Revenge of the Zombies (1943)

 

Primary Genre: Horror

Secondary Genres: Science Fiction, Science Fiction Zombies, Iron Age B Movie

Plot: Two men (Robert Lowery and  Mauritz Hugo) and their black manservant (Mantan Moreland) travel to a house in the Bayou to investigate the unexpected death of a woman (Veda Ann Borg).  Not only was her death suspicious, but her widowered husband (John Carradine) is a German scientist secretly developing a method to mass produce zombies for the German army. Among his test subjects: His wife.

The Good Stuff: 

• 
  Mantan Moreland is usually fun to watch in these cheap B pictures..  As usual, his character may be a stereotypical black man, and that might be cringe inducing for modern audiences, but he’s also very likeable.  The audience will likely identify with his character the more than with the other characters.
• Plot has a couple of unexpected twists (which we won’t be giving away).
  

The Bad Stuff

• When one of the the main characters starts wisecracking, it falls flat.  Instead of laughter, the response is more like “Wait, did he just make a joke?”  (Note: This might have been an attempt to play this like Bob Hope in George Marshall’s Ghost Breakers (1940), but Robert Lowery is no Bob Hope and the director of this movie is no George Marshall)
• The scientist has a handful of  zombies, but we usually only get to see three of them.  We get to see more of them at the beginning and at the end when they revolt (like the title says), but the time in between feels relatively zombie free.  I know this was an “economical” production, but when you can’t even afford a few zombie extras….
• Movie Quicksand: When characters fall into quicksand, they quickly sink to about neck level level, pause, then sink the rest of the way into it. (I know, it’s just a movie, but most people are too buoyant to sink all the way into quicksand -- assuming it’s deeper than the person’s height.)
• Although the move establishes some creepiness at the beginning and end, there's very little such in between.

The Who Cares Stuff

• This is similar to King of the Zombies (1940).
• Both movies have Mantan Moreland as a comic relief manservant called Jeff Jackson. (Morland often played characters called Jeff/Jefferson)
• Both movies have matronly black character actress Madame Sul-Te-Wan
• Both movies were supposed to have Bela Lugosi.
• Both movies are about two men investigating a mystery with their comic relief
  manservant
• Both movies take place in a remote location.
• Both movies have an antagonist with zombies.
• Both movies have foreign agents as antagonist
• Also known as The Corpse Vanished

See Also

The Evil that Men Do Lives After Them (Other early Nazi Germany Mad Science Zombie stories)

• Frozen Dead (1966)
• Shock Waves (1977)
• Night of the Zombies (1981)
• Castle Wollfenstein (1981)

The Bottom Line: Merely mediocre.