Directed by: Jean Yarbrough
Starring: Dick Purcell, Joan Woodbury, Mantan Moreland, Henry Victor, Patricia Stacey, John Archer, Leigh Whipper

STORY

Somewhere over the Caribbean, three American travelers are about to discover that surviving a plane crash may be the EASY part of their evening.

Pilot James “Mac” McCarthy is flying with his passengers, agent Bill Summers and Bill’s valet Jefferson “Jeff” Jackson, when their aircraft is mysteriously pulled off course. With their fuel disappearing and no safe landing field in sight, they hear what sounds like a strange radio transmission coming from a remote island.

Then the plane goes down.

Stranded but alive, the three men make their way through the darkness until they discover an isolated mansion belonging to the mysterious Dr. Miklos Sangre.

That should solve their problems.

It does not.

Sangre welcomes the unexpected visitors into his home, where he lives with his wife Alyce, his niece Barbara and several servants. But almost immediately, Jeff realizes there is something VERY wrong with this house.

People wander around as if they are in trances.

Drums sound mysteriously in the night.

Strange ceremonies are taking place.

And dead people do not seem particularly committed to staying dead.

While Mac and Bill investigate their suspicious host, Jeff repeatedly finds himself face-to-face with things no rational person should have to explain. His terrified reactions may be funny, but his instincts are absolutely correct.

Dr. Sangre is hiding something.

And it is much bigger than a haunted house.

The men eventually discover that Admiral Arthur Wainwright, a military officer whose aircraft disappeared, is being held prisoner on the island. Sangre is using hypnotism and voodoo in an attempt to extract important military intelligence from him.

Sangre also possesses an even more terrifying weapon.

Zombies.

Through a combination of hypnotic control, drugs and supernatural ritual, the doctor commands human beings who have been robbed of their own wills. They move when he orders them to move. They obey when he commands them to obey.

But Sangre’s control is not as complete as he believes.

As Bill and Mac move closer to discovering the truth, Jeff becomes entangled in the strange ceremonies himself, and the zombies who once obeyed their master begin to threaten the very man who controlled them.

King of the Zombies combines an old dark house mystery, wartime espionage, voodoo, hypnotism, zombies and comedy into one wonderfully strange package.

And while Dr. Sangre may be the man commanding the dead, Mantan Moreland walks away with the movie.

Because sometimes the smartest person in a horror movie is the guy who takes one look at the zombies and says, essentially:

WE SHOULD NOT BE HERE.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS

BEFORE PEARL HARBOR

King of the Zombies reached theaters in 1941, months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States officially into World War II.

Yet the war was already influencing American popular culture.

The movie incorporates spies, secret military information, missing aircraft and an enemy agent into its zombie story, creating a peculiar mixture of supernatural horror and the growing international anxieties surrounding the war.

HORROR MEETS ESPIONAGE

King of the Zombies is not simply about people being transformed into zombies.

Its villain wants military intelligence.

That makes Dr. Sangre part mad scientist, part occultist and part wartime spy. The movie combines several genres that were enormously popular with audiences at the time: horror, mystery, comedy, adventure and espionage.

Apparently zombies alone were not enough.

They needed spies too.

MANTAN MORELAND STEALS THE MOVIE

Mantan Moreland plays Jeff Jackson, and his lightning-fast delivery, expressive reactions and impeccable comic timing provide much of the movie’s energy.

Moreland appeared in hundreds of films and performances during a career that stretched from vaudeville to motion pictures and television. He became particularly well known to movie audiences for playing Birmingham Brown in the Charlie Chan series.

In King of the Zombies, Jeff may be frightened by almost everything happening around him, but he also frequently understands the danger before anyone else does.

When there are zombies wandering around the house, that is a valuable skill.

MORELAND WAS A MASTER OF COMIC TIMING

Mantan Moreland was famous for a comedy routine in which two performers could seemingly finish each other’s sentences, leaving portions of the conversation deliberately unspoken while somehow understanding exactly what the other meant.

Moreland performed variations of this routine with several partners during his career, including fellow vaudeville performer Ben Carter.

His extraordinary timing came from years of live performance, and King of the Zombies gives modern audiences a wonderful opportunity to see why Moreland became such a memorable screen presence.

BORIS KARLOFF WAS REPORTEDLY CONSIDERED

Contemporary trade reporting connected Boris Karloff with the project during its development.

Karloff would certainly have made an impressive master of zombies, but the role of Dr. Miklos Sangre ultimately went to Henry Victor.

