The Plague Of The Zombies Review

• 11th Jun 2012

Amazingly, The Plague of the Zombies is the only zombie film Hammer Studios ever made (and for the record: No. Mummies are not zombies. Mummies don’t bite and they ensure you die in the conventional way). As part of the Made in Britain season from Studio Canal, this 1966 schlocky horror hauls itself from the crypt to terrorise DVD and Blu-ray players across the land. It will also be lumbering through cinemas on 12 June – full screening details are available here: www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/films/collectionplaydates.aspx?ID=5941&c=5941

It’s not the most intellectually demanding zombie film ever made, but what it lacks in braaaaaiiiiinnnnnsss it more than makes up for in influence, Servalan from Blake’s 7 and mad home decor.

There are two kinds of zombie – the modern, biological zombie whose origins are ‘scientifically’ or medically explicable (Night of the Living Dead, The Walking Dead and World War Z), and the vintage, diabolical zombie created by messing with dark forces – specifically Caribbean “voodoo” (White Zombie (1932) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943)). Plague is definitely a vintage, diabolical zombie film, but it has the nifty twist of transplanting the action from some far-off island to Cornwall. Although this was probably to do with the number of sets and costumes readily available, the effect is to drop the whole evil soup right into the intended audience’s lap.

Much like Dracula, the story centres on a sexily unpleasant nobleman recently arrived from foreign parts – Plague was often double-featured with Dracula, Prince of Darkness –but in this case it’s Squire Hamilton, returned from Haiti to his ancestral Cornish home. In common with that other great tale of English pastoral unease, The Wickerman, Dr Thompson warns his mentor Sir James at the outset that their investigations into the odd deaths among the local young men will be hampered by the Squire – “Here he’s the coroner, the sheriff, the magistrate and the jury.” Some have even seen Marxist leanings in Plague’s central premise about a nobleman using Haitian servants to help him zombie-fy and enslave Cornish miners in an unsafe working environment for his own monetary gain. I can’t think what they mean…

The legendary John Carson, with his fox-like, unsmiling face, makes for an incredibly effective and alluring villain and the equally grave Andre Morell as Sir James is a wonderful foil for him. In fact, Plague is proof if ever it were needed that a great cast and directorial flair can comfortably stride across even the most gaping plot holes and bizarre anomalies. Despite being set in the mid-1800s, for example, Squire Hamilton’s home displays a contemporary fondness for velour upholstery in an array of lurid colours.

As the obligatory Hammer Hotties, Jacqueline Pearce and Diane Clare are better than the script deserves and Pearce is especially good. Her transformation from chaste doctor’s wife to lustily leering undead vixen leaves you in no doubt that her husband’s sorry to have to behead her, green complexion or not.

In the film’s mostly justly celebrated scene, director John Gilling’s handling of the now-clichéd sights of hands reaching up from freshly dug graves, dry ice billowing through a cemetery and mouldy corpses feels as eerily dreamlike now as it must have 46 years ago. As essential as any Romero offering for fans of the living dead.

Clare Moody