There’s nothing like a tin mine staffed by zombies and run by a sinister lord of the manor type. There’s nothing like Hammer’s ‘Plague of the Zombies’. Why pay workers when you can have them dies of a mysterious disease and
brought back as the living dead.
This is a stellar zombie movie. Before zombies essentially turned into a variation on a theme of ghouls and vampires. When zombies were the by-product of voodoo. The living dead who could be controlled. The desperate rotting slaves who could be used and abused and turned, if necessary, into murderers.
John Gilling is a name that often gets overlooked, although David Pirie gave him a good write-up in his classic book, ‘Heritage of Horror’. But he was a director and screenwriter of considerable style and talent. ‘Plague of the Zombies’ may be his best known film but he also directed ‘Shadow of the Cat’, ‘Pirates of Blood River’, ‘The Night Caller’ and countless other films during one of the most creatively fertile periods in British cinema history.
Jacqueline Pearce, as the unfortunate Alice is, here, unforgettable and it is her living dead smile that haunted me the most.
Black Park is used heavily despite the fact that the story is supposed to take place in Cornwall. Bernard Robinson’s talents were on hand to give Bray a Cornish village. And James Bernard creates what, for me, was one of his most memorable scores. I once taped the music from the television using a hand held cassette recorder and played it endlessly. Don’t let it be said that I had a wasted youth.
ZOMBIE
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