When I got the Sam Katzman: Icons of Horror DVD set for Christmas one year, I was mainly interested in it because it had The Werewolf, which I wanted to revisit after having only seen it once some time before, and The Giant Claw, which I knew of but had never seen; I knew absolutely nothing of the other two movies in the set, which were Creature with the Atom Brain and this film. Amazingly, it was never mentioned in the VHS documentary, The History of Sci-Fi and Horror, which had a whole section devoted to movies about the living dead (it also focused on movies featuring ghosts, mummies, and such), and I'd never heard of it anywhere else. You'd think, since it's a pre-Night of the Living Dead zombie movie, which is a rather scattered section of the genre's history anyway, and also because it seems to have inspired some of the elements that George Romero's film made popular, it would get talked about more than it does. But no, to this day, it's a rather obscure movie, and truth be told, it's not at all an underrated gem that deserves more attention, regardless of whatever historical significance it may have. If you remember back when I reviewed The Werewolf and It! The Terror from Beyond Space, I described Zombies of Mora Tau as being "absolutely awful" and that it "absolutely sucked." Those feelings came from my memories of being bored to death the second time I watched it, as I remembered about my first time (watching it again for this was only the third time I'd ever put it on). I was ready to make this an entry of Movies That Suck but, upon re-watching it, I decided it was more mediocre than horrendous. It's one of those movies that isn't bad enough to get angry about and also doesn't have any cheese factor for it to fall into the "so bad, it's good" category: it's there, and not something that will leave much of, if any, impression.
Jan Peters has come to visit her great grandmother at her house on the African continent, but on the way to the house, the driver, Sam, who is her grandmother's servant, runs right over a man who appears in the road and doesn't stop at all. Jan's horror prompts Sam to tell her that what they hit wasn't a man but, rather, "one of them." Arriving at the house, Jan tries to tell Mrs. Peters about it but, like Sam, she acts as if it were nothing at all and Jan realizes that her grandmother still believes in the superstitious legends of the area. Meanwhile, a salvage ship arrives, carrying a team consisting of financial backer George Harrison, his wife Mona, Dr. Jonathan Eggert, and a diver, Jeff Clark. Their interest is some diamonds contained in a sunken shipwreck in the area. The diamonds were discovered by the ship's crew in 1894 when it came in for some trading. They were stolen from a temple and a fight among the crew left ten of them dead, though the others were eventually killed themselves and the ship scuttled in the bay. Just as the salvage team is about to take a launch to shore, a deckhand is pulled off the boat by a man in the water and when his body is recovered, they find that his neck has been broken. Upon arriving and meeting up with Mrs. Peters and Jan, the group is shown the graves of five previous salvage parties, with a sixth already dug for them. Mrs. Peters believes that the crew of the sunken ship, the captain of which was her own husband, still roam the area and guard the diamonds, having become the living dead as a result of the curse. She stays herself because she hopes to some day help her husband find peace. During the time they spend there while preparing for the salvage, the crew members have their individual run-ins with the zombies and there is dissension among them, particularly between Jeff and Harrison over the deal they made concerning the cut of the diamonds, while Mona starts to believe that Jan and her grandmother are behind everything that's going on. Between the threat of the zombies, Harrison's refusing to leave without the diamonds, and Mrs. Peters' plan to destroy them because she believes it will lift the curse on her husband, it isn't long before things start falling apart.
Zombies of Mora Tau is a painful example of a movie that's so bland, with nothing about it being notably good, bad, or cheesy, that it's hard to talk about. One thing I can say is that it absolutely wreaks of the low budget it was saddled with, the story taking place in all of five locations within close proximity: Mrs. Peters' large house, the countryside surrounding it, the mausoleum and the small cemetery adjoining it), the salvage ship, and the area where the sunken ship is located. The house is a fine enough location and the art direction is passable but there's nothing that special about it (the nearby graveyard where the members of past salvage operations are buried is a nice, morbid touch, though), nor is there with the deck and main cabin of the ship and the mausoleum, the inside of which is a bland, barren room with a bunch of sarcophagi for the zombies and a small, wooden bench in the center. And while, since we're in Africa, the surrounding countryside is made up of jungle, those scenes are often set at night and photographed so darkly that it doesn't make much of any difference. That's a big issue with this movie: the cinematography. While, on a good print, like the one on the DVD, it looks well-enough in scenes that are nicely lit, the black-and-white coming off as very crisp, those nighttime exterior scenes and the underwater ones where they're trying to get at the diamonds are so murky that it can be hard to see what's going on. Obviously, you'd want a black-and-white zombie movie to be set at night as much as possible in order to make them look creepier, but in this instance, it's more of a hindrance than anything else. However, I will say that I'm not entirely how they pulled off the underwater scenes, where you see both the divers in their suits and airlines and the totally unsuited zombies in the same shots. I thought maybe they'd shot those scenes dry-for-wet, where you just simulate the feeling of being underwater with filters and slow movement, but you can often see the bubbles coming out of the divers' helmets, making me wonder if they did do some actual underwater photography and then maybe matted the zombies in (there are some shots that do appear to have some matte effects). I wouldn't have thought they'd had the budget for that but, you never know.
