THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

Young workers from a small village in Cornwall are dying but showing no internal or external signs of trauma. The only doctor in the village, Doctor Thompson, is dumbfounded and helpless so he turns to his aged tutor, Professor James Forbes, for guidance. Soon after the arrival of Forbes and his daughter, terrible things start occurring in the village and surrounding area, beyond imagination and reality. Bodies begin to disappear from cemeteries, figures strongly resembling the recently dead are seen near the abandoned mine and Forbes fears that black magic may be being practiced by someone of extraordinary power; a man with the ability to raise the dead, forcing them to serve their malevolent master as mindless slaves!

MY VERDICT:

There is a line drawn in the sands of time that every Zombie fanatic must know. In 1968, George Romero drew that line with his breath-taking modern Zombie-horror film, Night of the Living Dead. Zombie movies did exist before this point but the Zombies were never biological threats rising from the grave to rip out someone's throat, they were the original Zombies, the voodoo Zombies; people who had effectively been tricked into believing they were dead by a witch-doctor, sold as lifeless slaves and forced to work the sugar plantations or mines of the rich until they could work no more. Being made in 1966 (before the undead revolution), I was fully expecting The Plague of The Zombies to be a little bit more tame and, while yes, it certainly has no gore nor many truly grizzly moments, I was very surprised by just how much I enjoyed this ancient film - that said, being made by Hammer Horror, by-gone masters of the horror genre, I should not have doubted the production quality. Most striking is the acting which remains remarkable throughout - the good, old academic doctor is played remarkably well and the villain would not be at all out of place in one of the earlier James Bond movies. The quality acting is only boosted by the awesome set design, really bringing the creepy rural village (and abandoned mine) to life. A rather unique concept I particularly enjoy is the way that each Zombie is 'risen' by a voodoo doll (complete with their own adorable doll-sized coffin no less) and these dolls actually work as voodoo dolls on the actual Zombies; when the dolls catch fire, so too do the Zombies. However, it's those Zombies that form my first area of disappointment; they all look very much alike. I like that the filmmakers have made them quite scary-looking, defying the traditional bland 'dead man walking' style that cropped up in nearly all earlier Zombie movies, but seeing a whole group of people in the same dusty black robes and very similar dark hair just seems a little boring - there should not be a dress-code for Zombies! It's also a long film that rather overstays its welcome as the story is purely focused on goodie versus baddie, light versus dark - there is never any explanation of why the shaman mastermind is raising Zombies or, for that matter, any stipulation of why he must be stopped. This lack of narrative becomes shockingly clear when the film reaches its climax; it just ends, as abruptly as that - the heroes walk away triumphantly having achieved... well, what exactly? They got rid of the Zombies and the guy behind the diabolical operation but the long-lasting implications of this remain a mystery.