Chris Hardwick's Blog, page 2284

FEAR, INC. Apes Fincher and SCREAM, with Mixed Results (Screamfest Review)

It would be trite to refer to Fear, Inc. as a horror-movie version of David Fincher‘s The Game, simply because the movie itself does so, repeatedly. And that’s just one point of reference–if you thought Scream was heavy with plot devices from other movies, welcome to the film that uses Scream itself as a meta-reference in a maze of many. Our main character–it’d be a stretch to call him either “hero” or “protagonist”–is a horror movie fan, so not only does he interpret what happens based on movies he’s seen and loved, but his opponents also deliberately set things up that way. It’s not as insufferable as it sounds, though viewers who don’t get the in-jokes may scratch their heads a bit.

Joe (Lucas Neff) is a jobless slacker who has somehow managed to marry upwards, and spends the day lounging in the pool at his wife’s family’s large and luxurious house. Bored by even this turn of events, he seeks thrills at horror attractions, semi-reluctant wife (Caitlin Stasey) in tow. It’s at one of these that he encounters Tom (Patrick Renna, a.k.a. Ham from The Sandlot all grown up), whom we know to distrust since we saw him be an accomplice to a creepy pre-credits stalk-and-slash sequence featuring Abigail Breslin. Tom has a business card for a company that promises something truly scary, and sure enough, Joe, who has a drug and judgment problem, eventually calls the number. The voice on the other end appears to rebuff him, but in short order strange things start happening in the neighborhood, as it becomes clear that some sort of game is afoot.

With the prevalence of “extreme” haunted houses nowadays, from the more mainstream Blackout (in which you consent to be manhandled and have things put in your mouth) to even crazier haunts that deliver electric shocks or make you walk through naked, it’s only a matter of time before something like Fear, Inc., the company, actually happens, though a waiver would have to be signed upfront in real life. We’re told in the movie that the company is probably operating illegally, and genuinely hurts people…but of course, those rumors might just be part of the experience.

Because The Game [SPOILERS for a 19 year-old movie] ultimately turned out to all be just what its title implied, even with several reversals and double-bluffs, Fear, Inc. has the savvy viewer looking for clues off the bat that might tip us off the whole thing is fake. Here’s the problem: it’s a low-budget horror movie and as such, is fake on that level. So when the gore looks positively unreal, the viewer must wonder: am I simply not suspending disbelief as I would in a similar film, or does the stuff look shaky to the characters as well, thereby tipping them off as to the veracity of the stunt? Joe at one point praises what he thinks are cool prosthetics, and we are apparently supposed to believe are real wounds; they look like neither.

Director Vincent Masciale clearly scored one great location (the fancy house), and uses it to its maximum potential, which is the dream of all budding auteurs. Yet he fails to make it look all that interesting. The best visual flair comes in the masks the Fear, Inc. stalkers wear, which resemble classical bronze busts, while the rest of the cast look like actors in costumes, never quite convincing the eye that they’re regular folks who chose to put on the clothes they did that morning. What kept me watching anyway was Luke Barnett’s script, which ably keeps you wondering what will happen next, even if Joe is a clueless dork who deserves to get hurt rather than somebody whose life we actually fear for. Barnett gets us to care enough that Joe’s stupidity will harm innocent people around him, which is quite the trick.

2.5 burritos for Fear, Inc.

But are they real burritos?

If you’re in the Los Angeles area, you can catch Fear, Inc. tonight (Wednesday, Oct. 19th) at Screamfest, 7 p.m., at the Chinese Theater.

Image: Electric Entertainment

Luke Y. Thompson is Nerdist’s weekend editor and finds Twitter especially scary. But he’s there anyway.

GAME OF THRONES Re-Throned: “The Old Gods and the New” (S2, E6)

Winter is coming, but not soon enough. So to help pass the time until season seven of Game of Thrones, we’re doing a weekly re-watch of the series, episode-by-episode, with the knowledge of what’s to come and—therefore—more information about the unrevealed rich history of events that took place long before the story began. Be warned, though: that means this series is full of spoilers for every season, even beyond the episode itself. So if you haven’t watched all of the show yet immediately get on that and then come back and join us for Game of Thrones Re-Throned.

