King of the Zombies (1941)

I don't want to do it. It's talked about enough, but I feel like I have to address it. That giant elephant in the room of our culture anymore. Of course, I mean racism. It's such a touchy subject, but one that has become so implicit in our culture that it seems like you can't discuss any film anymore without defending or abusing it's portrayal of minority characters. The film should be judged, fairly, on its' comparison to other cheapie horror films of the era and how it stacks up, but there is so much discussion of the stereotyping of black characters in this movie that you almost have to discuss it. By not addressing at all, you run that risk of being labeled a racist yourself because you dared to embrace a film that has obvious stereotypes.I do not champion those stereotypes, nor approve of some of them, but I am also willing to say they are products of their age. That does not excuse them, but also does not mean that an audience looking at it with the benefit of 70 more years of racial understanding should judge it by today's standards. I'm already discussing this far more than I intended, so I will say this. Mantan Moreland is the star of this movie. He is hilarious. He is the entire reason that this movie is so enjoyable. It would be another 20 years before Hollywood really started giving starring roles to black actors, so I would say that Moreland is a pioneer here and should be appreciated for it. So, enough of my rant.The movie has a lot in common with the other Monogram Pictures of its time, cheap throwaway horror films, produced with a small budget, bad writing and bad acting and pushed out. Most of them had ridiculous plots with people acting in ridiculous ways and this movie is no exception. What it doesn't have, that a lot of Monogram's best known pictures have, is Bela Lugosi, but they got Henry Victor to do his best Lugosi impersonation.Two guys are on a mission to find a missing admiral who has crash landed in the Caribbean. Naturally, they bring their servant along because you can't go on a trip without your valet, now can you? They end up crash landing on an island that seems to be mostly jungle except for a creepy European guy who has a big, Gothic mansion in the middle of the jungle. It's filled with his sleepwalking wife, his young niece and a house full of zombie servants. It is, actually, one of the last films that I can think of where Hollywood used the old style zombie, the idea of the Caribbean style mindless minion that became popular horror fodder in movies like WHITE ZOMBIE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE. The movie is full of jungle drums, mindless walkers, hidden passageways and a big voodoo ceremony in the finale. On the surface, the Nazi type character is doing research on hypnosis and mind control. Ultimately, he is using it as a plot to help his allies with a nefarious plot against the Americans they are at war with.The two main characters are really just window dressing. We have the secret agent man, young and dashing, out to win the girl and save the day, but he's completely generic and forgettable. His buddy, the pilot, is along for some comic relief and to become the plot device as he is brainwashed by the evil scientist. It is Moreland who is the star. He has a majority of the screen time. He gets all of the best jokes. He is, also, the hero. Moreland is the one who realizes that something is afoot. He uses the other servants of the house to dig up information on what is really going on in this plantation. In the end, it is Moreland that saves the day. His sense of humor is fantastic. Yes, typical of the day there are a lot of one-liners and witty comebacks, but his facial expressions and use of body language is, also, just spot on.The humor makes this movie shine, but there is plenty of Saturday matinée monster goodness to satisfy my cravings. Watch this in a dark room on a Saturday night and it's perfect. The zombies go perfectly with the jungle drums, setting an exotic scene of scariness. The main villain plays his role well. Yes, he's clearly aping Lugosi, but he does it well. The creepy voodoo witch adds a nice touch, leading up to a finale, complete with voodoo masks that reminded me of something straight out of a Scooby Doo cartoon, which is what this whole movie feels like to me.

For those who thought that RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD was the first real zombie-comedy-horror, think again. A good forty years before that film, a movie came along that portrayed the undead menace with an equal number of laughs and chills. That film is KING OF THE ZOMBIES, and it's a great little movie. Now, I may be biased, seeing as how the last zombie film I watched was the god-awful REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES, made five years before this. That movie was a boring, zombie-free mess. KING OF THE ZOMBIES, by comparison, is a tightly-paced little thriller set on the confines of a tropical island.Essentially it's one of those 'haunted house' type movies, as our protagonists find themselves trapped in an eerie building and menaced by mysterious figures and the walking dead. These 'zombies' are of the classic variety, the hypnotised-workers group, and the make up, although simple, is more than effective. There's a lot of running around and voodoo ceremonies going on in the basement, and it all seems rather quaint and dated by today's standards. The majority of the cast are fairly wooden in their roles, especially the stiff-upper-lip 'heroes', but Henry Victor does a passable imitation of Bela Lugosi and Joan Woodbury wins points on her sheer loveliness alone. And then there's Mantan Moreland.You see, this is a COMEDY horror, along the lines of the classic Bob Hope type 'old dark house' comedies popular during the 1940s. And the presence of Mantan Moreland, a black actor typecast in this genre for his wide-eyed terror, means that we're in for a very funny ride. The type of humour seen here might seem racist and highly dated to a modern audience, but this is what passed for top comedy back in the 1940s and there's no point putting modern political correctness on an old, creaky black and white flick. Moreland shivers with terror, screams, runs and makes wisecrack after wisecrack in his various run-ins with the undead, and he's easily the best thing in the movie: he displays sound comic timing, great acting, and is a sheer likable personality. He also gets a huge amount of screen time, making this a very painless film to watch.

A mysterious island, a mysterious doctor living in a mysterious old house with mysterious people. Three men in a plane crash land on this island and the mystery thickens. Dark, forbidding and ominous. And everyone in the cast of this dark tale plays it straight, except for Mantan Moreland.Often classified as a horror film, Mantan Moreland puts on a bravura performance, turning this dark and forbidding tale into pure satire. Yes, he is relegated to the scared of everything role just like Stepin Fetchit. This is 1941, after all. And this a low budget, cheesy production. But his comedic talents are brilliant and make this film worth watching which, if he were not in the film, would be a forgotten throwaway.I tend to like very old films, and this is a real antique. But age alone does not make it good. There was a good deal of trash produced in the old days, just like today. But when you have a gem like this, it is worth preserving and watching repeatedly after a suitable time. And I believe you can download this from the Internet Archive since it appears to have fallen into the public domain. Very funny and great fun. I give it an 8.

This movie is kind of odd, you know it is something from a very different time.The plot is that in 1941, a navy plane full of weather equipment crashes on an Island where a suspicious foreign doctor is. (It's implied but never said he's German, because America hadn't gotten into the war yet.) He is using hypnosis to turn people into Zombies, and to get information out of an Admiral who crashed on the island previously.The best part of the movie is the banter between Jeff, played by Mantan, and the girl playing the maid. He really steals every scene he's in.The more dubious part of this movie are the racial attitudes. The two white male leads treat Mantan's character almost as badly as the Nazi villain does. Hollywood wasn't ready for change, just yet.