Revolt of the Zombies (1936)

What a waste of my time!!!

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

From the director of White Zombie! I thought this one would be more of the same, and was all jazzed up by the opening sequence, where a bunch of Cambodian zombies take a trench from the Bosch during World War One. Ah, I thought, this is going to be a good one, what with the zombies and the war and the intrigue and the murder of the zombie master. How could it fail? Well, how about bringing the whole film to a crashing halt by introducing a boring love triangle? That's what they do here, and I swear I had trouble distinguishing the two guys and who was being made to be jealous by the other guy and who ended up with the girl. I was nodding off at this bit. Seems they've all headed out to Cambodia to find out the zombie ritual for some reason, but you get little of that and loads of this trio standing around talking about relationships. And no zombies.Seems like the jealous guy's gone a bit whacko too, as he heads out on his own to a temple and follows a zombie in a scene which did make me laugh. In order to cut costs, it looks like the actors are just acting in front of photographs and projected images of the temple (and a swamp). When our jilted guy is following a zombie through the swamp, he's merely walking on the spot with added watery noises. That was funny at least, but still, it's the only entertainment I managed to get from the remainder of the film.Our jilted guy get's the zombie ritual and starts zombifying everybody (and I mean everybody) in order to get his girl back, but by this point, you won't be caring. Let me point out here that the zombies only actually do any damage when they're not zombies anymore – that's how crap this one is! This film was a real let down (especially if you've already watched White Zombie)…You might get some cheese kicks from the cheapness of it, but it's a cheat anyway.

Before the release of George Romero's genre-defining Night of the Living Dead, zombies were relatively well-behaved creatures. They certainly had much better table-manners in the old days. But social etiquette aside what thrills did these early zombies offer to the movie-going public? Judging by this film, a limited supply.The story is about an expedition to Cambodia, whose purpose is to find and destroy the secret of zombiefication. One of the party discovers the secrets on his own and sets about building his zombie army.This film is basically a love triangle with zombies. But seeing as this is a 30's movie, the said zombies are more like somnambulists than the flesh-eating variety we think of today. They seem to respond to mind-control, rather than insatiable appetites. And, quite frankly, the 'revolt' is somewhat underwhelming. The whole thing is a little lacking but the exotic setting does add something worthwhile to proceedings. The horror side of things is unfortunately marginalised in favour of romantic melodrama that doesn't really work all that well seeing as none of the participants are very likable. It seems unlikely that this could've provided much entertainment even 70 years ago. See it if you have to see everything with 'zombie' in the title but otherwise this is one for those with a taste for 30's poverty row flicks.

After going to Best Buy to buy the 50 Movie Pack Horror Classics 12-DVD Collection, I decided that the first movie to watch was this. This was just a random selection, and I didn't really know what this movie would be about except that it would contain zombies and an army. Well, this is incorrect. This movie is far from being about war, although you may see people in military uniforms. This movie is mostly a love story, and contains the plot of a mad man trying to win his girlfriend.This movie was very confusing, mainly because the plot switches continuously and the story doesn't stick with one character. You see the story of many characters, and that's too hard to shove in your brain. If this movie seems easy for whoever watches it, go right ahead. But, I just thought that there were too many characters.The acting is quite alright. Actually, it's excellent. This is quite hard to find in movies of this era. Well, not really.I don't really recommend this movie unless you are really bored.

Of the many problems with this film, the worst is continuity; and re-editing it on VHS for a college cable channel many years ago, I tried to figure out what exactly went wrong. What seems to have happened is that they actually constructed a much longer film and then chopped it down for standard theatrical viewing. How much longer? to fill in all the holes in the plot as we have it would require about three more hours of narrative and character development - especially given the fact that the film we do have is just so slow and takes itself just so seriously.That's staggering; what could the Halperins have possibly been trying to accomplish here? Their previous film, "White Zombie", was a successful low budget attempt to duplicate the early Universal Studios monster films (The Mummy, Dracula, etc.), and as such stuck pretty close to the zombie mythology that those in North America would know from popular magazines.Revolt of the Zombies, to the contrary, appears to have been intended as some allegory for the politics of modern war. This would not only explain the opening, and the change of Dean Jagger's character into a megalomaniac, but it also explains why the zombies don't actually do much in the film, besides stand around, look frightening, and wait for orders - they're just allegorical soldiers, not the undead cannibals we've all come to love and loathe in zombie films.I am the equal to any in my dislike for modern war and its politics - but I think a film ought to be entertaining first, and only later, maybe, educational. And definitely - a film about zombies ought to be about zombies.Truly one of the most bizarre films in Hollywood history, but not one I can recommend, even for historic value.