Director: Philip Ford
Screenplay: Dorrell McGowan & Stuart E. McGowan
Starring: Robert Livingston, Adrian Booth, Ian Keith, Thomas E. Jackson
Release Date: May 24th, 1946
VALLEY OF THE ZOMBIES is a harmless trifle of a film that isn’t terribly exciting, but it managed to hold my interest during it’s brief running time without wearing out it’s welcome.
The story involves Ormond Murks (Keith), presumed dead for four years who, through circumstances that are left extremely vague, has returned from the grave and needs blood, specifically his blood type, in order to keep living. Seeking vengeance for being stuck in an asylum five years earlier, Murks murders Dr. Maynard, the man who declared him insane, as well as his brother who had been stealing blood from Maynard’s depository for the last few years. When the police blame Maynard’s two assistants, Dr. Terry Evans (Livingston) and Nurse Susan Drake (Gray), for the deaths, it is up to the duo to prove their innocence and stop the evil Murks before he claims another victim.
The title of the film is actually a bit of a misnomer, as this movie features a count of zero valleys, and only one zombie, who’s really just a regular-looking angry old guy wearing a cape and a top hat, and who sorta looks like the love-child of Boris Karloff and John Carradine. Despite not meeting my base expectations for a screen zombie, Ian Keith’s low-key portrayal of Murks makes for a fairly effective villain. None of his dialogue is all that memorable or earth-shattering, but he has a magnetic screen presence and delivery that instantly perked my interest whenever he was onscreen.
Aside from the presence of the undead Murks and the few offscreen murders that take place, this is barely even a horror movie. The flick begins with some extremely moody exterior shots of a clock tower near Dr. Maynard’s office enshrouded in mist, and a good deal of the flick does take place in an old dark house and a graveyard, but once the police investigation comes into play VALLEY OF THE ZOMBIES pretty much drops any semblance of being a genre flick and turns into more of a comedic whodunit as Terry and Susan are blamed for the murders and forced to do some investigating of their own. The bulk of the second act is spent watching these two trying to piece together what’s going on, but the problem is since we as the audience are already know Murks is the one responsible we’re basically watching them catch up, which is not exactly exhilarating. It helps that Terry and Susan are likeable leads, though after a while I began to grow tired of their endless dryly humorous one-liners. At a certain point I become convinced I had fucked up and turned on a romantic comedy, but thankfully the two finally wind up back at the Murks family mausoleum, leading to a car chase with Murks that ends on the roof of the clock tower from the beginning. Of course hypnotism is involved at one point, but in the end Murks is defeated, Terry and Susan are cleared, and Terry gets to end the flick with an awful joke about going out to a bar and ordering a zombie. Har-dee-har-har!
If this flick were much longer I probably would have gotten angry at it, but at an incredibly brief 56 minute running time VALLEY OF THE ZOMBIES is exactly the length it needed to be. For what it is, it certainly passes the time, and the film was made well enough, with a capable cast, so there’s no real reason to hate it, either. It’s just a flick that exists, does it’s thing, and gets the fuck out. And you know what? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
My Rating: 6.5/10
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