Directed by: Victor Halperin
Starring: Dorothy Stone, Dean Jagger, Roy D’Arcy, Robert Noland, George Cleveland, E. Alyn Warren, Carl Stockdale

STORY

During World War I, something far more terrifying than ordinary weapons appears on the battlefield.

A Cambodian priest serving with a French colonial regiment possesses an extraordinary secret: the ability to transform human beings into zombies, stripping them of their individual will and turning them into tireless servants who obey the commands of their master. Military leaders immediately recognize the horrifying possibilities. An army of soldiers who feel no fear, exhaustion or pain could become an almost unstoppable weapon.

But the secret must not fall into the wrong hands.

After the war, an international expedition travels deep into Cambodia searching for the mysterious formula behind the zombie power. Among them is Armand Louque, played by Dean Jagger, an interpreter whose fascination with the secret soon becomes dangerously personal.

Armand is also hopelessly in love with Claire Duval, played by Dorothy Stone. Claire, however, loves Armand’s friend Clifford Grayson. When Armand discovers the ancient secret hidden within the temples of Angkor, he suddenly possesses something more intoxicating than wealth or military power: the ability to control the minds of other human beings.

And heartbreak gives him a reason to use it.

What begins as an expedition intended to destroy the secret of the zombies becomes the story of one man corrupted by it. Armand begins imposing his will upon those around him, including Claire, transforming love into possession and human beings into obedient instruments of his desires.

But controlling people is not the same thing as earning their loyalty, and an army without free will can become terrifying when that control begins to disappear.

Revolt of the Zombies belongs to the earliest era of zombie cinema, decades before the flesh-eating undead that would eventually dominate the genre. These zombies do not stagger through the streets looking for brains. They are living people whose minds and wills have been taken from them.

And in this strange combination of war story, jungle adventure, romance and supernatural horror, the most frightening monster may not be the zombie at all.

It may be the person who discovers he has the power to create one.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS

FROM THE CREATORS OF WHITE ZOMBIE

Four years before Revolt of the Zombies, director Victor Halperin and producer Edward Halperin made White Zombie, the landmark 1932 Bela Lugosi film that became one of the earliest feature-length zombie movies.

The brothers returned to the subject with Revolt of the Zombies, conceived as a follow-up to their earlier film.

But this time there would be no Bela Lugosi starring in the picture.

BELA LUGOSI WAS ORIGINALLY ANNOUNCED

In September 1935, newspaper columnist Louella Parsons reported that Bela Lugosi was expected to star in a project then called The Revolt of the Zombie.

By November, trade reports were describing the Halperin brothers’ planned follow-up to White Zombie, but Lugosi was no longer mentioned as part of the production.

Dean Jagger ultimately became the film’s leading man.

BUT BELA’S EYES CAME BACK!

Bela Lugosi may not appear in the cast, but attentive horror fans might suddenly think they have seen something VERY familiar.

They have.

An image of Lugosi’s hypnotic eyes from White Zombie was reused whenever the film needed to represent the mysterious power controlling the zombies.

So Bela Lugosi manages to haunt Revolt of the Zombies without actually appearing in it.

THE ORIGINAL TITLE WAS REVOLT OF THE DEMONS

According to the American Film Institute, the movie originally carried the working title Revolt of the Demons.

Eventually the filmmakers settled on a much more irresistible title.

Revolt of the Zombies.

For horror fans, we think they made the right choice.

THEY ACTUALLY WENT TO ANGKOR

The ancient Cambodian setting was not created entirely on a Hollywood soundstage.

A location crew traveled to Angkor in what was then French Indochina to photograph background material for the production. Contemporary Hollywood reports documented plans for the crew to sail from San Francisco in early 1936.

Those images gave a low-budget independent horror production access to one of the most extraordinary archaeological landscapes in the world.

AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPERT CAME ALONG

The production wanted its exotic setting to carry some degree of authenticity.

AFI records that archaeological expert Leigh Smith served as technical adviser on the production. George Savidge of the Chicago Art Institute was also reported as being connected with the production as art director, although AFI notes that only Smith received an onscreen credit.

THE FILM WAS MADE FAST

Production began in early March 1936 at Talisman Studios.

Despite the Cambodian location material and ambitious supernatural story, the finished picture runs only about an hour, a reminder of the speed and economy with which independent genre pictures could be produced during the 1930s.

A VERY DIFFERENT KIND OF ZOMBIE

Anyone expecting the flesh-eating walking dead of later zombie movies is going to meet a very different creature here.

The zombies of Revolt of the Zombies are living human beings robbed of their free will through supernatural control.

That concept connects the film to the earliest cinematic interpretation of zombies, years before George A. Romero and Night of the Living Dead transformed the screen zombie into the flesh-eating creature audiences recognize today.

ZOMBIES AS WEAPONS OF WAR

One of the movie’s most fascinating ideas arrives immediately.

What if someone could create soldiers who never questioned orders, never became exhausted and never felt fear?

Revolt of the Zombies imagines zombification not simply as supernatural horror but as a potential military weapon. The First World War setting gives that idea an especially dark dimension: human beings transformed literally into obedient machines of war.

DEAN JAGGER BEFORE HIS OSCAR

Dean Jagger was still years away from the performance that would bring him one of Hollywood’s highest honors.

He later won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Twelve O’Clock High, released in 1949.

Seeing him here as Armand Louque provides horror fans with the opportunity to watch a future Oscar winner in one of the stranger early entries on his long résumé.

A ZOMBIE TITLE WENT TO COURT

The connection between Revolt of the Zombies and White Zombie eventually produced a real-life legal battle.

AFI records that in February 1937 Sherman S. Krellberg Amusement Securities sued Academy Pictures and Victor and Edward Halperin over the use of the title Revolt of the Zombies, claiming that it infringed upon rights connected with White Zombie.

Apparently even zombies could end up needing lawyers.

AINTOID: THE HALPERIN BROTHERS

Victor and Edward Halperin formed one of early independent horror cinema’s fascinating filmmaking partnerships.

Victor directed while Edward produced, and together they helped bring the zombie into American motion pictures before the creature became one of the most recognizable monsters in popular culture.

AINTOID: ANGKOR BECOMES A HORROR SETTING

The movie places much of its story around the extraordinary ruins of Angkor in Cambodia.

The ancient temples provide the perfect backdrop for a 1930s supernatural adventure: enormous stone structures, jungle landscapes and mysterious passageways surrounding a secret powerful enough to create an army of human slaves.

AINTOID: BEFORE THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

Revolt of the Zombies arrived more than three decades before Night of the Living Dead.

That makes watching it today especially fascinating.

The word “zombie” was already appearing prominently in American horror movies, but filmmakers had not yet established the rules modern audiences associate with the genre. No bites. No infection spreading from victim to victim. No shooting the undead in the head.

The horror here is the destruction of free will.

AINTOID: WHITE ZOMBIE TO REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES

Watching White Zombie and Revolt of the Zombies together offers a wonderful glimpse into the very beginning of zombie cinema.

The two Halperin films helped introduce American movie audiences to a monster that would eventually evolve far beyond anything filmmakers in the 1930s could have imagined.

The zombies changed.

The movies changed.

But nearly a century later, audiences are STILL watching them rise.