Tag Archives: zombies

The Ghost Galleon (1974)

Third batch of the Blind Dead: the templars on the “Dutchman’s” galleon. 89min imdb

Recap:

As part of a publicity stunt a model and a starlet use a small boat on the open sea, and the boat is damaged when it hits a 16th century galleon. To the rescue come the two men who got them into this mess, a scientist who is of bored of mere science and two women who happen to be around.

On board they find the coffins of the 8th century templars and the captain’s log of an ominous “Dutchman”, and that’s all the “explanation” that we get, and of course we don’t get an answer to the most important question: why did they bother to make this movie? I don’t get the impression that anyone involved really cared. Let’s just get those people on board of the ship, even if we don’t have a decent plot or motivation for the characters. Let’s pad the runtime with some models in two piece swimsuits (at least nobody will complain about this) and a flashback to explore the relation of the two model girls of which one is already dead. Wait, isn’t this supposed to be a horror movie? Shouldn’t we have some templars templaring around? Meh, if you insist. But not more than one onscreen murder. And have you seen the REALLY GOOD horror movie last year? Let’s use the word “exorcism” in this one!

People who are keen on watching everything zombie will watch this one, too. But they will not really enjoy it.

Movie 90min subtitled

Trailer

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Return Of The Blind Dead (1973)

Second of the Blind Dead movies. 91min imdb

Recap:

So the villagers celebrate that the village has been templarfree for 500 years now, and the fiance of the mayor tries to rekindle her romance with the man who engineer’s the fireworks. However, the local idiot sheds a young woman’s blood to revive the blind dead who promptly poop the party (why? They won’t tell us, but it may well be because he is an idiot).

So there is a new batch of templars in this one: in the first movie they were hung, and then the birds ate their eyes. In this one they were blinded with torches and then burned on the pyre (which makes me wonder how they still got cloaks). Oh, and this time they are not so much into bloodsucking anymore. Generally it feels like the first one had more sex and violence in it (though I would have to re-watch it to be sure), and of course it had a great final plot twist that this one has so totally not. However, this one has much more plot in it and is by far not as slow-paced and longwinding. So while they’re both far from perfect I still say that both are pretty good, and the second one is a bit more entertaining. Enjoy.

Movie 91min

Trailer

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Tombs Of The Blind Dead (1972)

Satanist temple knights who were excommunicated and whose eyes were eaten by the birds rely on their ears when zombieing around. 101min imdb

Movie 100min age restricted

Movie family fun edit ca. 93min

Trailer

Recap:

So there is this love triangle: Virginia wants Roger, but Roger is after Bella, so Virginia jumps off the train and wants to sleep in the old abandoned abbey. At this point we’re almost half an hour into the movie and so far absolutely nothing has happened. But then, while reading a book, at timestamp 27:50, she flips to the last page to see how the story ends, and you know know that in catholic horror movies no sin goes unpunished. So the graves open up and undead satanist templers emerge, complete with live and healthy horses. The next day, the police asks Roger and Bella for an identification of Virginia’s body, but the attendant at the morgue has had a clown for breakfast and, trying to be funny, presents the wrong corpse. So Virginia later has to rise from the dead and kill him.

All in all this movie is unnecessarily long, and the amount of gore is unnecessarily small, but it has its moments and these temple knights are extremely cool, and the last plot twist is Fun with a capital f. So I say yes to the blind dead. I like it, it is a good movie and it doesn’t even bother me when the dialogue permanently switches between English and Portuguese (or is it Spanish?). I like to believe that the movie was mutilated for the international release and that this is a restored version.

Santo Contra Los Zombies (1962)

Santo battles an evil scientist and his zombie henchmen. With small parts played by Black Shadow and Gory Guerrero (father of Eddie). 85min imdb

Movie 80min with captions

No trailer

Recap:

He wears a mask, he wears a cape, he drives a fancy car and he has a secret hideout with superior technology. But since he is not Batman, he wears no gloves and touches everything with bare hands, including evidence that is later examined for fingerprints.

