Skip to main content

King of the Zombies (1941) - Jean Yarbrough

King of the Zombies is a horror/comedy from 1941. Boy does it show its time. The entire movie is loaded with racial stereotypes that start to really distract you from enjoying this otherwise mediocre chuckle fest. However, they did get some good jabs and references to Nazi Germany.

Low on fuel and off course, a cargo plane crash-lands while following a strange radio signal. The only inhabitants of the island are a crazy racist German doctor and his "servants". As he calls them. Jeff, one of the crew, stumbles upon zombies in the basement. However, that is only the beginning of this story. This racist German doctor is practicing voodoo!

This movie is the first movie that I have reviewed from the forties. It is interesting that this movie was made while the world was in such a terrible place. I was constantly looking for the mentions of the world outside of the one that the actors had created for themselves. 

That is until the main villain turns out to be a German spy that is holding a United States Admiral hostage. He apparently is trying to extract military secrets from the captured Admiral through voodoo crazy magic! What? We didn't enter the war until December 1941 and this movie was made less than a year before that. However, it is pretty apparent to me that this movie was meant to start motivating the public into buying into the military. Don't mess with America and what-not. Not bad Hollywood. Clever.

Take it easy there woman, I ain't no herring! 
  • Bela Lugosi was tapped to be the villain for the movie. He turned it down. Then Peter Lorre was contacted. He turned it down as well. 
  • The score for this movie was nominated for an Academy Award. This is the only zombie movie to date that has been nominated. 
  • The boom mic is visible in numerous scenes.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Human Monster (1939) - Walter Summers

Bela Lugosi turns in a fantastic performance. It is right on par with the exact same films that had made him famous like Dracula . My personal favorite being The Black Cat . Like the latter, this film suffered from poor circulation and lack of advertisement. Either that or the public wasn't interested in seeing Lugosi in anything else other than his famous bloodsucker. This film has a broad and well acted plot that was rich with detail.  Lugosi has two sides in this picture. His well loved and compassionate side. The other is a strict, brutal lone shark that acts as a sinister villain to blind and handicapped people. He really brutalizes his victims. It's a macabre message to pay your bills.  The film is slow moving and plagued by the usual setbacks from its time. Most of the nation wasn't really that concerned with horror at the time. But studios knew that they would always have an audience. This film is a prime example of that. It's sad because it's 

Ju-On (2000) - Takashi Shimizu

Watching Japanese horror is similar to watching British comedy. If you enjoy dry whit then you probably enjoy the boys of Monty Python in drag. That's the joke, they're dressed like women. Get it? Well, that's British humor. But if you're like most Americans you probably prefer Adam Sandler farting his way across a football field and hooking up with chicks that are way out of his league. Americans usually prefer this more in your face, crass brand of humor. My point is funny in England is different from funny in the US. The same goes for J-Horror. What the Japanese consider scary is very different from what Americans consider scary and it shows in this horror film. Japanese horror is generally slow (a little too slow sometimes), suspenseful and creepy. Ju-On is a creepy effing film. The movie has almost no soundtrack. It is incredibly suspenseful and the pay-offs are pretty awesome, but I think that it was done better in the American version (cultural t

Inseminoid (1981) - Norman J. Warren

What can be said for mindless schlock pictures like this one. They were pumped out in droves during the eighties. Inseminoid !? give me a break! It sounds like some pre-pubescent teenage boys came up with the title. On the plus side the movie isn't horrible to look at and it has a decent amount of gore. If you can separate yourself from the political incorrectness, then you might have a perfectly decent Sci-Fi Monster Feature.  A research team exploring caves on Jupiter accidentally awakens an ancient alien that rapes and impregnates one of the team members. She suffers from terrible shock and trauma, leading to a complete mental breakdown as her pregnancy accelerates faster and faster. Feeling threatened she decides to kill anyone she deems a threat. Can the rest of the research team survive or will they all become victims of INSEMINOID! Apparently this movie had a million dollar budget. That's really shocking considering the outcome of the picture. The acting