Dead Men Walk
Dead Men Walk opens with a thoroughly demented prolog which has genuine EC horror in it: burning grimoires, superimposed faces, and an evil-toned spectral VO. George Zucco plays both kindly physician Lloyd and his evil Satanist twin brother, Elwyn. Forced to kill his wicked half before the film starts, Dr Lloyd is soon confronted with the fact that his brother was also a vampire and has now returned from the dead to wreak havoc. It seems that the vile, rapacious Elwyn had pledged his life to the Devil and was given near immortality as a reward while studying the black arts in India (?!). Elwyn announces his incestuous intentions to vampirize his own daughter and, assisted by loyal hunchbacked servant Zolarr (Dwight Frye), revenge himself on his old persecutors. Local wandering nutter Kate (Fern Emmett), whose son seems to have been killed by the undead warlock, had predicted just this type of demonic resurrection, and she now joins Lloyd's crew in hunting down Elwyn's sovereign resting place. Though she is killed, she leaves enough clues to guide the good guys, who have wasted a lot of time in talky drawing room scenes, to the logical place of Elwyn's unholy rest: his own house. The whole foul plot ends in a pyrrhic victory for the forces of Good.
Sam Neufield directs this demented PRC quickie in a somnolent, glacier manner which gives it a feel not unlike Carnival of Souls or even Herzog's Heart of Glass. The actors stand facing each other and intone the ridiculous dialogue as if they were statues; the other set piece places them in shrubs and bushes, staring blanky ahead at action we have just witnessed, miming shock or sniggering evilly. The doctor's mansion is used like an Escher print; impossible sightlines move the action along despite their physical impossibility, with the camera obsessively returning to the goddam bushes. In a 'folks with the pitchforks' trope, a local mob of yokels and poltroons who attack the mansion is made up of about eight people dressed in Western outfits left over from yesterday's cowboy shoot. Poor Dwight Frye, the greatest maniacal laugher in the history of cinema, is here cast as a pastiche of his classic mad assistant roles in one of his last films. He gives it his all, ending up screaming for his master under a cardboard altar to Lucifer. The climax uses some rudimentary editing and angled camera shots, which look like the work of Eisenstein when compared to the hypnotized stasis of the rest of the film. This dramatic shift from the previous hour of delirium to real bargain basement excitement works particularly well.
Dead Men Walk is pretty good, though perhaps against its own intent. Time has been kind to this cheapie, extracting its static faults and transforming them into haunted ellipses and repetitions. The loopy dialogue now sounds cryptic, meandering symptoms of a dysphoric universe. Its set-bound nature becomes flea-bitten claustrophobia, staggering and dreamlike, like some regional Marienbad before its time. And doctors being the Janus face of the ancient dark wizards is a common suspicion which never gets old.
Dead Men Walk opens with a thoroughly demented prolog which has genuine EC horror in it: burning grimoires, superimposed faces, and an evil-toned spectral VO. George Zucco plays both kindly physician Lloyd and his evil Satanist twin brother, Elwyn. Forced to kill his wicked half before the film starts, Dr Lloyd is soon confronted with the fact that his brother was also a vampire and has now returned from the dead to wreak havoc. It seems that the vile, rapacious Elwyn had pledged his life to the Devil and was given near immortality as a reward while studying the black arts in India (?!). Elwyn announces his incestuous intentions to vampirize his own daughter and, assisted by loyal hunchbacked servant Zolarr (Dwight Frye), revenge himself on his old persecutors. Local wandering nutter Kate (Fern Emmett), whose son seems to have been killed by the undead warlock, had predicted just this type of demonic resurrection, and she now joins Lloyd's crew in hunting down Elwyn's sovereign resting place. Though she is killed, she leaves enough clues to guide the good guys, who have wasted a lot of time in talky drawing room scenes, to the logical place of Elwyn's unholy rest: his own house. The whole foul plot ends in a pyrrhic victory for the forces of Good.
Sam Neufield directs this demented PRC quickie in a somnolent, glacier manner which gives it a feel not unlike Carnival of Souls or even Herzog's Heart of Glass. The actors stand facing each other and intone the ridiculous dialogue as if they were statues; the other set piece places them in shrubs and bushes, staring blanky ahead at action we have just witnessed, miming shock or sniggering evilly. The doctor's mansion is used like an Escher print; impossible sightlines move the action along despite their physical impossibility, with the camera obsessively returning to the goddam bushes. In a 'folks with the pitchforks' trope, a local mob of yokels and poltroons who attack the mansion is made up of about eight people dressed in Western outfits left over from yesterday's cowboy shoot. Poor Dwight Frye, the greatest maniacal laugher in the history of cinema, is here cast as a pastiche of his classic mad assistant roles in one of his last films. He gives it his all, ending up screaming for his master under a cardboard altar to Lucifer. The climax uses some rudimentary editing and angled camera shots, which look like the work of Eisenstein when compared to the hypnotized stasis of the rest of the film. This dramatic shift from the previous hour of delirium to real bargain basement excitement works particularly well.
Dead Men Walk is pretty good, though perhaps against its own intent. Time has been kind to this cheapie, extracting its static faults and transforming them into haunted ellipses and repetitions. The loopy dialogue now sounds cryptic, meandering symptoms of a dysphoric universe. Its set-bound nature becomes flea-bitten claustrophobia, staggering and dreamlike, like some regional Marienbad before its time. And doctors being the Janus face of the ancient dark wizards is a common suspicion which never gets old.