What a waste of my time!!!

One of my all time favorites.

All that we are seeing on the screen is happening with real people, real action sequences in the background, forcing the eye to watch as if we were there.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Everyone rightly agrees that George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD pretty much single-handedly invented the modern zombie genre in 1968. It posited the zombies as a flesh-eating monsters which, when massed together, became a terrifying threat. Therefore the quaint Hammer Horror film THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES, made in 1966, is one of the last of the old-fashioned zombie films made just before the sub-genre changed forever.The good news is that this is a fantastic little film which feels much fresher and more inventive than Hammer's Dracula or Frankenstein films of the era. Peter Bryan's screenplay is the stuff of excellence, featuring some realistic and likable heroic leads (Andre Morell is at his best here, I feel), a truly dastardly villain in the form of John Carson (making him a fox-hunting toff is a stroke of genius), and a very clever reason for the existence of the zombies in the first place (they're cheap labour in a Cornish tin mine).Prolific B-movie director John Gilling directs what I think is his best movie. Certainly this is atmospheric stuff indeed with wonderful sets and costumes and a really lush and colourful look to it. The supporting cast includes Michael Ripper and Jacqueline Pearce and is just as colourful in its own way. The eerie dream sequence is well-remembered for a reason and there's one of those rousing fiery climaxes that Hammer did so well. THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES is a real delight for horror lovers and there's not a thing I can fault about it.

As it turns out, THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES is an exceptional entry in the genre: part Monster Movie and part Social Commentary (worker rights are touched on- like the right not to be worked to death after Death...), it boasts a solid cast working from a sound script, with some taut direction and some suitably icky makeups (I've always liked the "soulless" look white contacts give Supernatural characters; Sam Raimi nailed the look in THE EVIL DEAD). The direct lineal descendant of movies like WHITE ZOMBIE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES can be viewed as the last of that particular line: within a year or two, George Romero would redefine the Zombie in Fright Films (for better or for worse) for Generations to come.

Instead of gory garbage and pervasive ugly trashiness, this is well- done B-movie with beautiful production values, decent script and good cast, especially Andre Morell as very gentlemanly older hero. The poor zombies really behave like zombies of Haitian folklore, not like cannibals and ghouls, and filth and depravity of younger generation ooze under the surface, led by over-aged but well-acting John Carson as murderous, possibly necrophiliac super-capitalist. (He played only four years later father of the grown-up man in uneven but not unimpressive Taste the blood of Dracula). This is not The Brides of Dracula but then, what is?

Known for being the first movie to introduce zombies as flesh eating ghouls (before Night Of The Living Dead did it), this low-budget Hammer movie doesn't really have a lot to offer. We start with a creepy underground voodoo ritual, unintelligible chanting and blood dropping on a doll, and a woman waking up and reciting the same chant. We learn later that the woman is an old friend of the protagonist, played with expression by Diane Clare. Her father and her go to a small British village, to visit the woman and her husband, a doctor (and former student of the old man) who is struggling with the skepticism of the village people on letting him perform an autopsy on any of the many recently deceased. The last noteworthy character is the Squire Clive Hamilton, a rich and mysterious man. Hamilton's men kidnap Ms. Forbes (Clare), and take her to his home, where they begin to torture her mentally, but the charming Squire comes to the rescue, and from there on, attempts to spark a relationship with her. Of course not everything's what it seems, and soon enough Mrs. Forbes' friend dies, murdered by a decomposing man. While her father and the doctor investigate, she learns that Mr. Hamilton might be the cause of her friend's death, and that she might be next. While quite original for its time, for me it didn't work as well, because, well, I've watched a lot of movies that pull the same tricks before seeing this. The look of the zombies is easily surpassed by that of Night Of The Living Dead, which was made only a year later, and the acting is average at best, the standoff being Clare and André Morell, who plays her father. The mystery is easy to figure out 30minutes in the movie, but it's still a very original movie for it's time, and you can see that it was made with a lot of love for the genre.