Victor brought his own considerable horror credentials to the production.

HENRY VICTOR ALREADY KNEW HIS MONSTERS

Henry Victor was no stranger to classic horror.

Nearly a decade before playing Dr. Sangre, he appeared as the strongman Hercules in Tod Browning’s legendary 1932 film Freaks.

He also appeared in numerous British, German and American productions during a career stretching back to the silent era.

In King of the Zombies, Victor gets to move from circus strongman to sinister zombie master.

That is quite a résumé.

MADE BY MONOGRAM PICTURES

King of the Zombies was produced and released by Monogram Pictures, one of Hollywood’s best-known “Poverty Row” studios.

Companies like Monogram specialized in films produced quickly and economically for theaters hungry for a constant supply of new entertainment.

Limited budgets did not mean limited imagination.

A remote island, plane crash, espionage conspiracy, mysterious mansion, voodoo rituals and an army of zombies?

Put them all in the movie.

DIRECTED BY JEAN YARBROUGH

Director Jean Yarbrough became an extremely prolific filmmaker in movies and television.

His career included horror, comedy, westerns and crime pictures, and he later directed performers including Abbott and Costello.

King of the Zombies arrived early in a directing career that would continue for decades.

THE ZOMBIES ARE NOT THE FLESH-EATING KIND

Like White Zombie and Revolt of the Zombies, this film predates the modern conception of the zombie.

These creatures are not decomposing corpses roaming around searching for human flesh.

The horror comes from something psychologically different: the destruction of individual will.

The zombie is a person who can no longer control his or her own body or actions.

That was the dominant screen interpretation of the creature long before zombies started trying to eat everybody.

VOODOO AND EARLY HOLLYWOOD ZOMBIES

The earliest American zombie movies drew heavily from sensationalized Western interpretations of Haitian Vodou and Caribbean folklore.

Those portrayals were often highly inaccurate and reflected the cultural assumptions and stereotypes of the period rather than authentic religious practices.

Watching King of the Zombies today therefore provides not only a look at early zombie cinema, but also a glimpse of how Hollywood imagined and distorted the origins of the zombie before the creature evolved into a largely fictional movie monster.

AN ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATION!

Here is something you might NOT expect from King of the Zombies.

The film received an Academy Award nomination.

Edward J. Kay was nominated for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture at the 14th Academy Awards.

Yes.

A movie featuring Mantan Moreland trapped on an island with spies, voodoo rituals and zombies went to the OSCARS.

We love old Hollywood.

AINTOID: THE NAME TELLS US SOMETHING

Dr. Miklos Sangre has a particularly appropriate surname for the master of a house filled with supernatural danger.

“Sangre” is the Spanish word for “blood.”

Subtle?

Not particularly.

Wonderful for a horror movie?

Absolutely.

AINTOID: THE ISLAND HAS EVERYTHING

King of the Zombies understands one of the fundamental rules of inexpensive horror filmmaking.

Get your characters somewhere they cannot easily leave.

The isolated island gives us a crashed airplane, darkness, strange noises, a mysterious mansion and no convenient way to escape.

Once everyone walks through Sangre’s front door, the movie has everything it needs.

AINTOID: THE THREE FACES OF THE EARLY ZOMBIE

Put King of the Zombies beside White Zombie and Revolt of the Zombies and something fascinating emerges.

The zombie was still evolving on screen.

Filmmakers could use zombies for supernatural horror, romantic obsession, mind control, comedy, espionage or even warfare.

There were no firmly established movie rules yet.

The zombie was whatever the filmmakers needed it to be.

AINTOID: 27 YEARS BEFORE NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

King of the Zombies arrived 27 years before George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead transformed zombie cinema forever.

Romero’s creatures behaved very differently from the controlled human zombies of films like this one.

Once the flesh-eating undead took over popular culture, the older hypnotized zombie largely disappeared from mainstream horror.

That makes King of the Zombies a wonderful time capsule from the FIRST era of the movie zombie.

AINTOID: HORROR WITH A SENSE OF HUMOR

What makes King of the Zombies particularly useful in a classic horror collection is its tone.

There are sinister ceremonies, kidnapped military officers, zombies and genuine danger, but the movie is also determined to make its audience laugh.

Mantan Moreland makes sure it does.

For audiences moving through a Halloween marathon, that combination makes King of the Zombies a delightful change of pace.

The dead have risen.

The spies are plotting.

And somehow, this is FUN.