marshrydrob King of the Zombies, is a comical piece; in the long list of classic horror film. The opening score, in the sounds of tribal drumming; gives the film an adventure theme.The mood of the film, is that of a mysterious island. The continually playing drums, hint at the presence of black magic: voodoo. The movie plays out similarly to that of an Abbot and Costello movie.The story is a little slow moving, but the combination of humor and mystery; makes the film worth watching. The gathered cast, is worth many a respects even today. King of the Zombies, may not actually be classic horror, but it is a good movie, and is not your average every day zombie film.

Nigel P In this standard comedy horror, three travellers make a forced landing on a remote island where they are met by Dr. Sangre (Henry Victor, playing Bela Lugosi - for whom the role was originally intended) and his servant Momba (Leigh Whipper). The two bland leads James and Bill (Dick Purcell and John Archer) are shown to their rooms, where manservant Jefferson (Mantan Moreland) is told he is to sleep in the servant's quarters. When he protests, James confirms that he will do as he is told.Jeff becomes acquainted with the hired help and becomes convinced the remote building is haunted by zombies.'Zombies? What's them?' 'Dead folks that walks around.' This is the kind of wide-eyed, knock-about light comedy fairly prevalent around this time. A haunted house mystery of sorts, featuring the blank-eyed dead. It is Moreland's show really. Madame Sul-Te-Wan, playing Tahama, also invests her part with a convincingly unnerving sense of superstition. While the chisel-jawed American actors play adequate straight leads, their 'subordinates' are far more interesting and entertaining, although in-keeping with the one-note scares on display, are limited in their patter.As shivering Jeff states towards the film's close, 'If there's one thing I wouldn't want to be twice, zombies is both of them!"

Leofwine_draca For those who thought that RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD was the first real zombie-comedy-horror, think again. A good forty years before that film, a movie came along that portrayed the undead menace with an equal number of laughs and chills. That film is KING OF THE ZOMBIES, and it's a great little movie. Now, I may be biased, seeing as how the last zombie film I watched was the god-awful REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES, made five years before this. That movie was a boring, zombie-free mess. KING OF THE ZOMBIES, by comparison, is a tightly-paced little thriller set on the confines of a tropical island.Essentially it's one of those 'haunted house' type movies, as our protagonists find themselves trapped in an eerie building and menaced by mysterious figures and the walking dead. These 'zombies' are of the classic variety, the hypnotised-workers group, and the make up, although simple, is more than effective. There's a lot of running around and voodoo ceremonies going on in the basement, and it all seems rather quaint and dated by today's standards. The majority of the cast are fairly wooden in their roles, especially the stiff-upper-lip 'heroes', but Henry Victor does a passable imitation of Bela Lugosi and Joan Woodbury wins points on her sheer loveliness alone. And then there's Mantan Moreland.You see, this is a COMEDY horror, along the lines of the classic Bob Hope type 'old dark house' comedies popular during the 1940s. And the presence of Mantan Moreland, a black actor typecast in this genre for his wide-eyed terror, means that we're in for a very funny ride. The type of humour seen here might seem racist and highly dated to a modern audience, but this is what passed for top comedy back in the 1940s and there's no point putting modern political correctness on an old, creaky black and white flick. Moreland shivers with terror, screams, runs and makes wisecrack after wisecrack in his various run-ins with the undead, and he's easily the best thing in the movie: he displays sound comic timing, great acting, and is a sheer likable personality. He also gets a huge amount of screen time, making this a very painless film to watch.

Cristi_Ciopron Bewitching, hypnosis, voodoo, rites of transmigration: a lowbrow comedy made in an epoch when some people, at least, thought these things made a comedy be more intriguing, more quirky, more over the top; like many others, they aren't humorous horrors, or over the top horrors, but comedies taking Gothic pretexts and spoofing them, 'King …' is a pure spoof, and a kind of a B favorite for people who don't really know or enjoy B cinema, and who believe this is what B cinema ought have been. Budget-wise, the show was neat, and its sets and cinematography look good.Joan Woodbury and Moreland are the walking trailers of this comedy, and he has a handful of funny one-liners.She has 2nd billing, and him, 3rd. For some reason, Archer got 5th billing, while Purcell got the … 1st.Tahama, the eerie cook, is also the priestess of the cult, and Sangre's hypnosis works as a complementary method, with the same results. Since war was at hand, the Austrian refugee is shown despising the black people, while the Yankees care for the manservant almost brotherly, when they descend some stairs one of them puts his hand protectively on the black man's shoulder. On their way to smashing the unbelievers, during the transmigration rituals, the zombies are switched to another target. If the recasting of the zombies' urge looks casual, provoked by Archer's shout, some significance is given to the religious nature of the gathering: apart from the ministers (the priestess, Sangre who blends voodoo with Irish bewitching), there is a congregation of black people, for whom the living dead have a religious meaning, legitimacy and value, the storyline reveals this social understructure, the religious side of the slavery (presumably not because of the scriptwriter's awareness, but because the trope was still such); when the Viennese refugee visits the priestess while she bewitches the seaman, he looks convinced by the theoretic efficiency of her ritual, though scoffing at the result.One of the tropes is the colonial _bewitcher and mastermind: a creepy foreigner who establishes a kingdom in a remote land. Both classic zombie tales and colonial manhunts recycle this trope, who must of been as much socio-historical as literary.Two actors aside, the rest of the cast isn't so likable. The cast and the script are the two main drawbacks; suspense isn't as much as attempted, nor any unholy feel, and, for a story supposed to be playful, it's _univentive, uninspired and trite. Archer, Purcell as the _zombified Irishman, Henry Victor as the insipid Sangre (played as a gentleman or a butler), Patricia Stacey as his mindless wife, and Guy Usher as the folksy seaman, weren't really a nice comic team. Given that they wished to have Lugosi or (at least) Lorre for the Sangre role, their other pick seems _unobvious, with a mostly bland and placid replacement.'King …' looks neat, but is bland, not very lively, as atmospheric or scary as any 5th rate sitcom, perhaps unconvinced, as if the crew didn't believe much in it, and it has an also bland, mediocre cast and a very bland script; there are cretins who hail it as a B classic.The line about Sangre's wife having tried to warn the guests alludes to her mysterious visit.