Plot Details: This opinion reveals everything about the movie's plot.
I wonder how much time it took to come up with the title to the 1936 film REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES. There must have been so many possibilities. Let’s take a look at the plot and see how readily a possible title presents itself.
It’s just after World War I and an international archeological branch of the Army is on the trail of Col Mazovia (who is hiding in their midst. Watch about 5 seconds of the movie and see if you can’t spot him. Here’s a hint: he’s the only one in all black, and the only American--Roy D’Arcy--made up to look like a stereotypical Japanese man of the 1930s), who, they believe, holds the secret to creating zombies.
With their intell, they travel to Angkor Wat in hopes of discovering either his plans or his secret for making zombies, I’m not really clear on just what exactly they went there for; I was a little overwhelmed by the love triangle. Because, naturally, General Duvall, the man in charge, brings his daughter Claire (Dorothy Stone) along. In the space of about 3 minutes, Claire goes from meeting Armand Louque (Dean Jagger) to, in the next scene, announcing her engagement to him. And two scenes later, Claire is giving Armand his ring back and running into the arms of Cliff Grayson (Robert Noland). Turns out she used Armand to incite Cliff’s jealousy so he’d reveal his true feelings for her.
Distraught--hey, Armand really loved Claire in those two awkward 1930s scenes--our hero throws himself into his work, sneaking off back to Angkor and discovering the secret of creating zombies on his own. When he returns to base, General Duvall is upset that Armand was AWOL and kicks him off the team. When Armand works out the specifics of the zombie formula, he takes control of the General (and most of the locals they’ve got working their dig) and forces him to ship Cliff off to some foreign location, threatening to kill him if Claire doesn’t marry Armand.
Claire acquiesces, but she refuses to give Armand her heart. So to prove he really does love her, he relinquishes control of his zombie hoards, who then wake up from their stupor and take revenge by killing Armand in the last 2 minutes of the movie.
Now, let’s try and think of a title. Well, we’ve got an unbelievable love triangle with three people who look like they’d all be more comfortable shackled to the floor than showing any honest emotion for each other. We’ve got a method for turning people into mindless automatons that appears to consist of nothing more than staring intently, and then showing stock footage of Bela Lugosi’s eyes from WHITE ZOMBIE a few years earlier. And we’ve got five or six people they pulled in off the street to play zombies who rush the camera in the last few minutes of the movie. Well, there’s your title: REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES. That was easy.
I’ve watched a few painful movies in this series, and no doubt have more to come, but holy crap this one was bad. Victor Halperin returns from his success on WHITE ZOMBIE four years earlier to tell a story not too much unlike that one. Another love triangle, another method of making zombies that doesn’t seem to be more complex than staring at them, and actors who don’t appear to have even read the script beforehand, let alone rehearsed their lines. Only this time Halperin forgot one ingredient. The story. REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES runs 65 minutes, and not one of those minutes was spared for explaining anything or developing a character. For the most part, the movie just goes from one scene to next, hoping the audience knows what’s going on. We don’t. I’m not even entirely sure if the characters were soldiers, archeologists, or both. I thought at first they were in the Army, but aside from the opening scene, Armand and Cliff never appear in uniform. And what kind of Army regiment is going to let the General bring his daughter to their excavation? So maybe they were just archeologists after all. But then why is the General able to ship Cliff off to another station? Who knows? I’m not even sure Halperin knows.
And God forbid they bother to develop a character. To tell you the truth, I only know Dean Jagger’s character was named Armand Louque because that’s what IMDB says he was named. I don’t recall it ever being said in the movie.
REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES was not a good movie. Poorly written, poorly acted, and just all-around boring as hell. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it can’t be considered a “classic” does it?
No, I guess it doesn’t. However, I hold to my original criteria that to be a classic, you have to have something you can offer to the genre. And REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES has nothing. It’s not the least bit original or influential--in fact, just the opposite as it takes just about every cue from Halperin’s earlier zombie movie, WHITE ZOMBIE. Now THAT one could be considered a classic. REVOLT is merely a rehash, and not a well-done one. While I’m glad to see a zombie movie using zombies in the classic, original, sense as opposed to the back from the dead brain-eaters of today, this one was just a letdown on so many levels. Even the writers new this thing sucked--all three of them; not one writer is credited. Yet another bit of IMDB info the DVD was too good to divulge to the audience. In the canon of Victor Halperin zombie movies, there are only two things you need to know. 1) WHITE ZOMBIE good, 2) REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES bad beyond belief. Nuff said.
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