Because the next best thing to watching new episodes is re-watching old ones.

——

Season 2, Episode 6: “The Old Gods and the New”

Original Air Date: May 6th, 2012

Director: David Nutter

Written by: Vanessa Taylor

Betrayal in the Seven Kingdoms isn’t just common, it’s a way of life. Whether the insular, clan mentality of houses gave rise to the prevalence of betrayal or vice versa, it’s the way it is. It also helps explain why kinslayers are so accursed, since to betray your own family is the ultimate sin in a world where there are so few people outside of your own home you can trust.

The sixth episode of Game of Thrones‘ second season, “The Old Gods and the New,” is all about betrayal, everywhere and in every form. In Qarth, Daenerys’s dragons were stolen and her people slaughtered (little does she know that it happened in Xaro’s house because he was responsible for it). North of the Wall Jon spared Ygritte’s life, and that will lead to him having to betray his Night’s Watch vows, and then Ygritte herself. Meanwhile, Robb learned about Theon’s treachery, and Roose Bolton told him he would send his bastard to take back Winterfell (uuuuungh). Osha managed to get herself into Theon’s bed so she could then betray him to save Bran and Rickon. Even the new to King’s Landing Shae, in hiding as Sansa’a handmaid, told the naive, trusting Stark girl to be careful who she talks to because the wrong people might hear her (Shae is a quick learner, Sansa not so much).

Betrayal, treachery, double-crosses, plots, schemes, it’s all there. It’s why friendships as true and loving as Robert’s and Ned’s are so rare, and why they were able to bring down a dynasty together. It’s why families arrange marriages, to build blood connections that mean far more than vows, which are nothing more than whispers.

It’s why the theory about Jon’s real mother and father was so important, and why having it confirmed is the most hopeful moment the story has had yet, just like the theory that Tyrion’s real father was the Mad King and not Tywin Lannister, making him yet another secret Targaryen, could be so important. A divided Seven Kingdoms, wrought by betrayal and civil war, might only be able to truly unite to defeat the White Walkers when its most important players are connected by the most meaningful bond, blood. Jon is a leader who knows the dangers they pose, Daenerys has the weapons to defeat them, and Tyrion knows how to govern. The three heads of the dragon conquered Westeros when Aegon and his sisters arrived, and it might take three heads of the dragon to save the country now.

Shae tells Sansa in this episode, “Don’t trust anybody, life is safer that way,” and it makes sense. Robb trusted Theon and Roose Bolton, Ygritte trusted Jon, just like Ned trusted Baelish and the Mad King trusted Jaime, and all of them died for that trust. But you should be able to trust your own family, otherwise the concept of trust itself wouldn’t exist.

The old gods and the new hold kinslayers accursed over all others because blood is not a promise, which can be broken. Boltons, Greyjoys, the richest man in Qarth, these are the people that will do anything to get what they want in life, at any cost to their honor and the lives of others, and they are more common than the Davos Seaworths and Brienne of Tarths in the world, but even they are loyal to their own houses.

A strong family can overcome betrayal. For everything done to House Stark it stands still, but that’s just the North. Seven Kingdoms will need something stronger, tied together by the one thing that can fight against betrayal: family.

What did you think of this episode? We think of you as part of our Nerdist family, so you know we won’t betray your thoughts if you share them with us in the comments below.

Images: HBO

THE WALKING DEAD Surrounds You with Walkers in New 360 Experience

As John Cleese said in his brilliantly funny recap of The Walking Dead, “there are no safe spaces” in the world envisioned by Robert Kirkman. And while humans may be the most dangerous predators of The Walking Dead, getting torn apart by a horde of walkers is still the worst way to go! Now, AMC is giving fans a taste of what’s it’s like to be hopelessly surrounded by the show’s ravenous zombies in a full 360° experience.

Special effects master and The Walking Dead executive producer Greg Nicotero directed the new video, which allows you to look in any direction as the walkers surround you. This isn’t like Resident Evil or any other game you may have played. You can’t fight back and you can’t run, which only makes it more horrifying as the final moments come. That said, this would probably be the Walking Dead video game of our dreams if we just had a knife or a gun to deal with them!

