Wednesday 16 November 2016

74 King of the Zombies ( 1941 )

This  one  was  originally  meant  for  Bela  Lugosi  but  he  couldn't  fit  it  into  his  schedule  so  the  workmanlike  Charles  Victor  played  the  villainous  Dr  Sangre  instead.

The  plot  is  a  weird  cross  between  The  Island  of  Dr  Moreau  and  Notorious.  Bill  Summers  ( Dick  Purcell ), his  pilot  and  black  manservant  Jefferson  ( Mantan  Moreland ) crash  land  on  a  remote  island , being  vaguely  aware  that  a  senior  admiral  had  disappeared   in  the  vicinity  not  long  before. They  are  rescued  by  Sangre  and  his  family. Sangre  claims  to  be  an  Austrian  refugee  but  is  really  a  Nazi  using  voodoo  to  try  and  unlock  the  secrets  in  the  kidnapped  admiral's  head.

The  film  never  manages  to  tie  the  supernatural  and  espionage  threads  together  because  it's  too  busy  trying  to  be  funny  with  Jefferson  bantering  with  the  maid  and  trying  to  steer   clear  of  the  titular  zombies. Moreland  has  by  far  the  most  screen  time  and  some  of  it  is  genuinely  amusing  but  the  narrative   goes  hang  while  he's  entertaining  us. The  film  is  also  thoroughly  un-p.c.  with  some  overtly  racist  jokes.

Joan  Woodbury  ( as  Barbara )

Sex : No

Death : Survives


Joan  was  a  very  busy  actress  from  1934  onwards  but  never  became  a  star. Nevertheless  her career  lasted  until  the  mid-sixties. She  died  in  1989  aged  73.

Patricia  Stacey  ( as  Alice  Sangre )

Sex : No

Death : Her  body  is  discovered  by  Summers  and  Jefferson  but  there's  no  real  explanation  of  how  she  met  her  end  or  what  her  function  in  the  plot  is.



This  is  Patricia's  only  film  credit  and  I  can  tell  you  nothing  more  about  her.

Marguerite  Whitten  ( as  Samantha )

Sex :  Samantha  has  a  formidable  cleavage  and  a  lot  of  screen  time  in  which  to  display  it.

Death : Survives


Marguerite  appeared  with  Moreland  to  act  as  his  comic  foil  in  a  number  of  films  between 1938  and  1943. She  died  in  1990  aged  77.



 

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