31 Days of Horror: The Plague of the Zombies (1966)

Zombies are wildly popular right now, thanks to shows like The Walking Dead. Today's movie is a zombie movie that isn't quite a zombie movie.

(Confused? You won't be after this episode of...)

Let's talk to Jay about Plague of the Zombies.

These aren't the types of zombies you'd expect; they're proper voodoo zombies that are forced into slavery. No brain-eating fiends here. 

I love voodoo-inspired zombies. They bring a whole different kind of scary to the horror genre. Unlike your typical Romero shufflers, these zombies are scary because they're recently deceased people who have become puppets to the machinations of another human being. The zombies you usually see are just trying to survive, right? They'll eat you, sure, but they're just responding to a natural impulse. Squire Hamilton's zombies die and are brought back on his whim. Anyone having that kind of control over someone else terrifies me.

(But, hey, I'm scared of zombie cows so maybe my fright barometer is a little off.)

I watched Plague of the Zombies on a horror double bill back in 1976, maybe 1977 on the BBC. It was one of those rare occasions when the older film was in colour, while the newer film was in black and white because it was shown with the original version of Night of the Living Dead. It was the first time, for me, that zombies were truly frightening. 

If I remember correctly, Plague of the Zombies is Hammer's only zombie movie...

That's right. 

It's also Hammer's forgotten film. It never gets the kind of attention that I think it deserves. I'm not arguing that Night of the Living Dead isn't the daddy of all zombie films; I'm just saying that the zombies in Plague of the Zombies were much better. That grey, rotting flesh and those white eyes were creepy as fuck.

The zombies were absolutely terrifying. I'd never seen anything like it before. You don't see zombies this good again until Romero's Day of the Dead.

The scene that gets me is the graveyard scene, where they're coming out of the ground. It's one of the real great scare moments of horror history. 



I think just about everyone who knows Plague of the Zombies agrees that the dream sequence is of the most iconic moments in zombie film history. Everyone else should watch it because they are missing out on a real horror gem.