‘Someone in this village is practising witchcraft…’
When the humble zombie first shambled onto our screens in the 1932 landmark horror White Zombie, the titular undead were revived using voodoo. This odd juxtaposition continued unabated until George A. Romero changed the game with The Night of the Living Dead in 1968. Two years earlier, British director John Gilling delivered one of the last significant voodoo zombie hybrid movies and its rural British setting ensures that it’s as cosy as horror films come…
Following a mysterious epidemic in a small Cornish village, local doctor Peter Thompson (Brook Williams) calls on his mentor Sir James Forbes (Andre Morell) to help find a cure. Upon arrival, Forbes is met with recalcitrant villagers, damsels in distress and, regrettably, the occasional voodoo zombie (a phrase I have used twice now and one that I’m warming to more and more as time goes on).
I’ve always preferred the British horror movies of this era to the more campy and light-hearted American counterparts. They manage to evoke a twinge of nostalgia (for a time I wasn’t even born into) as well as a sort of folk horror-inspired dread. Old-timey England just feels haunted. Especially in the countryside. As is tradition for many horror films of this era, an acting legend in the twilight of his career has been roped in – Andre Morell in this case – who, to be fair, puts a decent shift in despite this film being a considerable step down from his appearances in Ben Hur and The Bridge on the River Kwai.
The Plague of the Zombies is an enjoyable romp through tried and tested British horror tropes and the scares are surprisingly effective (if a little sparse). Zombie enthusiasts (another great phrase) will lap it up.