While the primary way to view this is on YouTube, AMC also has it enabled to work with Google Cardboard, which gives the video an even more unsettling VR aspect. With the sound turned up, you can actually hear the zombies coming from different directions. AMC also teased that more Walking Dead 360° videos will be released this season. It will be interesting to see if any stars of the series shoot scenes for them as well.

The Walking Dead season 7 begins this Sunday, October 23 on AMC.

What did you think about the new 360° Walking Dead video? Let us know in the comment section below!

Image: AMC

Marvel’s GENERATION X Returns in 2017

Next year will apparently see a resurgence in Marvel’s X-Men related titles, as Iceman, Jean Grey, and Weapon X have already been announced as the new ongoing series spinning out of the ResurrXion event. Now, Generation X is coming back as well!

Generation X was essentially the X-Men‘s junior varsity team during the ’90s, as Jubilee, M, Husk, Synch, Skin, and a handful of other teenage mutants were mentored by Banshee and the White Queen. Many of the Generation X kids went on to join the X-Men as full-fledged members, but the book hasn’t been published since 2001. There have been a few series that have followed the newer mutants that followed Generation X, and if the first teaser image is any indication, they’re all gonna appear in this book!

The modern vampire Jubilee (don’t ask) and the classic Generation X team are near the top of the image, but they’re also joined by the original New Mutants (Marvel’s first junior X-Men), the New X-Men team, Generation Hope, and a handful of characters from Jason Aaron’s Wolverine and the X-Men.

What does it all mean? Well, assuming that the Terrigen clouds are still poisoning mutants after Inhumans vs. X-Men, Generation X could be what the younger mutants are collectively called…and they may be the last generation of mutants on Earth. That said, ResurrXion implies “Resurrection,” so we may be introduced to a group of brand new team of mutant characters who will pick up the mantle from the previous groups.

On the other hand, we like the idea that this book could give a spotlight to underused characters in the X-Men franchise like Hope Summers, Quentin Quire, and others who haven’t appeared much in the last few years. But so far, we don’t know anything about the new Generation X book aside from its projected release date in Spring 2017.

Are you excited to see who is on the new Generation X team? Which creators do you want to see on the book? Let us know in the comment section below!

Image: Marvel Comics

Real Life DEUS EX-Style Autoshade Sunglasses Offer Hope For a Cooler Tomorrow

Science fiction tech has long been a source for real-life innovation, but that usually pertains to the fields of communication, weaponry, travel, and medicine. Yeah, those kinds of things are important–we guess–but what about progress in the fields of looking cool and being lazy? That’s what we really need to make our future brighter, though not literally brighter. Which is why these real-life Deus Ex-style autoshade glasses, that slide into place when they detect UV light, are the kind of science fiction come-to-life technology we want to put a spotlight on.

We first learned about these sunglasses at Tech Crunch, and they were made by Yousif Ashoor using a 3D printer. Ashoor said he was inspired to build them after seeing the kind of mechanical augments that the character Adam Jensen has in the game Deus Ex. You can see them in action in the player above, going back and forth from covering his eyes as he turns into and away from the sun.

If you’d like to see what inspired him, and just how cool these glasses really are in comparison, you can see the fictional ones at work at around the 22-second mark here.

What’s really amazing is that he says that he made these glasses on a “whim,” and that they are only in the beginning stages. As of now he has no plans to sell them (boo!), but he might share the design (yay!).

Would you wear these? What other wearable, imaginary tech do you wish was real? Augment our comments below with your thoughts.

Featured Image: Yousif Ashoor

Bruce Springsteen Wrote an Unused Song for HARRY POTTER

As is obvious when discussing a magical world filled with wizards and talking paintings and flying brooms and all that, there are a few disconnects and lingering questions between the Harry Potter universe and our own. For instance, how do wizards and witches balance getting a real-world “muggle” education with their magical studies, or do they? Do magical people have an interest in muggle entertainment? What kind of music do they listen to?

Music doesn’t seem to play a particularly important role in the life of Potter and company—given they usually have bigger fish to fry—but it would appear that they’re blissfully unaware or just disinterested in one of the biggest names in muggle rock and roll history: Bruce Springsteen.

