Zombies on Broadway (1945)

Primary Genre: 
Comedy (?)

Secondary Genres: 
Horror, Fantasy

Plot:
After two doofy publicity agents (the comedy (?) duo of Alan Carney and Wally Brown) heavily advertise that a new nightclub will have a real life (sic?) zombie, the nightclub owner sends them to the Caribbean to fetch one -- or else.  Along the way, they encounter a wandering calypso minstrel delivering plot exposition (Sir Lancelot),  a blonde cabaret club singer/dancer/knife thrower (Anne Jeffreys), a mad scientist (Bela Lugosi), a monkey, and a zombie (Darby Jones)

(What were you expecting with a title like that?  A documentary about burnouts aimlessly wandering NYC?)

The Good Stuff:
Zombies in this movie have pop-eyes, and the pop-eyed zombie makeup effect is good..

The Bad Stuff:
Near as I can tell, RKO’s Carney & Brown as a movie comedy team were supposed to replace RKO’s Wheeler & Woolsey (Woolsey had died) while being like Universal’s Abbott & Costello, but the similarities end at saying there were two of them.

The Who Cares Stuff:

• The tall, skinny, silent pop-eyed black zombie in this movie is very much like the one in I Walked with a Zombie (1943).  [Checking...]  Well, duh!  It’s the same actor
• The calypso singer in this movie delivering plot exposition via song is very much like the one in I Walked with a Zombie.  [Checking...]  Well, duh!  It’s the same actor.
• The setting for this movie is the fictional Caribbean island of Saint Sebastian, same as in I Walked with a Zombie.
• (You might be wondering if this movie was supposed to be a satire of I Walked with a Zombie.  On the whole, it’s not, but maybe the references if and of themselves were meant to be some kind of knowing parody.  Or maybe it’s just that the filmmakers didn’t have any sense of originality.  I’m not gonna lose sleep over this, and neither should you.)
• As bad as it is, this movie turned a profit.  Just sayin’.

See Also: 

• White Zombie (1932) - Bela Lugosi as a Caribbean zombie master, a role he later played in this movie and a couple of other 1940s B movies.
• The Ghost Breakers (1940) - Supernatural Caribbean zombie comedy -- with Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard, and Anthony Quinn. Recommended.
• King of the Zombies (1941) - Nazi mad science Caribbean zombie comedy (?) with dated racist stereotypes.  Instantly disposable.
• Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952) - Plot and gimmick-wise, it’s very similar to this movie.  In Zombies on Broadway, a comedy (?) duo meant to resemble a more famous comedy duo stumbles upon mad scientist Lugosi turning people into zombies, including one of the duo; in Brooklyn Gorilla, it’s the same deal, but this time it’s gorillas instead of zombies.

The Bottom Line
Very poor Iron Age B movie Caribbean zombie comedy.  This is no laughing matter.

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