Revolt of the Zombies
Director: Halperin Brothers
Year: 1936
Rating: 3.0
Produced and directed by the same brothers Halperin
who made White Zombie, but it is a disappointing follow-up. Like following
a Wedding cake with a cupcake. It has an interesting setting in Angkor of
all places, and they actually sent a photographer there to take a few pictures
to use as backgrounds. How many people in 1934 had even heard of Angkor,
I wonder? But there are no zombies in the traditional sense - just hypnotized
people. And Bela only appears as his eyes. They use the shot of his eyes
from White Zombie whenever the main character is using his telepathy. I wonder
if Bela got paid for that. Otherwise, this is quite dreadful.
During WWI a Cambodian Buddhist monk joins
the front line in France and uses his abilities to hypnotize Cambodian troops
to fight and no bullets will stop them. The High Command worries that this
power could enable someone to take over the world. The monk is murdered.
but after the war two friends are sent to Angkor Wat to find the secret.
There they both fall in love with the same woman (Dorothy Stone). Don't friends
always fall in love with the same woman. One of my most hated clichés
in film. The nice guy (Dean Jagger) loses out to his more outgoing friend.
So naturally, when he discovers the secret of making men into zombies, he
uses it to steal the girl away. He experiments first on his manservant played
by Teru Shimada, best known as Mr. Osato in You Only Live Twice. As best
as I recall, he came to a bad end in that. He was born in Japan and moved
to America to act. He was in a number of films in the 1930s but oddly basically
none in the 1940s. I wonder why? Oh ya, he was interred for three years.