In a recent interview on BBC Radio 2 with Simon Mayo said he wrote a song called “I’ll Stand By You Always” that was meant for the movies, but “they didn’t use it.” He said that while it may not be a traditional Springsteen song, he was still proud of the track.

“It was pretty good,” he said. “It was a song that I wrote for my eldest son, it was a big ballad that was very uncharacteristic of something I’d sing myself. But it was something that I thought would have fit lovely; at some point I’d like to get it into a children’s movie of some sort because it was a pretty lovely song.”

Listen to that portion of the interview below, and try not to frustrate yourself imagining what Harry Potter would have been like with a bombastic Springsteen ballad.

Featured image: Warner Bros. Pictures

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: ROANOKE Recap: The Big Chapter 6 Twist Is Here!

Editor’s note: This post contains spoilers for American Horror Story: Roanoke . Proceed with extreme caution if you’re not caught up. Seriously, this recap contains spoilers for the entire season. 

The fateful sixth episode has finally arrived! As promised, Chapter 6 offered a massive twist, and it didn’t even wait until the last 20 minutes to get crazy. After the in-universe docudrama we had been watching play out over the course of the first five episodes (American Horror Story: My Roanoke Nightmare) was labeled a smash hit by the show’s producer Sidney (Cheyenne Jackson), he opened the episode by pitching a Big Brother-like follow up titled Return to Roanoke: Three Days in Hell. And that’s just the tip of the spoiler-filled iceberg. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s dive in.

This time around, the aim of the fictional show is to bring the real Shelby, Matt, and Lee back to the Roanoke house with their actor counterparts, the crew, and Rory (the actor behind Edward Mott, portrayed by Evan Peters). Sid’s plan is to rig the house with hidden cameras, and fake spooks, throw the group in, and watch them deal with the reunion… all during the blood moon. Woo!

Not everyone was pumped about returning to the house, however. Actual Shelby (Lily Rabe) made it clear that she didn’t want to return to her old house (which is now owned by Sid). The only reason she agreed was because she thought being cooped up in a house with her ex-husband Matt would fix their marriage, which had crumbled after she cheated on him with his TV counterpart Dominic (Cuba Gooding Jr.).

Speaking of relationships, Audrey (Sarah Paulson) and Rory (Peters) apparently fell madly in love while they were shooting My Roanoke Nightmare. Before heading to the house, we got to see their incredibly romantic wedding where Rory promised to “love the sh*t” out of Audrey until he dies. This is reportedly Peters’ favorite role, and it’s clear to see why. Throwing a dude-bro type into the equation is hilarious.

But Rory wasn’t the only ghost reenactor that made an appearance again. Agnes Mary Winstead (Kathy Bates) was approached about her role as The Butcher, but was quickly shot down because she took her role a little too seriously and had a tendency to chase people around with a butcher knife. It was so bad that she was committed to a psychiatric facility and diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. As a result, Sid served Agnes with a restraining order, and told her to stay away from the house.

Though most of the stuff at the house was indeed rigged by Sidney’s crew, there were several concerning things that happened last night. For starters, a mysterious fetal pig sacrifice was found near the house before the cast even arrived, as well as a freak chainsaw accident wherein one of the workers accidentally decapitated himself. The weirdness and horror of this death was enough for one of the producers to take off in her car—finally, a smart person in a horror show! Too bad she was murdered by the Piggy Man as she was driving away. R.I.P. smart lady.

Things kicked up a notch when the Millers and Roanoke cast showed up. Everyone was accounted for, including real Lee (Adina Porter), who agreed to do the show to prove that she didn’t murder her husband. She blamed the public’s assumption on Shelby’s rash decision to lead the cops to her door Meanwhile Monet, the actress that played Lee, blamed her real life counter part for becoming an alcoholic. As Lee later pointed out to her, they’re more alike than they thought.