The zombies themselves are nothing to write home about at all, as there's nothing particularly interesting or creepy about them. They're just slow-moving, shambling dead guys, who do nothing but stalk around and attack anyone who threatens their treasure (interestingly, they pay Mrs. Peters no mind, appearing to understand that she doesn't want the diamonds). Like in the old Universal Mummy movies, they're so slow that you wonder how they could pose that much of a threat, which is probably why the filmmakers made sure that the scenes where the characters are confronted with them occur in confined, claustrophobic settings or down on the ocean floor, where they're hindered by the water and the weight of their diving suits. Even then, when you see the actors really trying to sell what a menace they are while struggling with them, in spite of their slowness and supposed supernatural strength, it doesn't work in creating any excitement or tension. The zombies are not creepy-looking, either: they look just like ordinary people who seem out of it, and there are no makeups used to make them come off more like living corpses. Mrs. Peters talks about how dead they look in the eye but it's more akin to people who are in a trance. The nature of the curse that made them what they are is never expounded upon, though it does seem to have something to do with the diamonds, since the skirmish over them is what led to the crew members getting killed and then returning for the dead to forever guard the diamonds. But, while the notion of them following you wherever you go as long as you have the diamonds is a bit unsettling, everything about their curse is so generic and treated with such indifference in the story that it's impossible to become all that interested in it. (The same is also true for whatever "Mora Tau" is, as that name is never said in the movie itself and you don't know if it's the area where the story is set or what.) The zombies are kind of vampire-like in how they appear to rest in the sarcophagi in the mausoleum and they're also repelled by fire, like the Frankenstein monster. And as proved by Mona, it's possible for other people to become undead as well. Again, how that happens remains ambiguous, as you never see what the zombies did to Mona, but early on, Mrs. Peters tells Dr. Eggert, "Bodies around here must be buried quickly," suggesting that anyone who dies in the area must be laid to rest as soon as possible to prevent it from happening.
As I said, zombies or not, there's no excitement or suspense in this movie at all, as the sequences featuring the zombies are all ho-hum. The first time you see one of the zombies is less than two minutes in, when one appears on the road in front of Sam when he's driving Jan to her grandmother's house, but the first significant scene involving them occurs just as the salvage party is about to take the launch from their ship to the shore. A deckhand, Johnson, hears what sounds like someone swimming around near the launch and when he looks over the side, a zombie reaches up out of the water, grabs him, and pulls him down in. He's able to yell for help and, seeing this from the deck, Harrison takes some shots at the zombie before Jeff stops him due to his drunkenness. Harrison insists he hit Johnson's attacker but, when they reach the launch, Jeff spots the zombie swimming away and thinks it's more likely that Harrison hit Johnson himself. They pull him up out of the water and find that he's dead from a broken neck. There's a brief moment after this where, as Mrs. Peters stands by the water's edge with her dog, a zombie emerges from the jungle. The dog runs off in a panic but the zombie simply passes by Mrs. Peters, paying her no mind at all, and walks into the water. The crew then arrives and tells her of what happened to Johnson, which Mrs. Peters had already figured out, having heard voices and gunshots from where she was standing. She informs Harrison that the police are miles away and suggests they bury Johnson. She shows them the graves of all those who tried so salvage the diamonds before, then reveals some recently dug, empty graves, the first of which is for Johnson, while the others are likely to be filled by the others. Mona ends up falling into one of the empty graves and panics, with Jeff and Harrison having to help her out. She faints and they take her up to the house. Later, while Mrs. Peters is talking with Dr. Eggert about the zombies and how she wants to help her undead husband find his eternal rest, their conversation is interrupted by some screams upstairs; both Mona and Jan are cornered in a bedroom by a zombie. Jeff and Harrison rush in, Jeff grabbing the zombie from behind but soon finding that he can't move him, no matter how hard he tries. He then punches him in the face and the gut but the zombie doesn't react at all, and when Jeff grabs his shoulders, he's lifted up and thrown against the patio doors. The zombie turns his attention back to the girls, Harrison raising his gun, but before he can shoot, Mrs. Peters comes in with a torch and uses it to back the zombie out of the doors, proclaiming that fire is the only effective way of fighting them. Mona wants to get out but Harrison makes it clear right then that he's not leaving without getting the diamonds.