Basically the plot is about a policewoman and a policeman who search for a missing voodoo expert, and about a mad scientist who controls a small army of zombies. But there is also this masked dude who does a whole lot of fighting in the ring, uses his batcave surveillance stuff and wrestles zombies. All in all he has not much more dialogue than Arnold Schwarzenegger in, say, Conan The Barbarian. But then, fists speak louder than words, and Santo not only dominated lucha libre for decades, he also had a movie career that Hulk Hogan or The Miz can only dream of, and his comic book outlived him for three full years.

Best of all: this movie is fun! It maybe is the best pre-Romero zombie movie I have seen by now and I am looking forward to watching more lucha libre movies.

Zombies Of Mora-Tau (1957)

A crew of treasure hunters is after diamonds which are guarded by voodoo zombies. With Marjorie Eaton. 69min imdb

Movie 69min

Trailer

Recap:

So there are these treasure hunter trying to salvage diamonds from a ship that sank a long time ago. Several crews have tried this before, and they are all dead because the wreck is guarded by voodoo zombies. Two things are different this time: the crew’s diver is the love interest of the granddaughter of a zombie’s widow, and this time the old lady helps the treasure hunters. She wants to see the diamonds found and the zombie curse broken.

Well, this is a plain and simple adventure movie which uses zombies instead of natives, pirates or wild animals. It sure is not a good movie but it’s still better than most of the old zombie movies. What else? Well, in the beginning they use the term “twilight zone” two years before the TV show, and they got underwater zombies long before Shock Waves, so you can say that the film is innovative. Ach, and the grandmother indeed is played by Imperator Sheev Palpatine (don’t believe me, just search for “marjorie eaton palpatine”).

The Incredibly Strange Creatures (1964)

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies.

Three young people visit the carnival where an evil voodoo lady is looking for new zombie material. Directed by Ray Dennis Stecker. 82min imdb

Movie 80min

Trailer

Recap:

The story mostly consists of an endless stream of song and dance acts. As intermissions, we see two young man and a young woman visiting the carnival. Eventually one of them is hypnotised by a voodoo lady and becomes a mixed-upzombie, committing murders at her command.


This movie is quite notorious, so I guess sooner or later I had to see it. Well, I’m glad it’s over. Many people say that this is a fascinating movie, like they just can’t believe how bad it is. Well I don’t have to believe it, I have seen it with my own eyes. What I haven’t seen though is why this is supposed to be so-bad-that-it’s-good. I guess some people appreciate Steckler’s recklessness to just grab a camera and go for it. And yes, I understand people who want to make movies so badly that they just make them, even if they don’t have a budget or a story or a clue. However, in this case I cannot enjoy the result, because nothing really happens. There’s nothing really interesting or entertaining about it. Even when there is the zombie action it’s just too little, too late.

Revenge Of The Zombies (1943)

John Carradine tries to create an army of voodoo zombies. With Mantan Moreland and Madame Sul-Te-Wan. 61min imdb

Movie 58min

Trailer

Recap:

So there is this man who goes to Florida because his sister has died, and he brings a friend (a cop) and his driver, a black stereotype comic relief. We soon find out that the sister has been poisoned with a zombie drug, and that’s not even the only fishy thing that’s going on.

So this one has John Carradine in it, but apart from that it’s pretty much the same as King Of The Zombies. Trouble is that Mantan Moreland this time is not zombiefied, which was the one thing that made the first movie worthwhile. I even file this one as horror, it’s not that it’s too eerie to be a comedy, but too unfunny.

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King Of The Zombies (1941)

Silly caribbean adventure with zombies, voodoo, hypnosis and what have you. With Mantan Moreland and Madame Sul-Te-Wan 67min imdb

Recap:

So there is a storm, and a plane lands on a mysterious island. The pilot and his two passengers find first a graveyard and then a manor where they can spend the night. Then, a whole lot happens, because the house is full of secret passages, undead zombies, a hypnotised woman, a love interest, a voodoo priestess and an american admiral who was imprisoned by the master of the house who claims to be austrian but really is a german spy.

Well, all in all the movie is rather so-so. It’s creepier and zombier than, say, Revolt Of The Zombies, but that doesn’t say much. And it’s not so much a semicreepy horror movie but rather a semifunny comedy. The one who keeps the story going is Mantan Moreland, a skilled comedian who plays the ungrateful part of the superstitious black coward as a comic relief for the white 1940s moviegoers, but the more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that he is the most sympathetic zombie that I’ve seen so far. But I don’t know whether that’s reason enough to watch this movie.

