Customer Reviews

Plague of the Zombies (Widescreen)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Sadly, Anchor Bay no longer offers this DVD and there is no indication that they (or Blue Underground) will be offering any of these classic Hammer titles on DVD anytime soon. Its too bad. This is one of the lost gems from Hammer.

The title of this film is INCREDIBLY Misleading!! There are NO ZOMBIES ANYWHERE in this film! A Terribly Disappointing film to watch or to own. This one CAN "Passed Over" AND Forgotten.

I watched this Hammer production only yesterday and it's worth watching from beginning to end. It's especially a treat to be savored on Halloween night. Although I basically knew what this 1966 film was about, it nevertheless held my interest. Just about all of the movie's elements, such as the script, camera shots and overall direction, have been carefully crafted so that John Gilling would avoid creating a hackneyed, cliche-driven monster flick. Not bad, considering that "The Plague of the Zombies" was filmed in a single month!
Actor Andre Morell stars as Sir James Forbes, a London Professor who travels to Cornwall after answering a distress letter sent by his ex-student Peter Thompson (Brook Williams). Cornwall itself is a small communal village riddled with superstitious beliefs; the villagers won't allow scientific research performed on their dead. Upon arriving, Forbes investigates a mysterious fever that has killed 12 villagers. The cause of this disease is unknown, but Peter's study indicates that every victim suffered dementia, a loss of appetite, and skin discoloration. What makes this case even stranger is how the bodies buried in the Cornwall cemetary are disappearing! Later, Forbes' strong-willed daughter Sylvia (Diane Clare) follows Peter's distressed wife Alice (Jacqueline Pearce) after she suddenly wanders away from home in a trance. Curious about Alice's mental state, Sylvia eventually comes across an abadoned tin factory where Alice's body turns up dead. Sylvia, meanwhile, gets a frightful scare in an accidental encounter with a walking corpse! After collecting a number of scientific clues, Forbes, Sylvia and Peter eventually uncover a devious scheme conducted by Clive Hamilton (John Carson), the town's wealthy Squire. The suave and sadistic Hamilton is secretly performing voodoo rituals to infect innocent villagers with zombification; once transformed, the living dead are forced into slavery, working endlessly in the tin factory's underground mines. In a wicked pattern, Hamilton preys upon each victim by politely asking for a drink of water, dropping the glass and forcing each person to cut his/her skin. This enables the Squire to collect drops of blood and seal each victim's fate with black magic. After discovering this, the alarmed Sir James and Peter race against time; they must break into Hamilton's estate and rescue Sylvia before SHE becomes the Squire's latest zombie slave!
Like I said before, this film is guaranteed to hold your interest in place. Beware for a few scares! Wide-eyed corpses will rise from their graves only to be decapitated and set on fire! Also watch out for masked figures wearing hollow masks and dripping blood into wooden coffins!

I watched this little gem for the first time and was pleasantly surprised. The story is well written and keeps you on the edge of your seat. I was particularly impressed by the performance André Morell who plays Dr. Forbes. He has a Sherlock Holmes-esque quality as he tries to solve the mystery of a "plague" that is killing off residents of a small village. As the story unfolds we are exposed to voodoo rituals, murder, and zombies. The movie retains a gothic atmosphere in typical Hammer fashion. The DVD transfer is beautiful with only a hint of scratches at a couple of points in the film. The picture is presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic format and the sound is clear. I recommend this film for collectors of classic horror flicks as well as those adding to their Hammer library.

This is an above average Hammer Studios film from 1966. It was filmed back to back with The Reptile, another above average Hammer production, using chiefly the same crew and much of the same cast.

The story is that there is a mysterious plauge killing people in a small Cornish villiage. Dr. Forbes (André Morell) travels there to inviestigate and is accompanied by his daughter, Sylvia Forbes (Diane Clare), who uses it as an excuse to visit her childhood friend Alice Tompson (Jacqueline Pearce). Alice's husband is the local doctor and has been unable to figure out why people have been dying. His wife Alice has also been acting strange lately, somewhat withdrawn and lifeless, which has been the main sympton before the locals died.

There is a local gang of privileged ruffians who are headed by the local nobleman, Squire Clive Hamilton. Hamilton more or less runs the vilage and he also owns the old abondoned mine near town. He is of course approached by Dr. Forbes but cannot provide any help as to the cause of deaths. But soon he doctor begins to suspect the truth: That the Squire is actually a practicing Voodoo priest who has been turning locals into zombies to work in his mine!

Before too long Alice Tompson dies and her distraught husband has her buried in the local cemetery. We get to watch as she rises from the grave to report to the mine for duty! There are lots of cool shots of zombies lumbering around and rising from graves

In this film the whole town is shrouded in mist and there is a constant sense of dread among the population. Michael Ripper does a great job as the local constable who is trying to solve the mystery along with Dr. Forbes. Tightly put together with a fast pace for most of the movie, this is a great release from Hammer. It is also the only zombie movie they ever put out which is too bad as this one turned out so well.

This release from Anchor Bay is another notch in their cap for the fine picture (1.85:1 anamorphic) and sound. There are a couple of trailers and a World of Hammer Episode: "Mummies, Werewolves & the Living Dead". I am glad I own this dvd and I will watch it many more times over the years.

