Blood of the Zombie (USA, 1961) 71 min color DIR-SCR: Barry Mahon. PROD: Barry Mahon, Brandon Chase. DOP: Mark Dennis. CAST: John McKay, Linda Ormond, Monica Davis. (Media Blasters – Shriek Show)
Media Blasters, are you hiring? Sure, there are a lot of DVD companies out there who are resurrecting a lot of obscure stuff, but I especially salute them because they’re reviving long-lost titles by favourite Grade Z filmmakers. Most importantly, they are giving bang-up restorations to ESR’s favourite fringe artist, Ray Dennis Steckler.
Blood of the Zombie (also known as The Dead One) is a colour horror film made by Barry Mahon, who is best remembered for all those tawdry nudie pictures of the 1960s. Fear not, fans, Mahon does not forgo his namesake even in this different kind of movie.
Even though this film is roughly an hour in length, it is still perplexingly, relentlessly padded. After an opening in which a silly looking corpse in a black suit and tie is resurrected, and is ordered by some overacting blonde woman to go out and “Kill! KILL! KILL! KILL!”, we cut away to our newlywed heroes, and nothing else really happens for a full half-hour! Well, Jonathan (played by John McKay, also of Mahon’s Cuban Rebel Girls and Rocket Attack U.S.A.) does take his new bride Linda (Linda Carlton, in her only film role) to all the New Orleans hot spots, and since this is a Barry Mahon film, a strip joint is one of their pit stops.
Jonathan, it turns out, is the new owner of a plantation, and lays down the law real quick about having some order around the place. He is insensitive to the practices of his workers, and then we meet Monica (Monica Davis, who had a brief career in 60s nudie pictures, including two other Mahon epics: 1,000 Shapes of a Female and Rocket Attack U.S.A.), the headmistress of the plantation, the overacting blonde in the beginning, who shows the scoffing Jonathan how live and real voodoo is in the modern world. Thus, we get one corpse revived, it stumbles around a bit and that’s that. The thrills are quite low-jinks for sure, but it is an interesting piece about supernatural cultures, which still exist.
While little happens in the frame to warrant it being shot in 2.35 to one, the transfer is gorgeous, and the disc also comes with an unfinished feature (shown without credits, unfortunately) called Voodoo Swamp. The structure of the film is the same (white people get immersed in voodoo goings on), and the only sound you hear is whatever was recorded on location in every scene. This little picture actually looks intriguing- I’d like to know more about it. (UPDATE: since this review was published, it’s been learned that Voodoo Swamp was written and directed by “one and done” Arthur Jones, and co-stars former Mr. Universe, Billy Pearl.)
Originally published in Vol. #1, Issue #16. Media Blasters had subsidiary labels like Shriek Show (horror films), Tokyo Shock (Asian cult cinema), and their RareFlix collections. As of this writing, they’re strictly releasing anime.
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.