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Revolt Of The Zombies (1936)

Second zombie movie of the Halperin Brothers about a man who stops at nothing to get the girl he wants. 65min imdb

(VPN:D)

Recap:

Boy meets girl. They get engaged. But when he finds out that she really loves another, he withdraws. Then he discovers how to zombiefy people and decides to be a ruthless man who takes what he wants, using all the people who he has zombiefied.

Well, yes, that’s the story. The Halperin Brothers have had moderate success with White Zombie, the story of a lovelorn man who uses voodoo to get what he wants and fails, and so they tried this recipe again and, well, did not really succeed. I can live well with Halperin voodoo zombies not being Romero flesh eating zombies, but this movie starts playing with the idea of using an army of zombies to wage a horrible war but then turns out to be a lukewarm love triangle with an bare minimum of creepiness. Some people (like me) will watch it because there are zombies in it, but few will not be disappointed.

Zombie 90: Extreme Pestilence (1991)

Classic gore movie by Andreas Schnaas. 75min imdb

(VPN:D)

Recap:

So there is this new disease that turns the dead into flesh eating zombies, and a scientist proves scientifically thar even removing the heart doesn’t help, you just destroy the brain.

So much for the plot. The rest of a movie is a nonstop gore fest with people who get butchered in the very scene in which they are are introduced. No, wait, there is indeed a story arc with two dudes who are investigating the situation, but it leads nowhere.

Andreas Schnaas is not a filmmaker like Ed Wood who wanted to be a real professional, looking for investors and hiring celebs. He is more like Ray Dennis Stecker who just grabbed a camera and started filming. There is nothing that remotely resembles a plot, or acting, just a bunch of kids enjoying themselves, playpretending and imitating the trash they had seen on VHS, mostly Italian zombi/cannibal flicks, I assume. What the kid’s love best is grossing people out. There is more fake blood and more gore (including what looks like real intestines, which makes sense because professional movie props are expensive) than you see in professional movies. Wait, in a way this is a professional movie. Schnaas’ first movie was distributed internationally, and for this, his second, they even created an English dub. I read that it was meant to be a joke in the first place, but Schnaas declared it the official dub, and it’s easy to see why: it’s hilarious. A few minutes into the movie I thought “great, a comedy”, a few minutes later I thought “nah, it’s too gory to be filed as comedy”. But to be honest it’s really to silly to be a real horror movie.

This is not an actual movie-as-we-know-it. It’s crap and you cannot say anything good about it. But I’ll do it anyway. It’s far from being the worst movie ever. Some people claim that Plan 9 From Outer Space is the worst movie ever, because it won the Golden Turkey award. But that was awarded many years before Uwe Boll made the German Fried Movie, which is the worst movie that I have seen by now, and Zombie 90 really is so much better than these two movies.

Nightmare City (1980)

Fast zombies that use weapons and drink blood. Directed by Umberto Lenzi. 91min imdb

(VPN:D)

Recap:

An airplane is contaminated with radiation, and after the touchdown a horde of zombies unboards. A journalist witnesses this and tries to warn the people with a newsbreak, but his boss takes him off the air because the military wants to keep the whole thing covered. So they switch back to the daytime schedule which soon is interrupted by a live broadcast of zombies feeding on a bunch of dancers.

Sounds promising, doesn’t it? I really thought wow, this is one splendid satire. File it as comedy, no wait, don’t. For a comedy it’s got a little too much gore. However, this movie starts with an incredible velocity, and the zombies are guano crazy. They are strong, they are fast, they use weapons.

Q: how can this movie keep up its speed?