This is an above average Hammer Studios film from 1966. It was filmed back to back with The Reptile, another above average Hammer production, using chiefly the same crew and much of the same cast.

The story is that there is a mysterious plauge killing people in a small Cornish villiage. Dr. Forbes (André Morell) travels there to inviestigate and is accompanied by his daughter, Sylvia Forbes (Diane Clare), who uses it as an excuse to visit her childhood friend Alice Tompson (Jacqueline Pearce). Alice's husband is the local doctor and has been unable to figure out why people have been dying. His wife Alice has also been acting strange lately, somewhat withdrawn and lifeless, which has been the main sympton before the locals died.

There is a local gang of privileged ruffians who are headed by the local nobleman, Squire Clive Hamilton. Hamilton more or less runs the vilage and he also owns the old abondoned mine near town. He is of course approached by Dr. Forbes but cannot provide any help as to the cause of deaths. But soon he doctor begins to suspect the truth: That the Squire is actually a practicing Voodoo priest who has been turning locals into zombies to work in his mine!

Before too long Alice Tompson dies and her distraught husband has her buried in the local cemetery. We get to watch as she rises from the grave to report to the mine for duty! There are lots of cool shots of zombies lumbering around and rising from graves

In this film the whole town is shrouded in mist and there is a constant sense of dread among the population. Michael Ripper does a great job as the local constable who is trying to solve the mystery along with Dr. Forbes. Tightly put together with a fast pace for most of the movie, this is a great release from Hammer. It is also the only zombie movie they ever put out which is too bad as this one turned out so well.

This release from Anchor Bay is another notch in their cap for the fine picture (1.85:1 anamorphic) and sound. There are a couple of trailers and a World of Hammer Episode: "Mummies, Werewolves & the Living Dead". I am glad I own this dvd and I will watch it many more times over the years.

"Plague" is a well made British period horror film about a Cornish lord/landowner using voodoo (via rituals he picked up in the islands) to turn the local people into zombies to work his tin mines. Very good production with good acting and atmospheric sets make this highly watchable. Jacqueline Pierce (also in Gillings' "The Reptile") is very good as a victim. I recommend both films to Hammer and horror fans. They're perfect companion peices for each other. "Plague" is stylish and well worth seeing. Although classy and non-gory, it's interesting as an early modern effort to present a zombie story in literate terms. The DVD from Anchor Bay is fine. Enjoy this one.

People keep inexplicably disappearing and dying in a backward Cornish town. Visiting doctor Andre Morell can't find out why, because the locals are so superstitious they won't let him perform autopsies to determine the cause of death. Decadent squire John Carson seems slippery and evasive about it all, when clues are tracked to his doorstep. Local chief of police Michael Ripper is reluctant to accept Morell's evidence for a supernatural explanation - the well-traveled Carson learned voodoo in Haiti, and is killing and resurrecting the locals by black magic to become his cheap slave-labor in the neighboring mines. It goes without saying he "comes to a bad end."

This is more or less a companion feature to the same year's The Reptile, both pictures featuring Ripper and Jacqueline Pearce and directed by John Gilling. Most critics prefer Plague to Reptile, but I am not one of them. The Reptile is much more original than this movie, but that isn't to say Plague of the Zombies isn't good - it's just pretty pedestrian, really, except for some memorable camerawork and better-than-usual (for this kind of fare) performances.

Carson is a splendid cad, often reminiscent of James Mason. Morell has a certain presence and dignity that are naturally compelling. Michael Ripper is a wonderful character actor, and is as good here as in any of his other numerous supporting roles. In fact, the entire cast is quite good.

The story couldn't be more ordinary, but the scenery and some of the camerawork are splendid. The zombie makeups are trite affairs - a bit of pyrotechnics occurs in the finale, and you can easily see one or two of the staggering undead in immobile asbestos face-masks - but there is a truly phenomenal time-lapse metamorphosis scene about an hour into the picture, in which a dead Jacqueline Pearce seamlessly transforms from a beautiful maiden into a grotesquely livid corpse before the viewer's eyes.

Not a bad flick, but no surprises here. You've seen it all done better, in countless zombie flicks since.

It's impossible to give a Hammer-style film a 5 star review but this one is pretty good. Atmospheric and dreamlike, it is only let down by a poor turn by John Carson as the villian of the piece and by the usual Hammer lack of pace. Andre Morell is a sympathetic lead and the zombie scenes are ahead of their time (George Romero has obviously seen this film.) A classic of the genre.

Intelligently written allegory of colonial blight and ravening classism which is also very well acted and superbly directly by Gilling ,and who is also an imaginative screenwriter in his own right). It is a much more potent and intelligent symbolic depiction of class warfare than NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and also anticipates Fulci's ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS. The zombie resurrection sequence is still one of the best of its kind and has proven very influential to the point of being used in other films. The idea of utilizing zombies as undead labor appeared first, I believe in WHITE ZOMBIE. This being the first modern Zombie film, and being one of Hammer's best horror films not directed by King Terence Fisher. Gilling would later go on to make the superior "The Reptile(1966)..and also checkout his minor effort "The Mummy's Shroud(1967)...and finnaly his best film "The Devil's Cross(1975)"...and if you missed any of his earlier work, the best one to check out is "Shadow of the Cat(1960)", and "the Flesh & the Fiends(1959)"