The question of whether Lee actually murdered her estranged husband was a big topic of discussion during last night’s episode. It’s part of the reason Sid brought everyone back under the same roof. As a result, everyone is wary of the real Lee. After Lee had a blowout with Shelby (regarding Shelby’s unfaithfulness), Monet, Audrey, and Rory sat around in the kitchen talking about how they think the Millers’ story isn’t true, and that nothing happened to them when they stayed at the house during filming.

Then an even bigger twist came. Following the deaths of the crew members, a batch of text hit the screen to reveal that over the course of the next few days, all of the characters died of unexplained causes except for one. We don’t know who that one is at the moment, but we do know that it won’t be Rory.

In the last few minutes of the episode, things went to hell. After a steamy hot tub scene with Rory, Audrey was almost attacked by the pig man in the bathroom. When she told Rory about it, he went upstairs to check it out. Just when he thought the Piggy Man’s appearance was a hoax cooked up by Sid, the ghosts of the malevolent nurses showed up and murdered him.

As Matt was examining the famous “MURDE” wall downstairs, he realized that the word was finally complete. “R” is for Rory! Now that the nurse’s task is complete, what will happen next? Who will be the one character left alive? Why does Ryan Murphy keep killing Evan Peters off this season? Leave your thoughts below, join the conversation on Facebook, or start one with me on Twitter: @Samantha_Sofka!

Images: FX

Crazy Person Coyote Peterson Gets the 2nd Worst Sting on the Planet

Adventurer and wildlife enthusiast Coyote Peterson is on a quest to endure the worst insect stings on the planet. Before he gets to the most painful sting though — the bullet ant — Peterson has to brave the penultimate poisoner in the video above.

The tarantula hawk wasp is a beautiful, giant wasp that turns tarantulas into zombies for their young to burrow into and eventually emerge from. Their reproduction alone is terrifying, but the wasps, which can grow to the size of your hand, are infamous for their incredible sting. Entomologist Justin Schmidt of the University of Arizona describes the sting of the wasps as “blinding, fierce, and shockingly electric.” The pain is reportedly second only to the appropriately named bullet ant, whose sting literally feels like getting shot.

When Peterson forces the wasp to sting him, you can see that “fierce” pain immediately take hold. His forearm is paralyzed while waves of brilliantly hot pain crash across the rest of his body. The feeling is intense, but fleeting. In just five minutes, Peterson is ready to finish the video, with only a swollen arm as evidence to what he went through.

I can’t say I agree with Peterson’s videos. I believe forcing animals, like hawk wasps or snapping turtles, to sting or bite you just for YouTube views is exploitative and unnecessarily stressful for the animals. However, I can’t look away. Sting or bite pain is something we are only told about, so to see someone experience the worst the animal kingdom has to offer is at least informative.

Tarantula hawk wasps are nectarvorious, meaning that they are usually buzzing about flowers looking for nectar, not a fight. The insect are actually quite docile, and if you don’t grab them and shove them against your arm, you shouldn’t be worried encountering one in the wild. Unless you’re a tarantula. Or Coyote Peterson.

IN A VALLEY OF VIOLENCE is a Classic Western Full of Delightfully Stupid People (Review)

Low-budget filmmaker Ti West won me over with two very understated and atmospheric horror films (House of the Devil and The Innkeepers) and then lost me again with The Sacrament and those portmanteau films ABCs of Death and V/H/S to which he contributed. But I have remained firm in my opinion that he has the ability to give a fresh take on very familiar filmic territory. For his latest film, In a Valley of Violence, he turns his attentions to the well-tread territory of the western, pulling elements of Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci… but with way dumber characters.

The opening credits of In a Valley of Violence purposely recalls the splashy red-and-white pop art credits of Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, but aside from that and score by Jeff Grace, very little about the movie has the same dialogue-free punchiness of any of the Dollars Trilogy. Half of the movie feels very somber and tense while much of the rest feels like broad, almost anachronistic comedy, wherein pretty much every character aside from Ethan Hawke‘s drifting former soldier is some degree of moron, often veering into parody. But that’s almost the weird charm of everything.