A: it doesn’t. The movie introduces a bunch of supporting characters and then forgets about them and then returns to them to kill them. Then the girlfriend or wife of the journalist says all the pseudo intellectual blahblah that they apparently wanted to have in the script, then he slaps her in the face, which makes the feminist bitch horny as hell…. Wut? Well, yes, to tell the truth, the movie industry is dominated by morons. They wanted to make cash with just another zombie movie, so they made a list of tropes they could use and created something that resembled a story. I bet when they found out that one third of the film was brilliant they said “way cool! One third is so much more than we could ever have hoped for!” and the sad thing is: they were right. The One-eyed is king among the blind. So I guess when I give 3* for brainless braineater movies because they are good enough to fix our zombie cravings, then I must give this one 4*. I do so reluctantly, though.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

City Of The Living Dead (1980)

1980 horror classic by Lucio Fulci 93min imdb

(VPN:D)

Review:

In Dunwich, a priest commits suicide, and this sin is serious enough to open the gates of hell. A psychic woman in New York sees this and dies, well, sort of. A journalist saves her from being buried alive, and together they travel to Dunwich, where a whole lot of strange things are happening, like people who see the ghost of the priest start crying blood, etc…

Yes, a lot of things are happening, involving not just astonishing amounts of blood, but also brains, intestines, rats and maggots. What puzzles me, though, is that all these elements don’t really make a story. Let’s make this and we can do that and then there is something we could also do, and then we have a finale and then a surprise twist that doesn’t even have to make sense, we have a runtime of like 90min and enough shock effects and that’s good enough for us.

Also, the story takes place in Dunwich, which is a Lovecraft town name, but I cannot find how hell and catholic sins are related to Lovecraft.

What can I say? Many call this a masterpiece, and yes, in a way it is a masterpiece of the horror genre, but only if you don’t too much storywise.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Shock Waves (1976)

Peter Cushing and John Carradine in a movie about underwater nazi zombies. 84min imdb

(VPN:D)

Review:

John Carradine is the captain of a small very old ship with a crew of two and a four tourists on board. Eventually they are hit by a huge ghostship and find themselves stranded on a forgotten island with a hotel that has been abandoned by everybody but Peter Cushing. During World War 2 he had been in charge of a ship full of underwater nazi zombies, and when the war was lost he just sank the ship and retired to said hotel.

What’s not to like about those blonde underwater nazi zombies with their awesome dark goggles? Often it’s really badass when they come out of the water. And, well, that’s where it starts with what I don’t like about them: sometimes they just kneel in the shallow water until they stand up. I wonder why and that sometimes ruins my immersion. And wait until you find out how you can kill an underwater nazi zombie. Spoiler: it’s not about destroying their brain. And while we’re at it: yes, this is a zombie movie, but, no, this is by no means a gore movie. Every single kill is unbloody and some even happen off camera, which is a bit untypical for that kind of film.

Oh yes, this movie has it’s moments, and I sure like the extra twists they add towards the end just to make you feel a little extra miserable. And as I mentioned above, the zombies in many scenes are quite badass.

So all in all this is a very watchable movie. It’s not a masterpiece, it doesn’t keep some of its promises, but it’s very, very watchable.

⭐⭐⭐

Night Of The Living Dead (1968)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 96min First modern zombie movie, by George R. Romero

Recap

Famous last words: “They’re coming for you, Barbara.” says Johnny before he gets killed by the first modern zombie ever seen on the screen. Barbara escapes and hides in a seemingly empty house, but she is in a state of shock and of not much use, so the rest of the story focuses more on Ben, another survivor who actually has what it takes to deal with the apocalypse at hand.

This is of course not the first zombie movie ever, that was White Zombie, but this is the first modern zombie movie, with zombies that are not voodolated, but with living dead who feast on human flesh and turn their victims into more zombies. So I guess I must give this movie full score for being not only extremely well done and entertaining but also an important historical document.

Ach, and before I forget: do you remember how some people complained about fast zombies in later movies like Zack Snyder’s remake of Dawn Of The Dead? Well, about 8min into the movie we see the very first modern zombie moving quite swiftly. Just saying.

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White Zombie (1932)

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 66min Bela Lugosi in the first zombie movie ever.

Recap

So there is that couple and they want to marry in the Caribbean. However their host wants the bride for himself, so he talks to the local voodoo priest who turns her into a zombie.

This is definitively a “should see”. Of course the movie is, well, old, for example the running gag is a man who smokes but never has matches on him. Yes, about 90 years ago people were still smoking on the screen, and a man without matches was an incredibly funny screwball. And yet this movie is a classic that you may not want to miss, and I give you three good reasons:

The music is super, one of the best horror scores ever.

Bela Lugosi is in it.

This is the first zombie movie ever. Zombies back then were voodoolated slaves and it took more than 35 years until George Romero invented the modern zombie, so this is a priceless historic document.

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