The Dead One
1961, USA, Directed (and written) by Barry Mahon
Colour, Running Time: 68 minutes.
DVD, Region 2, BE, Video: Anamorphic 1.78:1, Audio: Mono
Some guy (John) marries some babe (Linda) and sets off to his old family home (I think) for some kind of mundane honeymoon. There, in one of the old tombs, the housekeeper is practicing voodoo with the local community in order to exact revenge on John for wanting to sell the property, or something like that.
This is one of those Z grade movies that you can’t believe ever got committed to celluloid, full of bad acting, talentless direction, stock music, crap dialogue, etc. Some people actually enjoy watching this kind of pap but I’m not really one of them (unless inebriated, and even then it’s a struggle). Even by bad movie standards it’s a fairly boring film. The first ten/fifteen minutes or so features John showing Linda a night on the town (as rather amusingly foreshadowed in the trailer: “See the excitement of a night in New Orleans” - er, this film’s really sold New Orleans to me). Basically it’s them going from one club to another watching stage acts. In their entirety. I suspect this was because the film only came to 40 minutes and needed padding. This does, however, serve to present the film with its one and only victim, Bella Bella, a rather sexy Indian-style dancer who leaves something to be desired when it comes to actually speaking. I think the walking corpse murdered her due to her ridiculously lame acting personally, ’cause I sure as f**k felt like it. It’s not the worst film of all time though it will rarely wake you up (apart from some classic lines: “this place is giving me the creeps” and “stop or I’ll shoot”, the latter being said three times at various points). I also liked the cops who demonstrate American authoritative sensibility quite accurately - they show up, seeing a couple of people arguing and a walking corpse, obviously then saying, “what’s going on here.” The corpse pays them some attention and the cop goes, “stop or I’ll shoot,” the corpse then takes one very slow step in his general direction but still about 15 feet away, so the cop clearly feeling a bit threatened decides to unload a couple of rounds on him. Accidentally shooting the housekeeper in the process. Diplomatic but, I suppose, as in the Parisian opening of Team America, they got the job done somehow.
This was a pretty obscure film however and it’s nice, in a sort of perverse way, that someone has exhumed it for a DVD release. It was released stateside by Shriek Show a couple of years back (as Blood of the Zombie), coming with an entire bonus movie called Voodoo Swamp that was deservedly forgotten about until SS found the reels. I suspect the transfer on this UK disc is a port from the SS disc as both suffered from a marginally disproportional (slightly horizontally compressed) image. Otherwise the picture is good considering the source. Audio is a bit messy but then I’d attribute that to flawed sound recording in the first place. The trailer is, well, not much better than the film really. I wanted to see this film for years thanks to a couple of cool looking B&W stills of the walking dead guy. Unfortunately, in colour (and in motion) he tends to look more like a drunken Halloween party reject staggering home (and is about as threatening). As a historical slice of zombie cinema it’s worth watching for completists (that’s why I really bought it), or for lovers of Z grade crap.