Starring Dick Purcell, Joan Woodbury, Mantan Moreland, Henry Victor, John Archer
Directed by Jean Yarbrough
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
A government agent, his faithful valet, and their pilot crash land on an island where a mysterious doctor resides and frightening zombies roam the grounds.
Poverty Row studio Monogram Pictures delivers a number of horror elements, from the zombies to a graveyard, to Victor's cultured villain with something to hide, but the whole movie's really a comedy vehicle for the always wide-eyed Mantan Moreland. Although Moreland throughout his career played mainly stereotypical roles which would definitely be looked down upon and criticized today, he had an indisputable comic timing, and talent for delivering rapid-fire jokes, which kept him employed as comic relief on a great number of pictures. He might have his funniest material in this script, bouncing off the other actors playing their roles as straight as can be, and excelling when hypnotized into becoming a zombie, but definitely not a silent one. That helps the film flow pretty well, despite Victor's less than compelling villain- Bela Lugosi or John Carradine would have done more with the role. Despite Monogram's status on Poverty Row, somehow this film earned an Oscar nomination for composer Edward Kay.
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