Hawke plays a man who is trying to make his way to Mexico to fulfill a promise to his wife. His only companions are an incredibly smart and obedient dog named Abby and an immeasurably patient horse. After deciding to make a stop at the town of Denton, a near-deserted stretch of prairie on the way through a valley to the border, Hawke is harassed by a gang of ruffians, led by the 1800s frat-boy-esque Gilly (James Ransone). Hawke beats him in a fair fight which draws the admiration of local hotelier Mary Ann (Taissa Farmiga), the outrage of her sister Ellen (Karen Gillan), who is Gilly’s pampered fiance, and the unwanted attention of the Marshal (John Travolta). Gilly’s the Marshal’s deputy and also his son, so naturally he can’t let even a fairly-won fight go totally unnoticed.

The set-up for the film could not be more by the book and the eventual drive for Hawke’s character to seek and obtain revenge is equally highly pedestrian, but what sets the movie apart is the way Hawke portrays the gunman. He’s tough as nails and can be quite ruthless, but there’s a pathos to him that we don’t see very often in this genre. He can’t speak to people very well, but he talks to the dog quite a bit and pours his heart out to her, likely because she can’t respond and/or judge. He blames himself for his lot in life and would just as soon run away from any further problems. He only gets into scrapes when his animals are threatened, and he even gives the aggressors many, many opportunities to turn back, no harm done. I also really appreciated that he’s not a superhuman gunman; he makes mistakes and really only fires a couple of bullets at anybody. He’s not Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson, unloading a six-shooter into a cadre of thugs in record time. He’s sloppy, but gets the job done.

Aside from Hawke, whom I think does a particularly great job (and he continues his streak as Blumhouse’s solid go-to star), Travolta turns in one of his best performances in a long time, as the aging yet clearly dangerous Marshal, who equally doesn’t want a fight and is smart enough to realize Hawke isn’t someone to mess with. The Marshal just has the bad luck of having such a stupid hothead for a son. Speaking of, Ransone (whom you probably know as Ziggy from the second season of The Wire) gives a performance that feels like it doesn’t even belong in this movie. It’s in him and Gillan that we get most of the broader comedy. I applaud West’s desire to have such drastic style differences, but you definitely need to buy in to the whole thing to fully enjoy it.

Overall, West does a great job with In a Valley of Violence and he manages to make it look as good as he can with the budgetary limitations. His script doesn’t always work, but it definitely has more enjoyable bits than duff ones. If you enjoy westerns, and enjoy new riffs on the time-tested genre, it’s a good, weird time.

3 out of 5 Burritos

Schlock & Awe: THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES

Welcome to week three of Schlock & Awe‘s Hammer Horror-centric month, which I’m affectionately calling “Hammer Schlocktober.” If you’d like to catch up on previous entries, read my reviews of Frankenstein Created Woman and The Curse of the Werewolf right there where the hyperlink tags are.

This week, we’re going to right smack in the heyday of Hammer Horror, 1965, during a particularly fruitful period which saw Hammer partner with a new overseas distributor — 20th Century Fox — after several successful years trading off between Warner Bros and Universal. As a way to show off for their new partners, Hammer made four films in rapid succession to be released on two double bills. The A-pictures would use the same sets and cast members, as would the B-pictures, the former starring Christopher Lee and directed by Terence Fisher, and the latter being shot and set in the Cornish countryside and directed by John Gilling. In many ways much more interesting and ambitious, the first of Gilling’s B-side films ended up being one of the studio’s very best: The Plague of the Zombies.

The Plague of the Zombies represents the one and only time Hammer attempted the zombie subgenre and, releasing a full two years prior to George A. Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead, represents one of the last and best of the voodoo zombie cycle, though the zombies in this movie are indeed the living dead. Gilling had been working with Hammer since the ’30s, but he had proved difficult to work with and hard on actors. After leaving and directing an effective horror film called The Flesh and the Fiends, Gilling was re-hired at Hammer and directed the smashing pirate adventure, The Pirates of Blood River, before getting the chance to direct both Plague and The Reptile, the pair known as “The Cornish Double.”

John Bryan wrote The Plague of the Zombies, who had previously pitched a version of the Haitian zombie horror when Hammer was still working with Universal. His previous work for Hammer consisted of two truly phenomenal films, The Hound of the Baskervilles, which had Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes, Andre Morell as Dr. Watson, and Christopher Lee as Sir Henry Baskerville; and The Brides of Dracula which saw Cushing’s Van Helsing as a roving vampire hunter. While his later scripts for Hammer and beyond left much to be desired, Bryan’s first three Hammer scripts create a glorious triptych of smart mysteries with a horror edge.

