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Monster #46 -
The Zombie
United Kingdom, 1966
A Hammer Films Production
90 mins, colour
1.66:1 aspect ratio
Director - John Gilling
Writer - Peter Bryan
Cinematographer - Arthur Grant
Production Designer - Bernard Robinson
Editor - Chris Barnes
Music - James Bernard
Andre Morell, Diane Clare,
Brook Williams, Jacqueline Pearce, John Carson,
Alexander Davion, Michael Ripper
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The Zombie from Plague
of the Zombies was the last monster on Denis
Gifford's alphabetically ordered list - and the
image of that last double-spread page of Monsters
of the Movies would stick with me forever.
Roy Ashton's Zombie make-up was,
with one or two exceptions, absolutely stunning,
featuring ghoulishly blue and grey decaying skin
and large, uncanny white eyes. It was highly
effective even in black and white, as the image
used in Monsters of the Movies
illustrates.
Although the Zombies in Plague
of the Zombies are of the
"classic" Voodoo variant (along the
lines of the 1932 White Zombie,
Gifford's Monster #42), its visuals are widely
accepted to have influenced many later Zombie
films, including George Romero's Night of the
Living Dead (1968).
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(Carousel Books / Transworld
Publishing)
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| Plague of the Zombies is a wonderful gem, a
perfect specimen of true Hammer mid-1960s horror movie
vintage. Working on a budget of around £100,000,
production started in late July 1965 at Hammer's Bray
Studios on the River Thames. |
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Original 1966 Lobby Card (personal
collection)
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In order to cut costs, the movie
was shot back-to-back with The Reptile
(which made it onto Denis Gifford's list as
Monster #38), allowing Hammer to use the same
sets (a Cornish village created on the backlot by
Hammer's production design genius Bernard
Robinson) twice. First released both in the UK
and the US in January 1966 (in some cases as a
double feature together with Hammer's Dracula:
Prince of Darkness), it was a success at the
box office and netted its producers a nice
profit.
Plague of the Zombies has also been
well received by critics. At the time of its
original release, Variety called it
"a well-made horror" film, while The
Monthly Film Bulletin even declared it
"the best Hammer Horror for quite some
time", pointing out that "visually the
film is splendid, with elegantly designed sets,
and both interiors and exteriors shot in
pleasantly muted colours; and the script manages
quite a few offbeat strokes".
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It has aged well
and continues to receive positive reviews, mostly
focussing on the strongly portrayed atmosphere
and the twinning of Hammer's classic gothic
visuals with the Voodoo/Zombie theme. The
underlying subtle social commentary is also
praised.
I watched this movie for the
first time on Studiocanal's 2012 Blu-ray release,
featuring a restoration of Plague of the
Zombies based on an original negative. The
result is a gloriously high-definition rendition
of both image and audio. The rather ineffective
day-for-night shots (most of which clearly remain
daylight shots) have not been corrected,
respecting the original material. The Blu-ray
features a number of extras, the most exciting of
those being a documentary on the making of Plague
of the Zombies.
Plague of the Zombies is a
fantastic film for its time and easily one of my
favourite Hammer films; it deserves greater
recognition. The classic Caribbean voodoo
background of the Zombie puts it somewhat at odds
with Hammer's gothic tones and settings, but John
Gilling's direction, Peter Bryan's script, Arthur
Grant's camera work and Bernard Robinson's sets
found the perfect approach. Plague of the
Zombies would, however, remain the one and
only Zombie movie Hammer ever made - all the more
reason to enjoy it.
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Denis Gifford on Plague
of the Zombies
in A Pictorial History of Horror
Movies (1973)
"One of the better Hammers
was Plague of the Zombies (1966), a tale
of the Cornish tin mines."
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The illustrations presented here are
copyright material.
Their reproduction in this non-commercial review
and research context is considered to be fair use
as set out by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, 17
U.S.C. par. 107
and in accordance with the the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and
Artistic Works.
All images from Monsters
of the Movies (Carousel/Transworld) were
scanned from my personal copy purchased in 1977
All images of Blu-ray or DVD covers were scanned
from my personal copies
All images of lobby cards were scanned from
copies in my personal collection
Page created 15
February 2023
Last updated 10 April 2023
(c)
2023
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