Edward L.Cahn rarely, if ever, ventured into the world of "A" features, spending his days knee deep in low-budget Westerns, horror and Sci-fi. This film, produced by "Jungle" Sam Katzman is one of his better efforts thanks to a story that relies far less on padding than is usual for this kind of production. It reminded me of a mixture of a zombie movie and DRAGNET (although if Jack Webb had written and starred it would have been a better movie) as cops track down a gangster who is using a tame German scientist (Gregory Gaye, looking for all the world like an elderly Conrad Veidt or one of Lang's super criminals) to producing Zombies 
to carry out revenge on his former associates. It's pretty tame by George Romero standards but it moves at a fair lick towards its climax as a small army of Zombies break out from the laboratory to dike it out with the polices. Top-liner is the reliable Richard Denning (we know he's reliable because he smokes a pipe) in the days before he retired to Hawaii to share the Governor's job with Lew Ayres in Hawaii 5-0. Rating **
to carry out revenge on his former associates. It's pretty tame by George Romero standards but it moves at a fair lick towards its climax as a small army of Zombies break out from the laboratory to dike it out with the polices. Top-liner is the reliable Richard Denning (we know he's reliable because he smokes a pipe) in the days before he retired to Hawaii to share the Governor's job with Lew Ayres in Hawaii 5-0. Rating **
1 comment:
After reading your blog entry, it occurred to me that I had the recent Sam Katzman Icon Collection box set and had yet to watch it. So I popped this in the old player and, I'll have to agree with your assessment. Silly but fun. Now I have to venture into the other 3 movies in the set; I have seen THE WEREWOLF and ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU before, of course. And the GIANT CLAW -- I'm not sure but I must've seen it sometime in the dim mists of my past. Hmm, is it possible to harm yourself by watching too many Sam Katzman movies back to back?!?
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