating bore."  Oh sure, like The Ape Man, which gets fifteen pages, was any better?  I've sat through MUCH WORSE, my friend.

Director Victor Halperin talked a good story, and his previous effort White Zombie was well-enough received to have the press interested in his next production.  "In Asiatic Cambodia the zombies are employed as fighting creatures and indomitable soldiers they make..." said Halperin in a New York Times interview, "The ratiocinators, having been forced to admit the existence of zombies chiefly because the poor creatures have been recognized by relatives as kin folk whom they had long since buried and mourned in proper fashion, have rationalized the phenomenon to their partial satisfaction.  They have deduced that these necrogenic slaveys must have been victims of astute poisoners who have superinduced a thanatoid condition by administering some subtle mortific such as bhang, for example, or that they have been placed in a state of suspended animation perhaps by the influence of jar-poonhk, a common accomplishment of fakirs in the Far East."  I wonder whether Revolt of the Zombies might have been more entertaining if the camera had simply pointed in Halperin's direction for an hour, allowing us to be baffled by his knowledge of exotic and possibly made-up words.  Sadly Revolt did not meet anyone's expectations and to top it off, Halperin became embroiled in a lawsuit over the use of the term "zombie."

An endless process shot journey through a swamp.  It's like a Lewton walk, but less well acted.

 Gosh, I am a rather handsome looking man - why am I trapped in this awful sausage?

No comments: