Whilst the
very lowest of low-rent studios were not slow to jump on the horror bandwagon,
they never had the budgets or the rights to compete with the likes of Universal
and its roster of creature features; which is why it’s remarkable, as Tom
Weaver points out, that “in the 1940’s Poverty Row, oddly, avoided vampires
almost scrupulously.” After all, a sober suit, optional opera cloak and fangs,
plus a hopefully hypnotic rather than laughable stare costs very little.
The first
one to prise open the coffin of the urbane undead was PRC with Dead Men Walk (1942). Unfortunately this
is the product of the feverish work ethic of speedster director Sam Newfield,
whom we last saw churning out their rip-off of Universal’s The Wolf Man in The Mad
Monster (1942) in his one-man celluloid sausage factory of 250-300 credits uninhibited
by quality control. The script was also written by his partner-in-crime on that
turkey, Fred Myton. It was likewise no problem to draught in George Zucco to
topline this, since he seemingly accepted anything typed that was placed
in
front of him.
The result
is sixty-four minutes of tedium that belies its brevity in making you feel it’s
three times as long, an almost impressive feat when you consider that it was
filmed in a scorching five days. Not one calorie of that kinetic energy however
seems to have translated onto the screen. Instead, the film crawls along at a
deadening pace.
The prologue
initially raises hope, consisting of a book of vampire history being tossed
onto a fire, followed by a spectral head (Forrest Taylor) accusing the audience
of having the “puny conceit” to doubt the power of the supernatural. He suggest
we are to encounter “witch and warlock, werewolf, and all the spawn of Hell,
borne on the sable wings of night through the holy communion of the witches’
Sabbath.” What a mouth-watering invitation. If only we could believe one
wing-flap of it would be on offer here.
We switch to
the funeral of one of two twin brothers (both played by Zucco). The deceased Dr
Elwyn Clayton was originally a good man whose soul was corrupted by the dark
arts of witchcraft after returning from India. His surviving sibling, Dr Lloyd,
offed him in secret to save the town from his hideous occultry. We understand this
when grieving local Kate (Ferm Emmett) bursts in to lambast his coffined body
at the altar. He had murdered her grand-daughter, this “Servant of the Devil”.
Lloyd takes Kate’s pained outburst in his stride. Indeed Zucco more or less
handles the entire film as though it’s a leisurely round of golf through which
he mutters his lines on auto-pilot.
Away from
the public show, Dr Lloyd meets his niece Gayle and her fiancé Dr David
Bentley. The former is played by the able and beautiful Mary Carlisle, who had
risen to become a musical comedy co-star of Bing Crosby three times before
marriage persuaded her to make this film her last. As Dr David we have Nedrick
Young, who thankfully was a strong writer - weathering the McCarthy blacklist
to co-write Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse
Rock (1957) and earn an Oscar as the pseudonymous Nathan E. Douglas for
1958’s The Defiant Ones - because his
performance here in front of the camera is dreadfully wooden throughout.
Once the
lovebirds have left, having passed judgement on the “black and evil thing”
they’ve just buried, in private, Dr Lloyd is burning his brother’s unsavoury
notes when he is assailed by the crazed appearance of the latter’s hunchbacked henchman,
Zolarr. It is good to see Dwight Frye again, even though the years’ mileage had
clearly not been kind to him since his promising one-two of Dracula and Frankenstein roles in 1931. By now, he was largely reduced to
trying to balance his time between unremarkable stage roles and war effort factory
work for Lockheed Aircraft, hence his haggard, prematurely-aged appearance.
Tragically, he died that November before reporting for work on Fox film Wilson (1944). In his last role, at
least his engine still summons up the red-lining revs of frenetic servitude
that made and limited his name. “You’ll pay for death long before you die!” he
gibbers at the sight of Lloyd’s dishonouring of his dead master’s work.
No matter,
for just like his high priest Andoheb in the previous year’s The Mummy’s Tomb, you can never count on
an evil Zucco staying dead. Zolarr opens Elwyn’s coffin to reveal the satanic
sibling can cheat death here as well. To differentiate between each Clayton’s
(bored) demeanour, Dr Lloyd is the one with glasses and a hat whereas Elwyyn is
without either. One interesting feature, possibly accidental, is Zucco’s
facial resemblance to Aleister Crowley, the real-life occultist who also
sported a bald head and sinister glower. It turns out that Elwyn is actually a
madcap hybrid of both Andoheb and Dracula, in sinister service to evil gods
whilst literally moonlighting as a vampire in need of constant fresh blood. His
resurrected self confronts the not-noticeably shocked Lloyd, vowing that to
replenish his blood bank, he intends opening an account using his brother’s loved
ones, starting with Gayle, before suddenly vanishing.( The effects work of showing both brothers together by necessity is simply achieved using separate right and left shots of Zucco merged together where the scene cannot get away with a double)
True to his
word, Elwyn sneaks into Gayle’s room for a swift pint one night. This causes
our heroes to go into crisis mode, which for Dr David means behaving as though
he’s been ex-sanguinated himself, such is his bloodless acting. He’ll need
every drop though as he steps up to offer his own matched blood type to give
his fiancé a rejuvenating transfusion. To be fair, Dr Dave is at least a less
erratic physician than his prospective father-in-law. He noticed the tell-tale
puncture marks on Gayle’s neck immediately. Lloyd, perplexed over Gayle’s
sudden anaemia, missed them completely in his presumably full examination, - even
though he spotted them on a previous victim. It just shows the value of getting
a second opinion.
It takes Kate
to fully understand the demonic forces at work here. She warns Lloyd and Gayle
that they are up against a vampire who can only be deflected by a crucifix she
gives to Gayle. And sure enough she is proved right when a glowing-eyed Elwyn
pays her a return visit but is foiled. You would think these plot developments
would create some interest, yet I hate to say it but Zucco is one of the main culprits
in the slowness of the piece. As Dr Lloyd he prefaces each exchange with
ponderous thought as though attempting to diagnose his own boredom. This would
be understandable if the dialogue was worth savouring, but Myton’s script is likewise
cripplingly dull. When Gayle asks what he thinks of Kate’s utterly fantastic
story, he replies drearily: “I don’t know, dear. It seems utterly impossible
and yet it’s the only answer to an impossible condition”. Not for Zolarr it isn’t,
who offs Kate for being wise enough to supplying that the answer.
We must not
forget the townsfolk, who cannot be expected to tolerate a resurgence of unexplained
deaths without over-heatedly reaching for the torches and marching on what
passes for Castle Dracula. This motley mob are however no-one’s idea of an
urban vigilante threat; they look and sound like a rabble of Wild West hillbillies.
Robert Strange as the gummy comic relief posse member appears to be a prototype
of ‘authentic frontier gibberish’ wild man Gabby Johnson in Blazing Saddles (1974)
Before the
villagers can head off evil at the pass, Elwyn and Zolarr battle with Lloyd in
his home. “You don’t wait for death. You come to meet him” hisses Elwyn. No
wonder he’s boiling with pent-up fervour – Lloyd has just administered his
slave one of the most ignominious lingering demises possible, pinning Zolarr
fatally under a pedestal supporting a stuffed ostrich. Cain and not-very Abel
grapple with each other as a fallen lamp sets fire to the curtains, a clichéd
resolution already in horror movies. One striking point is the element of
jeopardy of seeing Zucco and his stand-in finally duking it out within a ring
of staged flames encircling them in the house set. “Good heavens. There’s two
of them!” declares one of the cowboy panhandlers in oddly polite exclamation
compared to their earlier blue-collar roughness. Unusually, both brothers die
in the blaze, so at least we have the boldness of a downbeat ending
Dead Men Walk is a tepid Dracula rip-off that never stands a chance by being hamstrung from
the start due to its tortuously slow rhythm, dull acting and slapdash, quickie execution.
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