After their talk about why he wants his cut of the diamonds' worth, Jan tells Jeff about her and Sam hitting one of the zombies on the road and they decide to drive out to the spot to see if they did kill him, Jeff taking some flares and gun with him. Finding the spot, they come across some spots of water, pieces of the car's headlamp, and some seaweed. A little further up the road, they find footprints and Jeff figures the lamp pieces and seaweed marked the spot where the zombie was thrown upon being hit. They go back and search around that spot, unaware that a zombie that had been watching them this whole time is now following them. They quickly find some more footprints, which Jeff plans to follow the next day with the others, and runs to the car to get something to use to mark the spot. The zombie then comes out of the jungle, scoops Jan up, and carries her off, holding her across his shoulder. Hearing her scream, Jeff runs back to the spot and, following the zombie's trail, tries to catch up with him, only to become lost in the dark. As he looks around, the zombie, who knows he's been followed, sneaks up behind Jeff and tries to smack him to the ground. Jeff backs up against and manages to duck out of the way when the zombie reaches for him. He stabs him in the chest from behind but the zombie doesn't react at all and turns around, the knife sticking out of his chest, and again corners Jeff. He grabs him by the throat, lifts him up, and smacks the back of his head against the trunk, knocking him unconscious. The zombie heads on into the jungle, Jan coming to and screaming and struggling in his grasp, while Jeff also comes to and, grabbing his dropped flare gun, follows them. The zombie carries Jan to a mausoleum past a small graveyard in the jungle, Jeff stumbling after him, and inside, she's placed on a wooden bench in the center of some sarcophagi. More zombies rise up from the coffins, the sight of which causes Jan to pass out again and roll off of the bench. Finding his way to the mausoleum, Jeff forces the door open and, finding the zombie-filled room, yells for Jan to get away while he holds them back with flares. He shoots a flare and the bright light stops the zombies in their tracks, giving Jeff the opportunity to get Jan off the floor and help her out the door. The zombies follow after them but Jeff fires another flare, which gives him and Jan enough time to escape the jungle.
Next comes the first attempt to retrieve the diamonds. Putting on his old-fashioned diving suit, Jeff is helped overboard and lowered down into the depths of the bay. On the way down, he comments that the helmet has a small leak in it but decides to press on, eventually reaching the bottom and finding the shipwreck. He trudges towards the hold, unaware that a zombie is following after him, walking along the ocean floor like him. Jeff believes he can walk right into the hold and goes for it, the zombie slowly approaching him, while up on the deck, Harrison is putting on his own diving suit, not wanting to give Jeff a chance to make off with the diamonds. Jeff finds the safe, but before he can approach it, the zombie grabs him from behind and pulls him back. Jeff tells them to hoist him up, as he struggles with the zombie, his airline snapping loose. The others try to get him up, Harrison preparing to go down after him, when Jeff breaks the surface, punching off the zombie, which rode up with him. The zombie swims away and Jeff is helped onboard the ship and removed from his suit. (This whole scene was really dull, due to the sluggish movements of both the man in the diving suit, be it actually Gregg Palmer or a stand-in, and the actor playing the zombie, as well as the less than stellar cinematography. And that punch? Pathetic.) They manage to get him back to the shore and to the house, where Mrs. Peters tells them she does the doctoring, as the nearest actual one is five hours away. She gives him something to stimulate his breathing, which has fallen to almost nothing, although Jan has to sip some of it herself in order to allay their suspicions that Mrs. Peters may be trying to kill Jeff. They leave him to rest, with Jan keeping an eye on him.