The film takes place in and around a Cornish village during Victorian times. At the beginning, we see a strange voodoo priest with an ornate mask perform a ritual on a doll, cutting between that and the target of the curse, Alice (Jacqueline Pearce), the attractive wife of the town’s London-educated physician, Dr. Peter Tompson (Brook Williams). She’s afflicted by something, and gets visibly sicker as the film continues. Elsewhere, Sir James Forbes (Morell) and his daughter Sylvia (Diane Clare) make their way to the village in a carriage. Sir James was Dr. Tompson’s professor at medical school and the younger man has asked for help with a strange illness killing young men in the village. On the way, Sylvia lies to a group of fox hunters about where the fox had gone, which draws the ire of the men once she and her father reach their destination.

Dr. Tompson is baffled; young, seemingly healthy men are dying and nobody knows why. It’s made even more infuriating because the villagers — a very God-fearing, blue-collar sort — refuse to allow an autopsy on anyone. The village is under the control of Squire Clive Hamilton (John Carson), an aristocrat who acts as coroner, mayor, judge, and jury all in one. Hamilton, meanwhile, has seen Sylvia and has the fox hunters — who are all his cronies — round her up. They toy with her and it gets very close to something like a gang rape, but Hamilton intervenes. He likes the girl.

The brother of the most recent dead man comes to Sir James and Dr. Tompson and swears that he’d seen his brother up walking around, which is impossible, right? Sylvia, too, sees the man up, looking frightful, and carrying a now-dead Alice. Sir James reads up on voodoo and black magic which gives him an inkling there’s a voodoo priest somewhere in the village, which would also explain why all of the recently-buried men’s graves are now empty and filled back in. Zombies, friends. Zombies are everywhere, and the next one might be Sylvia.

I really adore this movie, for a number of reasons. First and foremost is the awesome and macabre makeup on the zombies, which looks at once like decaying old wood and ancient stones. This is one of the few voodoo zombie flicks where there is actual death and resurrection, but through black magic and ceremony, as opposed to just living people becoming cursed. The second big reason is the fantastic central performance by Andre Morell as Sir James. Hammer became famous for having these stalwart older gentleman characters as their heroes — often being much more capable and intelligent than the strapping younger leading man — and they’d usually cast a well-respected character actor in the role. When Peter Cushing or later Andrew Keir weren’t available, they got Morell, who only ever did a couple of Hammer films but is just terrific in the lead role.

The movie also contains some of the most harrowing and well-directed horror and violence of the age. Gilling offers a masterfully shocking moment when Sylvia sees the lead zombie toss the dead body of Alice down the hill by the mill. It has a hideous, wincing smile on its face and lets out a shriek. Later, when Alice is brought back as a zombie, Sir James has to kill her by decapitating her with a shovel, which causes Dr. Tompson to faint and have a truly horrifying dream in which he is slowly beset by zombies as they rise from their graves. There are gorgeous shots of them coming out of the ground and creeping up behind tombstones. The fact that the whole of the movie’s night time scenes were shot day-for-night (and not particularly convincingly) actually adds a strange air of otherworldliness, like the whole village has been cursed to forever twilight as the zombies rise to do their master’s bidding.

The Plague of the Zombies is easily one of the best non-franchise Hammer horror films and one that doesn’t get nearly as much play as it should. It can be said that the first pair of double bills that Hammer made in this period did markedly better than the second. Gilling’s The Reptile (about a girl played by Jacqueline Pearce who turns into like a were-snake) is quite good, though, and played second to Rasputin: The Mad Monk which had Christopher Lee as the titular character. However, neither quite holds a candle to Plague and its A-picture, Lee’s return to his most famous role, Dracula: Prince of Darkness. We will look at this entry in the long-running Dracula series next week!

Images: Hammer Films/Studio Canal

Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He writes the weekly look at weird or obscure films in Schlock & Awe. Follow him on Twitter!