Ten Days of Terror!: The Plague of the Zombies

Films: The Plague of the Zombies
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

There’s something rather charming about Hammer horror films. They tended to go for that Gothic feel, meaning that the horror is much more along those classic lines and probably isn’t going to be really scary. It’s all about that Victorian feel, putting a damsel or two in distress, killing off a few people, and eventually getting rid of the monster or monsters by the end. What makes The Plague of the Zombies particularly interesting to me is that this was released a couple of years before Night of the Living Dead. That means that this may well be the last movie made before “zombie” became synonymous with flesh-eating ghouls.

What that means is that with The Plague of the Zombies we’re going to get actors playing 19th century dress-up, “scares” that aren’t that scary, and emphasis on story, which makes it kind of refreshing. That the story is kind of nonsensical is kind of beside the point here—it really is focused much more on the story than on anything like gore. Once again, it strikes me just how different this movie is from Night of the Living Dead despite a mere two-year difference.

Wednesday Horror: The Reptile

Films: The Reptile
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

When you talk about classic horror movies, you have to spend at least a little bit of time talking about Hammer films. Hammer horror films are kind of what made horror films stay around for a few decades. They were fun, had a touch of class to them, and some of them were genuinely good. There was a sense of wanting to keep the gothic feel of the classic horror movies, but also move them a little bit more into the modern world. Hammer remade all of the classics, of course, but also created their own monsters and scares, as they did with The Reptile. Instead of banking on the name recognition of the monster, this film tries to blaze a new path by giving us a creature that certainly has ties to the classics but is different in significant ways.

As fitting with the ties to the gothic, The Reptile takes place at the turn of the previous century. We see a man exploring an old house when he is suddenly attacked. He runs from the house and dies, the skin on his face turned black and a white foam coming out of his mouth. Nice way to set the scene, huh? Anyway, flash forward a day or two and we’re sitting with the dead man’s brother, Harry Spalding (Ray Barrett) and his new wife Valerie (Jennifer Daniel), who have learned that Harry’s brother has willed them his little cabin. They are warned off staying there, but since they are newly married, they decide that it’s as good a place as any to start their life together, and off they go.