Following the violent argument between Mona and Harrison, Mona runs out of the house, though Harrison feels she'll have to come back. But, come nightfall, she hasn't returned, and the men decide to form a posse to search for her, deciding to check out the small graveyard and the mausoleum, despite Mrs. Peters' warnings that it's too late for Mona and they'll only fall prey to the zombies themselves. With the help of Art and Johnny, a couple of crew members, Jeff, Harrison, and Dr. Eggert drive out to the spot in the road and then make their way through the jungle to the mausoleum. In the graveyard, Harrison finds Mona's bracelet on the ground, and when they reach the mausoleum, Jeff has the crewmen stay outside, telling them to use flares on any zombies that show up. The others go into the mausoleum, Eggert setting a can of gasoline right outside the door, and inside they find Mona on the floor in the middle of the room, seemingly dead. The zombies rise from their coffins and Jeff has Eggert go back outside and spread gasoline on both sides of the door. Jeff then fires a flare from the bearing pistol, lighting up the room and prompting the zombies to move back. Harrison goes to get Mona, while Jeff keeps the zombies at bay, but finds that she does seem to be dead. While Eggert pours the gas outside, Harrison fires on the zombies so he can have a chance to get Mona's body out. Suddenly, Mona sits up and Harrison gets her to her feet and pulls her outside, Jeff staying behind to cover them and then running when he hears they're clear. The zombies slowly follow them outside but Jeff ignites the gasoline on the ground with a flare, giving them the opportunity to escape with Mona.
They get Mona back to the house but, when she gets out of the car, Jan and everyone else sees the vacant look in her eyes, with Jan feeling that she's cold to the touch. Inside, Mrs. Peters declares her dead and refuses to let them keep her in the house but Harrison isn't having it, as he's not going to move her to the ship. Jan helps him get Mona to bed, while her grandmother allows Art and Johnny to stay as well, saying they may need the added protection. Later, with Mona doing nothing but lying in bed, staring at nothing, Harrison leaves her and goes over to talk to Jeff. While he's gone, Mona rises up and takes the knife that Harrison left on the nightstand, engaging the blade. She walks out of the room and down the hall, towards the room where Art and Johnny are sleeping. Entering the room, she stands over the bed and stabs Art, killing him. Johnny manages to jump up and yells for help, as she advances on him. He grabs a nearby candelabra and throws it at her, hitting her square in the forehead, but she doesn't react at all. Harrison and Jeff rush in, the former trying to stop Mona while Jeff checks on Art. Mona instantly turns on Harrison, him trying to hold her arm back while she attempts to stab him, and Jeff has to help to keep Harrison from getting stabbed. Jan and her grandmother rush in with another candelabra, the old woman telling them to light as many as they can. She uses the light candles to subdue Mona, telling Jan to tell Sam to get all of the big candles he can. They drive her all the way back to her room and fill it with lit candles, making especially sure to surround the bed with them in order to keep her in it. This gives Jeff an idea about how to get at the diamonds.
The next day, Jeff and Harrison have a bonfire built outside of the mausoleum to keep the zombies contained inside, while the two of them suit up and head down to the shipwreck to burn through the safe with an acetylene torch. When they reach the bottom and prepare to work on the safe, another group of zombies approaches them on the ocean floor. Jeff finds it easy to burn through the safe's hinges, while Harrison stands guard with another torch nearby. It isn't long before he spots the zombies and tries to hold them off, as Jeff cuts through the safe's second hinge. However, two zombies grab him on either side, just as Jeff gets through the safe and grabs the small chest holding the diamonds. He tells Harrison he needs ten seconds to get out but Harrison can't deal with the zombies anymore and signals to be brought up. On the deck, Dr. Eggert has the diver stage sent down for Harrison, while Jeff is now surrounded by zombies, trying to hold them back with the torch. He tells Eggert that, as soon as he knows his line is clear, he'll give him the word to pull him up. Harrison breaks the surface, with zombies all over him, and Jeff tells Eggert to use the flare gun to drive them off. This makes the zombies drop off and he's hoisted up onto the deck, while Jeff is now struggling with those attacking him. He tells the men to send the diver's stage down, as Harrison is helped out of his suit and into the main cabin, injured from his fight. Jeff then surfaces on the stage, a couple of zombies hanging onto him, and they again use flares to startle them into letting go. He gets on the deck and, as he's helped out of the suit, he learns that Harrison lost a lot of blood from his fight. Moreover, they're running out of flares and the zombies are climbing aboard the ship. Jeff has the crew get torches and kerosene, while Eggert is sent into the cabin with the chest and locks himself in. Their torches lit, the crew tries to fend the zombies off, Jeff running down below and swiping at a group there, while a crewman manages to make another fall off the side. However, they're unable to prevent any at all from getting aboard and they get surrounded from both sides. The captain throws a torch at three advancing on him, as Jeff runs back on the deck. Seeing the torch and knowing he has to get it before it lights the ship on fire, he has a man cover him with a flare gun as he runs for the torch and picks it up. There's a moment where Johnny nearly gets grabbed from behind and, in a panic, he throws his rifle at the zombie and jumps overboard. Another man follows suit, until Jeff is left alone, his torches completely out and he runs for the door to the cabin, banging on it and yelling for Eggert to let him in.
Eggert lets Jeff in, and they're joined by the captain, who was apparently hiding this whole time! The zombies start pounding on the cabin's walls and Jeff tries to build a makeshift torch. The captain yells for them to just give the zombies the diamonds but Harrison pulls a gun to make it clear that's not happening. He insists they'll just fight their way out and that he can manage, but it's clear he can't run at all on his injured leg. Jeff then proposes he make a break for it with the chest and lure the zombies away but Harrison isn't having that either, as he thinks Jeff is trying to make off with the diamonds. The zombies start smashing through the windows (one of them makes a goofy face after doing so) and Jeff tosses the chest at Harrison, distracting him long enough to punch him out. Grabbing the chest and lighting his torch, Jeff runs outside and the zombies immediately converge on him. He runs down to the launch and, after knocking off one zombie that manages to climb onto the boat, heads for shore, the others in pursuit. On the deck, Harrison actually tries to shoot Jeff but Eggert stops him, trying to tell him that he's helping them by heading to shore with the diamonds; Harrison, however, says, "I know him better than you," and orders the captain to break out the dinghy. Jeff, meanwhile, reaches the shore, where he meets Jan, and the two of them run to the house. They stop by Mona's room, where she's still subdued by the candles, and Jeff calls to her. Seeing the chest, Mona gets up and tries to approach but she's still too afraid of the candles to get any closer and sits back down on the bed. Jeff and Jan run to Mrs. Peters' room, telling her that the zombies are coming for the chest. He says they should get out and meet up with Harrison at Dakar, as he struggles to get the chest open, finally smashing it on the desk.
Harrison and the others reach the shore in the dinghy and he tells them to get the launch ready, while he and Eggert head to the house. The zombies then emerge from the water and come ashore (kind of similar to that scene in Land of the Dead), ignoring the men at the boat and heading for the house. Harrison and Eggert, meanwhile, head to Mrs. Peters' room, where Harrison holds them all at gunpoint and demands they give him the chest, threatening to shoot Jeff if he tries anything. He declares that he's taking Mona and the diamonds away, that he's wrote up a new deal. Jeff has Jan give him the chest and Harrison leaves, threatening to shoot anybody who follows; little does he know that Jeff took the diamonds out of the chest. He goes to Mona's room, blows out some candles, and uses the chest to lure out of the room. She follows him to the launch and he tries to untie the rope, when he sees more zombies approaching. That's when Mona picks the chest up and, when Harrison tries to stop her, she smashes him over the head with it, killing him. She joins the other zombies as they head back into the jungle, while Jeff and Eggert learn what happened when they rush outside. Later, Jeff tries to get Jan and her grandmother to come with him, asking Jan to marry him on top of it, but Mrs. Peters won't leave, telling Jeff that the only way to stop the zombies is to dispose of the diamonds where no one will ever be able to find them again. Saying that he couldn't throw them away if he wanted to, Jeff forces the two of them to come with him and they head out to the launch. They're about to leave, when the zombies return, having discovered that the chest is empty. Among them is Captain Peters, the sight of whom moves Mrs. Peters to tears, as she asks him if he must continue walking the Earth for all eternity. Seeing this, Jeff gives her the diamonds, telling her to do what she likes with them. She tearfully casts them into the water (how will that keep anybody from finding them again?) and turns to her undead husband, whose body disappears, leaving only his uniform behind. The movie ends with Jeff and Jan kissing after he comments that he'll probably never be rich again.
I've said it before but I'll say it again: music is such a vital component for my enjoyment of any visual media that I can actually watch and be entertained by a pretty bad movie if it at least has a good score. Unfortunately, that's not the case here; just like everything else, Mischa Bakaleinikoff's music for Zombies of Mora Tau doesn't stand out at all from the myriad of other bland horror and monster movie scores being done at that time. Bakaleinikoff worked on literally hundreds of movies and short subjects during his lifetime and while a good chunk of them aren't exactly classics, he did manage to come up with some memorable pieces of music but there's nothing noteworthy about this score at all, just like the movie itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment