Zombie Flicks/Hammer Time: The Plague of the Zombies (1966)

I can still vividly remember how much the images from this film that were featured in the History of Sci-Fi and Horror documentary freaked me out, particularly one close-up of a zombie staring off-screen, with steam rising up behind him (that shot wasn't even featured in the documentary's section on "Zombies: The Walking Dead"; it was just thrown in randomly after Butch Patrick mentioned that this particular subgenre was his personal favorite, leaving me totally unprepared for it). It also showed a clip where a guy was cornered by zombies rising from their graves, with one creeping up behind him and grabbing him, which also left quite an impression on my 14-year old mind. However, that was virtually all I ever saw of the movie until I was able to watch the whole thing, which wasn't until the summer of 2019, when I bought a copy of Scream Factory's Blu-Ray release at the G-Fest convention in Chicago. This is a Hammer film I don't hear talked about all that much (in fact, I don't remember that documentary even mentioning it being one of their productions, which led to me not knowing that until I looked it up myself), and yet, not only was it quite profitable for them, it was also the studio's only zombie film, putting it in a niche akin to The Curse of the Werewolf, which you would expect would help it to stand out from the bunch. Moreover, it's a pre-Night of the Living Dead zombie film, which there aren't that many notable examples of, and one that proved to be fairly influential in its own right, including for Romero himself, so it shouldn't be quite so obscure. In any case, it's a very well-done film, with lots of laudable aspects such as good production values, chilling makeup designs for the zombies, some very striking scenes and images, a memorable music score, and an exciting climax, although I think it does suffer a bit from a few characters who could have been more interesting.

England, 1860. Renowned scientist and physician Sir James Forbes of the London University is on holiday, when he receives a letter from a former pupil of his, Dr. Peter Tompson, who's now the doctor at a small village in Cornwall. The letter speaks of a number of deaths in the village that are the result of a bizarre illness Tompson can't identify and he asks Forbes for his assistance. Forbes travels to Cornwall with his daughter, Sylvia, and on the way, they encounter a reckless group of young men, the Young Bloods, who, after having been out fox-hunting, enter the village and disrupt a funeral procession in a truly abominable fashion. Arriving at the Tompson household, Forbes and Sylvia are met by his wife, Alice, a former school-friend of Sylvia's, who looks rather sickly and has a bandaged cut on her arm that she's reluctant to have anyone examine. Forbes goes out and finds Tompson drinking at the local inn, where he's being accused of not doing his job by the townspeople, including Tom Martinus, the brother of the most recent victim of the strange illness. That night, after dinner, Forbes talks with Tompson about the symptoms of the malady and learns that he hasn't been allowed to perform any autopsies, as well as that the one authority figure in the village is a young squire, Clive Hamilton. Determined to get to the truth, Forbes talks Tompson into going out to the village graveyard that night to dig up the recently deceased young man in order to examine his body, only to be found out by the local police. Initially, they intend to charge them with grave robbery, but they're taken aback when Forbes opens the coffin to reveal that the body is already gone. At the same time, Sylvia sees Alice wander off into the night and follows her, only to be attacked by the Young Bloods and spirited away to a large estate, where she's harassed and bullied until Squire Hamilton comes to her aid. Despite her fear and frustration over the incident, he convinces her not to go to the authorities about it and heads back to the village on foot, only to pass by an old tin mine, where she witnesses a monstrous man throw Alice's body to the ground. Staggering back to the village, she tells her father of what happened, who's forced to inform Tompson, and when the three of them head back to the area with Sergeant Jack Swift, they find Martinus drunkenly sleeping near Alice's body on the moors. Though charged with her murder, Martinus swears he didn't do it, and also claims he saw his dead brother out on the moors. Hearing this, and after performing an inconclusive autopsy on Alice's body, Forbes comes to believe that someone in the village is practicing witchcraft and turning the recently dead into zombies. Moreover, that someone has now set their sights on Sylvia.

John Gilling was a director who began working in the British film industry in the early 30's as an editor, before moving on to screenwriting after World War II and making his directorial debut with a 1948 short, Escape from Broadmoor, which he followed up with his first feature, the 1949 crime film, A Matter of Murder. He first worked with Hammer, at least as a director (he'd had connections with them since the 30's, when he was a young assistant, and had written many screenplays for them after World War II), in 1961, when he made The Shadow of the Cat. He worked with the studio further on 1962's The Pirates of Blood River (with Christopher Lee and Oliver Reed), 1963's The Crimson Blade, and 1965's The Brigand of Kandahar (both of which, again, featured Reed). Though most of his filmography consists of crime thrillers and adventure films, Gilling was no stranger to fantastic cinema when he directed The Plague of the Zombies, as he'd done a 1952 horror-comedy called Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (which featured Bela Lugosi), a 1956 science fiction film called The Gamma People, and his first film for Hammer, The Shadow of the Cat, though ostensibly a crime thriller, has some really bizarre elements to its story (it's about a house cat that seeks revenge for its owner's murder). However, Plague was his first full color, Gothic horror film for the studio, and it wouldn't be his last.

It may seem odd that, only now, on the seventeenth day of Hammer-Thon, we've reached a movie featuring Andre Morell, one of the studio's most dependable actors, but the reason for that is he made very rare appearances in their Gothic horrors (in fact, unless you count The Mummy's Shroud, this is the only one). In any case, he was a more than capable actor, with a rich, warm voice, and an air of reason and authority about him that he brings here to his role of Sir James Forbes, but I've never found him to be quite as engaging as Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee, so he doesn't quite grab my attention entirely. Regardless, Forbes is shown to be something of a quirky guy, with a dry sense of humor. In his first scene, he's practicing casting his fishing line, saying it's what keeps him busy when he's on holiday, and when his daughter, Sylvia, brings in the mail, he dismisses it offhand, saying he doesn't want to read it. He also initially denies knowing anyone in Cornwall, having seemingly forgotten about how Peter Tompson, one of his favorite former students, moved there with his wife. When he does finally read it, he's not sure what to make of his claims of a strange disease plaguing his village, saying it's an unusually rambling letter from Tompson, and he's also not too keen on going to Cornwall, but gives in when it's clear Sylvia is eager to go to visit Tompson's wife, Alice, an old school friend of hers. He grumbles, "I don't know why I put up with you at all. I should've drowned you at birth." Similarly, while they're being taken to the village via carriage, Forbes is disinterested in seeing the fox Sylvia spots being hunted on the moors. But, when they arrive and witness the hunters disrupting a funeral procession in a manner that causes them to drop the coffin, which spills open, Forbes realizes there is something very wrong in the village. He grows all the more concerned when he and Sylvia arrive at the Tompson household and he sees how sickly Alice looks, as well as how reluctant she is to have him examine a cut on her finger. Deciding to see what he can find out in the village, he finds Tompson in a dispute with the villagers at the inn and manages to resolve the conflict by buying them all drinks. Talking with Tompson that night, Forbes learns of the disease's symptoms and that Tompson hasn't been allowed to perform any autopsies, as the village is under the control of a loan squire. Wanting a body to work with, he decides to go and dig up that of the most recent victim, regardless of whether or not it's possible to obtain a permit to do so. He and Tompson are caught by the police, but when Forbes flings open the coffin regardless, he, Tompson, and the officers are taken aback to find that the body is gone. He then manages to enlist the help of Sergeant Swift, who promises to withhold his report for 48 hours.

After Sylvia staggers back to the village, having suffered a disturbing assault at the hands of the "Young Bloods" and witnessing Alice's body being thrown by the hideous-looking man at the tin mine, Forbes is forced to break the news of Alice's death to Tompson. He convinces him to allow him to perform an autopsy on her body when they find it, which they do on the moors, but, when he does, he finds that rigor mortis hasn't yet set in and that the blood on her body isn't human. Discouraged as he is when the body itself yields no clues, Forbes is then told of Tom Martinus' claims that he saw his recently-deceased brother roaming the moors, and when he asks Sylvia about the man she saw, he has a hunch it was likely the supposedly dead man as well. Learning about the tin mine's history, its being owned by the family of Squire Hamilton, and of Hamilton's time in the Caribbean, particularly in Haiti, Forbes is compelled to begin researching the occult. He soon comes to the conclusion that someone in the village is putting the black arts into practice and has resurrected the dead as zombies. Fearing that Alice may be next, Forbes, Tompson, and the village vicar stake out her grave-site, but they're lured away when the vicar is attacked in town. They're unable to stop her from resurrecting, though Forbes manages to decapitate her with a shovel and he and the vicar bury her properly. It doesn't take long for him to link what's going on with Hamilton, as he sees Sylvia now has a cut on her finger like Alice and learns that Martinus, who escaped from the prison, was visited by Hamilton shortly beforehand, a visit that resulted in Martinus cutting himself. He heads up to Hamilton's house, but is quickly forced to leave when the squire disapproves of his questioning. Having thought ahead of time, Forbes unlocked a window near the front door before confronting Hamilton and uses it to sneak back in. He finds his way to a hidden study where Hamilton keeps the materials he uses in practicing voodoo, only to be jumped by one of the Young Bloods. Forbes manages to kill him in their struggle but the fight causes the room to be set ablaze by the fireplace and he's nearly burned to death, until Hamilton's servant barges in. Learning that Hamilton is at the tin mine with his zombies, he rushes there and aids Tompson in saving Sylvia from being made into an undead herself.

Sylvia Forbes' (Diane Clare) main incentive for getting her father to travel to Cornwall to help Peter Tompson is so she can visit with his wife, Alice, an old schoolmate of hers. Much to her father's annoyance, she manages to talk him into going, and she further aggravates him when, on their way to the village, she complains about a fox hunt and tries to talk him into stopping it. Though Forbes himself is uninterested interfering with the hunt, Sylvia manages to lead the hunters on the wrong track, which later causes her to run afoul of them when they come upon her in the woods that night. Beforehand, she'd been following Alice, who'd been acting rather strangely since they arrived and had also told Sylvia of Squire Hamilton. She meets Hamilton personally when the Young Bloods bring her to his house, intending to have their way with her, and he comes to her rescue. Frightened, humiliated, and angry, Sylvia decides to walk back to the village rather than allow Hamilton to have her taken back in his carriage. She also threatens to go to the police but Hamilton manages to talk her out of it, saying that such accusations would create a scandal that could hurt the entire village. While on her way back, Sylvia passes by the old tin mine and is horrified when she sees a monstrous man throw Alice's body from the top of a mound. She runs back to the village as fast as she can, where she's found by her father. The next day, she leads him, Tompson, and Sergeant Swift to the spot, only for them to find Alice's body on the moors, which so horrifies Sylvia that she ends up spending most of the rest of the day in bed. Talking with her father when she briefly wakes up, she's surprised when he asks her if the man he saw was the recently-deceased brother of Tom Martinus, and she also clarifies to him that it happened at the mines. While she's alone at the house, she's visited by Hamilton, who says he's come to offer his condolences over Alice, and the two of them have a more friendly interaction. However, when he asks Sylvia for a glass of water, he causes her to cut her finger on it and squeezes some of the blood into a tiny glass, telling her it's to ward off infection. Unbeknownst to her, he pours the blood into a vial and uses it as a way to influence her with his voodoo. Soon, Sylvia starts acting the same way Alice did, first falling under Hamilton's control at Alice's graveside surface and becoming secretive about how she cut herself. Ultimately, Hamilton draws her to the mines and intends to make her a zombie herself, but both Tompson and her father manage to save her just in time.

Though he's the village's clinician, Peter Tompson (Brook Williams) is unable to do much to relieve the people's fears about what's going on, as he has no clue what kind of disease he's battling and is stymied by not being permitted to perform an autopsy. Following the death of his brother, Tom Martinus confronts Tompson at the inn about his inability to tell them what their loved ones died from, which Tompson counters by saying they just want him to say they died from known maladies, even if it's a lie. Fortunately for him, Sir James Forbes arrives and manages to save him before the confrontation gets violent. Talking with his old professor and friend, he tells him that the illness appears to be more mental than physical, involving a loss of appetite, pale skin, and slow reflexes. Much to his shock and surprise, Forbes suggests they unearth Martinus' recently buried brother that night to examine his corpse, without getting a permit to do so, which he says is impossible to accomplish. When they do, Tompson is just as shocked as anyone when the body is revealed to be missing, and the next morning, he's dealt a crushing blow when Forbes tells him about Alice's death, for which he blames himself. Reluctantly, he agrees to allow Forbes to perform an autopsy on Alice's body when they find it, a procedure he's able to assist with, though it ultimately doesn't provide any answers. Forbes eventually comes to the conclusion that what's happening is the result of voodoo, which Tompson finds hard to accept, especially when he's told that it's being used to create zombies. But, when Forbes mentions that Alice may be in danger of becoming one as well, he insists on helping him and the vicar keep watch over her grave that night. He gets all the proof he needs then when Alice does rise from her grave and Forbes is forced to stop her through decapitation. Tompson faints at the sight of this and has a horrific nightmare about the dead rising all around him and cornering him. His nightmare leads Forbes to uncover that all of the graves in the small cemetery are empty, although Tompson is relieved to hear that Alice has been laid to rest properly. When Forbes decides to call on Squire Hamilton, he charges Tompson with looking after Sylvia, knowing that she's in danger as well, but despite his efforts, she's lured to the tin mines by Hamilton. But, Tompson follows after her and manages to save her from being made into a zombie, the two of them escaping along with Forbes.

Alice Tompson (Jacqueline Pearce) is seen in the film's opening, where Squire Hamilton first curses her via one of his voodoo ceremonies, as he drips blood onto a small figure in a tiny coffin, which leads to her bandaged finger bleeding badly and her waking up in bed screaming after having repeated Hamilton's chants in her sleep. However, the significance of this is not made clear until long after Alice's death early on in the movie, which occurs the night of Sir James Forbes and Sylvia's arrival in the village. When they first arrive at the Tompson household, Alice doesn't recognize them initially, even though she and Sylvia went to school together, and she seems rather sickly, fatigued, and overly secretive about the origin of a cut on her finger. She also says repeatedly that she wishes the two of them had told her beforehand that they were coming for a visit, making excuses as to why, but also refuses to allow them to stay at the inn. She later tells Sylvia of Squire Hamilton, whom she clearly likes, though she admits her husband doesn't share her opinion in the slightest. Late in the night, Sylvia spots Alice going out, ignoring her calls to her. Alice makes her way through the countryside to an old tin mine, where she's met by a freakish man who seemingly attacks and kills her, throwing her body from the top of a large dirt mound in front of a horrified Sylvia. As devastated as Tompson is about losing his wife, Forbes talks him into letting him perform an autopsy on her body, during which he finds that rigor mortis hasn't yet set in and that the blood on her body isn't human, although the autopsy itself reveals nothing. Far into the second act, Hamilton and his cronies attempt to remove Alice's body from her grave, only to be chased off when they hear Forbes and Tompson approaching. The two men then see her rise from her grave as a zombie, but Forbes ends her torment by decapitating her, and Tompson is later told that she was given a proper burial.

A massive con for me is that I don't find the villain, Squire Clive Hamilton (John Carson), to be all that interesting, intimidating, or creepy. He's mainly meant to be a symbol of the movie's themes of corrupted aristocracy and rampant colonialism, with his only true motivation given being how he uses the zombies as slave labor for the tin mines, from which he accrues his great wealth after the mine was originally closed down and his father died, leaving him with debt. Although the Young Bloods are in on his voodoo practices, which he learned during some time he spent in Haiti, and he allows them to share his wealth, he doesn't seem particularly fond of them, and is absolutely outraged when they bring Sylvia to his house in order to harass and assault her. You could say it's because he wants her for himself, but that doesn't seem to be the case, seeing as how he intends to make her a zombie in the same way he did Alice (unless, of course, he has certain, really disgusting fetishes). In any case, the only real glimpse we get into Hamilton's psyche is when he visits Sylvia on the pretense of sharing his condolences about Alice's death, and the subject of Tompson's disdain for him comes up. He tells her, "Oh, I should like to be popular, of course. I should be lying if I said otherwise. But, I realized long ago that in order to be popular, one must conform. I find that too big a price to pay... Well, to the standards of conduct dictated by convention. I have my own standards. I conform to them." He also haughtily admits that his one virtue is that he's always honest, including to himself, and menacingly tells her that he's sure of the existence of life after death, after which he tricks her into cutting herself in order to gain her blood to use in his voodoo ritual. What you can take from that is that his practicing of witchcraft is his own personal way of not conforming and that, in being honest with himself, he's accepted that he's a power hungry maniac who believes he's superior to everyone else, but it's not enough to make me think much of him as a villain. Charming enough as he can be, talking in his very James Mason-like voice, I find him to be something of a bore and don't really care about his interest in Sylvia or what's meant to be a matter of karmic kickback for him when he's killed by his own zombie slaves.

Fortunately for Michael Ripper, John Gilling was a big fan of him and would always cast him in a fairly substantial role in his films. Here, he plays Sergeant Jack Swift, the head of the village police department who, in his first appearances, intends to arrest Sir James Forbes and Peter Tompson for body snatching when he and his constable come upon them digging up John Martinus' grave. But, when Forbes opens the coffin to reveal that the body is gone, Swift is as baffled as he and Tompson, and agrees to help Forbes in finding out the truth, as his own son was one of the first to succumb to the illness plaguing the village; to that end, he decides to withhold his report of the missing body for 48 hours, as Forbes tells him they can't allow the village to devolve into hysteria. The next day, Swift accompanies Forbes, Tompson, and Sylvia onto the moors to search for Alice's body, only to find it near the spot where they come across a drunken Tom Martinus. Swift has Martinus arrested, convinced that he murdered Alice to get back at Tompson, whom he'd argued with at the inn the day before, but Martinus denies having done so. He also tells Swift that he saw his brother wandering the moors and Swift decides to let Forbes hear his story as well. Though Forbes believes what Martinus tells him, Swift decides to keep him in the jailhouse until he's made further investigations. He's the one who tells Forbes and Tompson about the Hamilton family's connection to the tin mine, as well as of Squire Hamilton's time abroad and how he somehow accumulated a vast wealth, despite the mine having been shut down. Swift starts to believe in Forbes' theory about the undead when he asks him and his constable to dig up all the graves in the cemetery, only to find them all empty. Forbes then asks to speak with Martinus again, but they find he's disappeared from his cell, and Forbes suggests he's now likely a zombie himself. Significantly, it's Swift's constable telling him that Squire Hamilton visited him and caused him to cut himself before he disappeared that makes Forbes realize he's the one behind it all.

Having just lost his brother, Tom Martinus (Marcus Hammond) is in a horrible state of turmoil throughout his brief screentime. After the Young Bloods interrupt his brother's funeral procession by riding into town and causing the pallbearers to drop his coffin, flinging the lid open, Martinus is completely overcome with grief and takes it out on both Sir James Forbes and Sylvia when they enter town, telling them to go away and leave them all alone. Later, Martinus confronts Tompson at the inn, accusing him of being a terrible doctor because he doesn't know what's behind all the deaths and also noting how they've had a death every month for the year he's been in the village. He also says he's not good enough for them, but Forbes arrives and stops the confrontation before it can get violent. Martinus heads out into the woods in a drunken stupor, at one point frightening Sylvia when she's out searching for Alice, and unfortunately for him, he's found sleeping near Alice's body the next day. Because of this and his argument with Tompson, he's arrested and charged with murdering Alice out of revenge, though he says he only went out there to get away from everything and that he didn't touch her. He also claims to have seen his brother roaming the moors, a sight that has chilled him to the bone and made him question his own sanity, but he's surprised when he talks with Forbes and the doctor says he believes him. Offscreen, Martinus is visited by Squire Hamilton and is turned into one of the zombies he uses as slaves in the tin mine. When the time comes for Hamilton to turn Sylvia into an undead, he has the zombified Martinus meet her outside the mine and bring her down there.

And here's one final, interesting bit of information concerning the cast: the coachman who brings Forbes and Sylvia to the village is as minor a character as you can get, with very little screentime, and yet, he's played by three different actors over the course of his scenes. When the carriage gets stopped and Denver of the Young Bloods impatiently asks him of the whereabouts of the fox they were hunting, he's played by Joylon Booth; when they actually arrive in the village, he's now played by George Mossman; and finally, when they arrive at the Tompson household, he becomes another actor between shots, going from Mossman, who had almost completely dark hair, when he's unloading the Forbes' luggage, to a very grayed person when he brings the bags up to the doorstep! I didn't notice this until I read about it, as you never see the other two actors' faces that well, but now see that I do see it, I'd definitely like to know the circumstances that led to it.

One of Bernard Robinson's major contribution to The Plague of the Zombies was the construction of the small Cornish village on the backlot at Bray Studios, which you see quite a bit of throughout the film, notably the main town square, several streets *particularly the one leading to and from the Tompson household), and the small cemetery where a fair amount of action takes place. It's very reminiscent of the village sets seen before, in films like The Kiss of the Vampire (the cemetery is especially akin to the one seen in the opening there) and The Evil of Frankenstein, and would be reused virtually as is, as would many of the sets here, in The Reptile, which began shooting as soon as Plague wrapped. Another really great set on the backlot is the exterior of the tin mine, which has the kind of eerie air you would expect from a place that's been long abandoned and left to rot, with a lot of equipment and materials left in place. As for the interiors, in addition to the lavish, fancy drawing room in the Forbes home, the comfortable, cozy inside of the Tompson household, and the bar at the inn, a very notable one is Squire Hamilton's large mansion, of which you mainly only see the large den, which is decorated with animal trophies, particularly a large stuffed bear in the back, and very posh, expensive furniture. Though you never see the upstairs, the presence of that staircase makes me believe that this is a certain set we've already seen many times before. You do, however, see a hallway that goes off to the left from the den, which leads to the study where Hamilton keeps the materials he uses in his voodoo rituals. This room has an eye-catching feature of rich blue padding around the benches on either side of the fireplace, as well as books and trophies everywhere, and a secret panel in the wall that leads down to the mine. Speaking of the mine, it's a bunch of cobweb-filled, claustrophobic tunnels of living hell, where the zombies are forced to dig out tin while being repeatedly whipped by the Young Bloods. In the back, there's a chamber where Hamilton performs his voodoo ceremonies over a large table draped with animal skins and candles, with objects such as animal skulls, dead birds, and steaming incense holders hanging about, and Haitian drummers beating rhythmically. Location-wise, the film makes use of the familiar forests of Black Park, a large, grassy plain in Frensham, an area that Terence Fisher would later use in Frankenstein Created Woman, and the exterior of Oakley Court for the outside of Hamilton's house, but the one that's worth mentioning, even if it's in just one shot, is Heatherden Hall at Pinewood Studios, which is used for the exterior of the Forbes home and which had earlier been used in From Russia With Love.

Although the day-for-night cinematography here is some of the most blatant, and it would only get worse as time went on, the movie is well-shot by Arthur Grant, with a color palette that, while not absolutely popping, is a bit richer than the last couple of films we've looked at. The way scenes in very dark rooms are photographed, most notably when Sir James Forbes sneaks back into Squire Hamilton's house after having been tossed out, more than makes up for the bad day-for-night material, although I will say that that cinematography does work well for the scene where Alice Tompson rises from her grave and advances on Forbes and her husband. The best shot scene, though, is the nightmare Tompson has following this, where the dead rise all-around him and slowly corner him. It's photographed from all sorts of bizarre angles, from Dutch angles that often tilt from one side to another to low ones looking up at the advancing zombies; it contains classic elements of a lot of mist rolling along the ground and close-ups of the zombies' fingers and hands breaking through the soil as they pull themselves out of their graves; and it builds and builds in creepiness until Tompson is grabbed from behind by one zombie and is shocked awake by it.

There are some deep layers to be found in the film's story, namely in the form of criticism of British aristocracy and colonialism. The former comes from the very notion of this small Cornish village being under the total control of Squire Hamilton, who, as Tompson tells Forbes early on, has elected himself as the local coroner and magistrate, judge and jury. Hamilton's family had a significant presence in the village before him, as his father owned the profitable tin mine, though he had to shut it down after a series of accidents prompted the miners to refuse to continue their work, but now, Hamilton himself has asserted a powerful and horrific level of control over the village, having used the black magic he learned in Haiti to make zombie slaves out of the dead in order to continue mining the tin. Through this, he's managed to accumulate a great wealth all his own, while also unleashing two horrible plagues upon the village. One is the Young Bloods, who are little more than a group of upper-class thugs who have no respect whatsoever for the lower class, as seen when they callously ride in on the funeral procession and knock over the coffin, and who spirit away young women to Hamilton's house, where they draw cards to see which of them gets to have his way with her, as they do to Sylvia. The other is the horrific illness that overtakes those cursed by Hamilton, with their loved ones having to watch them waste away until they die, only to be resurrected and forced to work in the mines. This is where the caution against colonialism comes in, as it was Hamilton's time in the often colonized country of Haiti that led to this horror being brought upon the village, and which eventually leads to his own downfall when his zombies go berserk and turn on him in the end.

It shouldn't be much of a surprise that, like so many other of its ilk, the film's depiction of voodoo is the stereotypical, old-fashioned one where it's a purely evil form of black magic and witchcraft, one which Sir James Forbes describes as "absolutely disgusting," and which he ascribes primarily to Haiti, even though that's only one of many different variations. It has everything you'd expect: cursing ceremonies accompanied by rhythmic drumming, the use of blood in said ceremonies, and voodoo dolls, which are used in combination with the blood of the cursed to control them before and after they become zombies, with the condition of the dolls being physically tied to them. While the notion of zombies being used as slaves is accurate to some of the actual practices, at least up to a point, everything else conforms to the most common and inaccurate depictions but, that said, this was hardly the movie's focus anyway, so it ultimately doesn't matter.

There were two images in The History of Sci-Fi and Horror that really did get to me. One of them was the shot from Carnival of Souls of the main ghoul (the one simply called "the man") walking right up to the camera, his arms reaching out, with that freakish smile on his bizarre face. The other was the one from this film that I mentioned in the introduction, where you get a close-up of a zombie's face as he's looking off-camera (it's that first image you see here), which was a very creepy image for me at the time, and is still somewhat unnerving for me to look at. In fact, I think all of the zombies in this movie are really creepy-looking, much more so than those in Night of the Living Dead, despite how much I love that film. While these zombies aren't much of a threat for the most part, as they're portrayed as victims of Hamilton's evil, with their main function being to work in the tin mines while being whipped and abused by the Young Bloods, the design of their moldy-looking skin (which looks like tree bark in some shots), white milky eyes, rotted shrouds, and shuffling movements make them very unsettling to look at. Those are the men, at least; Alice, instead, develops a ghoulish, pale skin color, which is akin to the design of the zombies in Dawn of the Dead over a decade later. While they make very little audible noise for the most part, they sometimes have disturbing expressions on their face to make up for it, such as the zombie who grabs Tompson from behind in his nightmare and the expression on Alice's face when she rises from her grave (which I think helps sell that more simple-looking makeup). However, one zombie who's just as terrifying to hear as he see is to look at Tom Martinus' undead brother, John, who happens to be that very one whose close-up creeped me out. When you first see him, he's standing atop a mound, holding Alice's body in his arms, and has a freakish, wide-mouthed expression on his face, accompanied with what sounds like insane, cackling laughter, as he throws Alice's body to the ground in front of Sylvia. And when they finally do become dangerous during the climax, where they get frantic and revolt against their tormentors when they catch fire, they are shown to be fairly brutal and their strength is in their numbers. But, it's also during the climax where you have some moments where the zombies are at their weakest visually: after they catch fire and are staggering around, it's obvious that some of them are stuntmen wearing really bad masks rather than the detailed makeups. Fortunately, that's only during the last few minutes and, other than that, they're first rate throughout.

Much like the approach to vampirism in the first couple of entries in Hammer's Dracula series, there is something of a scientific and logical approach to the gradual zombification of the villagers, as Forbes and Tompson talk about it in medical terms. Tompson describes the illness as causing a loss of appetite, pale skin color, and diminished reflexes, as well as that it seems to be more mental in nature than physical. Moreover, when the two of them perform an autopsy on Alice's body, they note that rigor mortis hasn't set in, even though she's been dead since the previous night. And when they finally get down to the likelihood that what's going on is someone using voodoo to create zombies, Forbes never loses his scientific angle on the subject, saying that the books in which he read up on it describe it in such terms, allowing him to believe it, while Tompson tries to explain the disappearance of John Martinus from his grave as his being buried alive and having clawed his way out. It may not work quite as well as Dr. Van Helsing's view of vampirism, mainly since, as Freddie Francis once stated, Peter Cushing could make anything sound plausible, but it's effective enough to where you can buy the characters believing it.

Like Dracula: Prince of Darkness, which it was paired with on a double bill, there's a fair amount of blood to be found in The Plague of the Zombies, though nothing as graphic as Dracula's resurrection scene. Obviously, blood is utilized in the voodoo ceremonies, as you see Squire Hamilton dripping it onto the dolls he keeps in tiny coffins, and there's a substantial amount on Alice's face and dress when her body is found (however, it's later found to not be human and Forbes suggests she was splashed with the blood of an animal, likely as a part of the voodoo ceremony). You also see some blood when Hamilton causes Sylvia to cut her finger and he squeezes it into a little vial, and, as happened with Alice during the opening, when Hamilton enacts the curse on her, blood can be seen seeping through the bandage on her finger. The moment that led to censorship problems is when Alice rises from her grave as a zombie and Forbes decapitates her with the shovel. While the act itself was cut from four hits to just one, you do still get a pretty close look at her severed head as it lies on the ground, although there's very little gore to speak of there (however, when Tompson dreams about the zombies rising around him and cornering him, there are a couple of shots of a large puddle of blood on the ground, which likely meant to be from Alice's decapitation). And Forbes' struggle with Denver in Hamilton's study ends in him getting a bloody stab in his left shoulder. The only true special effect is a Wolf Man-style lap dissolve showing Alice's slow deterioration into an undead before she rises, but there are also some well-done physical fire effects during the climax, including the zombies spontaneously catching fire.

The first thing you see when the movie is opens is one of the voodoo ceremonies, with several drummers doing their thing in a large, cavernous chamber. Two people dressed in white shrouds and wearing masks enter behind them, walking up to a long table decorated with two candles and a number of animal skins and pelts. One of them, who comes off as a sort of high priest, is handed a small box shaped like a coffin, from which he removes a voodoo doll, over which he recites an incantation. This is cross-cut with Alice Tompson lying in bed with her husband, when she starts tossing and turning in her sleep, murmuring the high priest's chanting. He places the doll back in the little coffin, removes a vial of blood, and, as he takes the top off, blood starts to seep through a bandaged cut right below Alice's wrist. He then pours the blood across the tiny voodoo doll, and Alice promptly bolts up in bed, screaming, "No!", at the top of her lungs. As one of the drummers pounds wildly on his instrument, the camera cuts to a close-up of the blood-covered voodoo doll, which the opening credits play over.

Following that, the introduction of Sir James Forbes and Sylvia, and their decision to head to Cornwall when the former receives a plea for help from Peter Tompson through a letter, the film shows them traveling there in a coach, taking a country road through a vast moor. While Forbes is trying to sleep, Sylvia excitedly looks outside the carriage and is elated at the sight of a fox running across a field. Forbes, however, couldn't be any less interested, and is also not concerned with Sylvia becoming upset when she sees that the fox is being hunted by a group of men on horseback, saying he doesn't have to interfere with local customs just because said customs bother her. Suddenly, the carriage comes to a halt, as the hunters have forced the coachman to stop, rudely asking him if he saw where the fox went. Sylvia takes the opportunity to lead the hunters astray and points them in the wrong direction. Knowing what she did without having to ask, Forbes says that he only hopes they don't run into that group again. In the next scene, they arrive at their destination, but the coach is forced to stop due to a funeral procession. Suddenly, the fox hunters come galloping in, rushing past the procession and pushing them to get out of the way, causing the pallbearers to drop the coffin over the side of a stone wall. Seeing this, Forbes and Sylvia disembark from the coach and rush to the spot, where they're greeted with the horrible sight of the coffin's lid having been knocked open, revealing the fixed, gasping face of the dead man within. Forbes angrily admonishes the hunters for their callousness, but he's ignored, as the man Sylvia personally led astray earlier warns her that she'd better stay out of his sight. The group rides off, as one of the men in the procession hysterically smacks the side of a section of the stone wall. Sylvia says those men should be reported, to which her father says, "I expect they will be, my dear... and, no doubt, those young ruffians will say it was an accident." They head back to their coach and, before continuing on, Sylvia asks the vicar who was overseeing the procession if there's anything they can do. Before he answers, the distraught man demands they leave them alone and storms off. The vicar apologizes for his behavior, explaining that the man in the coffin was his brother, adding, "The Lord is punishing us for our sins."

They then arrive at the Tompson household, where the door is answered by Alice, who initially doesn't know who they are, simply telling them that her husband isn't in. But, when Sylvia presses her, it hits her and she quickly invites them inside. While exchanging greetings, Forbes is surprised to see her arm bandaged below the wrist, which she insists is just a cut and asks Forbes not to fuss about it. She also comes off as needlessly defensive when Forbes jokingly questions her husband's credentials as a doctor, and refuses to let Sylvia inspect her cut as well. Forbes notes her rather ragged appearance, which Sylvia writes off, while Alice says she wishes they'd let her know they were coming, making the excuse that the house isn't too clean. As Sylvia helps Alice prepare some tea for them, she tells them there's been some trouble lately but says she'd rather let her husband expound on it himself. Forbes then decides to see what he can find out from the villagers. At the very moment, at the inn, Tompson is having a drink, when Tom Martinus, the man whose brother was in the coffin, comes in and confronts him about his inability to save his brother's life, as well as the lives of all the others who have died from the same malady. They argue about Martinus and the other villagers' not allowing Tompson to perform any autopsies, how one person has died every month for the past year he's been their doctor, and Tompsons counters that they merely want him to say the deaths were the result of known diseases, even if it's not the truth. During this argument, the other villagers at the inn have stepped up to back Martinus, but before it can go any further, Forbes appears and diffuses the situation. He introduces himself, adding that Tompson was his "cleverest and most able pupil" and that they should consider themselves lucky to have him. After buying them all drinks, Forbes leaves the inn with Tompson, walking him back to his house, saying they should talk about what's going on later.

That night, after dinner, Forbes sends Sylvia and Alice off to bed, saying that he and Tompson will do the dishes. Once they've left the room, Forbes asks Tompson to tell him more about the disease and is shocked to hear that no autopsies have been performed. He's further taken aback when he's told the village has no coroner and that it's under the rule of one, single squire, Squire Hamilton. The film then cuts to Hamilton in his home, using a candle to light a cigarette, and a shot of the ring on his hand reveals him to have been the "high priest" conducting the ceremony in the opening. He tells his servant to prepare for another such ceremony as soon as the Young Bloods return from their hunt. Cutting back to the Tompson house, Alice tells Sylvia about Hamilton, describing him as handsome, wealthy, and unattached, but adds that her husband doesn't care for him, feeling he's "arrogant and overbearing." She insists he's wrong and quickly excuses herself from the room, though Sylvia feels as though she were trying to tell her something else. Down in the kitchen, Forbes and Tompson are doing the dishes, only for Tompson to drop and smash a plate while drying it. He and Forbes switch duties, Forbes telling him that he needs something to relieve him of his worries, namely a body to examine. He then says that they'll dig up the body that was buried that very day, without asking for an exhumation, saying they'll head out around midnight... and he, himself, drops a plate he was drying.

Upstairs, Sylvia hears the front door clang from below her window. Looking out, she sees Alice walking down the street from the house. She opens the window and calls to her, but Alice ignores her and keeps on walking. Sylvia then heads downstairs and out the door, heading down the same path she saw Alice take. But, Alice has gotten far ahead of her and is now making her way through the nearby woods, on to the tin mine close to the village. There, she stops, and someone is apparently waiting for her, as the shadow of a hand, followed by that of a torso, falls across her. Sylvia, meanwhile, takes her own path into the woods, only to run into a very drunk Tom Martinus in a small, open field. He grabs her arm, slurring, "Wait a minute! I know you!", and, in a panic, Sylvia slaps him across the face and wrenches herself free from him. She runs off back towards the road, when the Young Bloods come riding in and begin chasing her. They pursue her into the trees and easily surround her, Sylvia unable to get around them. Before she knows it, she's grabbed and pulled up onto the back of one horse, and with that, the men ride off into the night, arriving at Squire Hamilton's house and riding through the gates. The man who took Sylvia, Denver, tells one of his comrades to get her off the horse and, despite her struggling and slapping, she's pulled through the front door and into the den. There, five of the men begin a mean-spirited and sadistic game of catch, as they toss her to each other, until she collapses to the floor. Four of them surround her, swiftly moving to block her every time she tries to go for an opening amid their legs, while Denver pours himself a drink nearby. They then start drawing cards, apparently seeing who gets to assault her first, but after the cards are counted, Denver tells the one holding her wrist to let her go. He does and she gets up and runs to the side of a nearby dresser, when Denver approaches her and forces her to turn around to face him, telling her, "Come on, little fox. Go to ground." Before it can go any further, Squire Hamilton appears on the staircase and angrily tells Denver and the others to leave Sylvia alone. He then storms down the stairs, belts Denver across the face, knocking him to the floor, and yells for them all to get out. Once they're alone, Hamilton tells Sylvia that he had no idea what his brutish friends were up to, but she doesn't care, telling him that he either arranges for her to be taken home or she walks, the latter of which she elects to do on her own. When she makes him open the door for her, she tells him of how she plans to go to the police over this, but he talks her out of it, saying that the resulting scandal could prove disastrous for the villagers and assures her that her attackers will be punished for what they've done. Once she's left, Hamilton storms into the den, yelling for Denver. When he enters the room, he simply tells him, "Everything is ready, master," and Hamilton proceeds to stomp down a hallway next to the staircase and head through a door at the end.

While Forbes and Tompson head down to the graveyard, shovels in hand, and begin exhuming the body of John Martinus, Sylvia heads back to the village, when she comes upon the tin mine. Curious, she walks onto the grounds, when she hears some rustling behind her. Turning, she sees a frightening-looking, monstrous man standing atop a mound, holding a body in his arms, which he then tosses down. When the body hits the ground, Sylvia sees that it's Alice and runs to her. However, she quickly realizes she's dead and, seeing that her apparent killer has vanished, flees the scene in terror. Back at the cemetery, Forbes and Tompson manage to unearth the coffin, when the former realizes they're not alone. Looking behind them, he sees two policemen glaring at him, and turns Tompson's attention to them. The one officer, Sergeant Swift, orders them out of the grave, warning them they're to be charged with body-snatching come morning. Forbes then takes the opportunity to quickly throw open the coffin, only for him and Tompson, as well as the officers, to be taken aback when they find it's empty. After the officers have helped the two of them out of the grave, Forbes asks Swift for his help, asking him to say nothing of what they've found. Since his own son was one of the first to die from whatever illness has befallen the village, Swift agrees to help, saying he'll withhold his report for 48 hours. Forbes then says they should fill the grave in but Tompson asks him to head back to the house, saying he and the officers handle that themselves. He grabs his coat and leaves, as the other men get on with the work. On his way back to the house, he sees Sylvia stumble to the front and collapse to the ground from exhaustion. He quickly rushes to her aid.

The next morning, after having spoken with Sylvia, Forbes waits for Tompson to return. After he's looked in Alice's bedroom and found that she isn't there, Forbes has him sit down and breaks the news to him that Sylvia found her body out on the moors. Initially trying to deny it, Tompson breaks down when the realization of it hits him, slumping down in a chair and whimperint, "Oh, God, forgive me." Blaming himself for what's happened, he asks Forbes to take him to her but first, Forbes gets him to consent to an autopsy so they can learn about the disease and destroy it. Sylvia enters the room, telling her father that she's ready to show them where she found Alice, and on the way out, Forbes says they'll have Sergeant Swift join them. On the way to the spot, Swift sees a pair of legs sticking out from behind a tree on the edge of an open field and rushes there to find it's Tom Martinus, who's slept there all night. He wakes him up and demands he speak with them, but Martinus gets up and tries to run for it, only to trip over a large tree root and fall to the ground. Swift and his constable quickly subdue him, while Sylvia gasps at the sight of Alice's body lying behind a log. Later, in Tompson's home office, Forbes prepares to carry out the autopsy, when he finds that there's no rigor mortis in the body, and unwraps the bandage near Alice's right wrist to find a bloody cut. Tompson says she cut herself several days before but that she was secretive about exactly how it happened. Forbes then takes a sample of the blood running from Alice's mouth and examines it under the microscope. He then has Tompson do the same, and he's surprised to find it's not human. Tompson wonders if she could have been attacked but Forbes doesn't think so, saying there are no exterior signs of an animal attack, though neither of them are sure how she died. Forbes then begins the autopsy proper.

Meanwhile, at the police station, Martinus is being grilled about why he was up there and how he happened to be found near Alice's body. Sergeant Swift accuses him of murdering her for revenge against Tompson, given the public argument the two of them had the day before, but Martinus insists he didn't touch her, adding, "I'm sure of that, at least." When pressed to explain what he means by that, he's initially hesitant to do so, saying Swift wouldn't believe him, but finally confesses that he saw his dead brother roaming the moors. He tells him, "I saw him just as clear as I see you now: all gray, eyes staring. I saw him, and yet, I know he's out there, lying in his coffin!" Back at the Tompson house, Forbes has finished the autopsy but it's yielded absolutely nothing. They start talking about the arrangements for Alice's funeral, when there's a knock at the door. In walks Swift, who tells Forbes that he might want to speak with Martinus at the jailhouse. There, Martinus tells Forbes the same thing he told Swift, about having seen his dead brother. He admits he has no idea how that could be but that he did him, regardless. He also expects Forbes to not believe him, but instead, Forbes tells him he's believed every word of it. He then leaves, and Swift, having not made a final decision on the matter, has Martinus taken to a cell. When Forbes returns to the Tompson house, he goes upstairs to Sylvia's bedroom, where's she been sleeping ever since she was horrified at the sight of Alice's body. He wakes her and speaks with her, asking her if she recognized the man who had Alice in his arms. She says she didn't, but is sure it wasn't Martinus. Forbes then asks her if it was possibly John Martinus instead, and while she doesn't confirm or deny it, she asks him how that could be possible. Rather than answer her question, he next asks if where they found her body was where she saw her with the man and she tells him it was actually out at the mine-works in the area. Forbes decides to find the place and heads downstairs, where he meets with Tompson, suggesting the two of them take a stroll on the moors with Swift.

In the next scene, the three of them find the mine, and Swift tells them its history, about how, after a series of accidents, Squire Hamilton's father was forced to shut the place down. He also tells them that Hamilton himself hasn't tried to reopen it since he doesn't need the money, adding that he was away when his father died and when he returned, he became a recluse for a while before taking in a number of young, free-spending guests. Forbes rightly guesses that the locals believe the mine to be haunted, before he and Tompson start back. Back at Tompson's house, Sylvia gets a surprise when Hamilton calls on her, saying he's come by to offer his condolences about Alice, and adding that her husband wouldn't accept them himself, given his disdain for him. They talk for a few minutes, Hamilton telling her about his personal refusal to conform to the standards of convention, and before he leaves, asks if he could have a glass of water. She goes to get the glass and, when he hints that he would prefer some sherry, she starts pouring. Standing behind her, he asks her if she believes in life after death, which she finds to be an odd question, but admits that she does. He, in turn, tells her that he's sure if it as a fact, and gulps down the sherry, only to drop the glass on the floor, breaking it. Sylvia reaches for a large section of it and Hamilton does the same, grabbing her hand, as if to help, and causing her to cut her finger on the glass. Apologizing for his "clumsiness," he grabs a small cup and lets the blood from the cut drip into it, saying it's to prevent infection. He then removes a handkerchief, tears off a small piece, wraps it around the cut, and suggests she use a safety pin to hold it in place. While she goes to grab the pin, he takes out a vial, pours her blood into it, and puts it in his suit pocket. He himself pins the piece of fabric, and then goes to grab his hat and cane. He comments, "May I say I consider you to be a very brave young lady?" She asks if he's referring to the cut, and he answers, "Because of everything, Ms. Forbes." He delicately kisses her hand and sees himself out. Once he's back at his house, he walks to his study off the corridor to the left of the staircase, takes out the vial, and removes one of several small coffins containing voodoo dolls from his desk drawer. He then knocks on a panel of the wall with a wooden mask hanging on it and announces, "It's the master. Open." Someone on the other side does as he says and opens the panel.

Sylvia enters the room where Alice's body is being kept in an open coffin until the funeral, seemingly to pay her own private final respects. Seeing her hands placed together on her sternum, she uneasily lifts up her right hand and sees the cut that was underneath her wrist, and then glances at her own bandaged finger. Frightened at the implication, she quickly heads back out the door. Next, while Alice's funeral is underway and her coffin is being lowered into the ground, Hamilton performs one of his voodoo ceremonies, which Sylvia is able to sense in some manner as she stands with the other mourners by the grave. In his high priest garb, Hamilton pours Sylvia's blood out of the vial and onto one of the dolls in the tiny coffins, and at the funeral, blood begins to seep through Sylvia's bandaged finger. She becomes dizzy and almost loses her balance, though Tompson manages to catch her and leads her away, which doesn't go unnoticed, including by Forbes. Once the vicar has finished reciting his prayer, Forbes approaches him and asks if he can make use of his library in order to research the subject of witchcraft and black magic. After spending a good amount of the day there, pouring over many books, he returns to Tompson's house with the vicar, where they join Tompson in the dining room. He tells Tompson of voodoo, how it's practiced in the Caribbean, specifically Haiti (he pronounces it, "hi-ee-tee,"), and that he finds it to be more revolting than any other form of witchcraft. Considering how both Sylvia and Martinus claim to have seen a man on the moors who, for all intents and purposes, was a walking corpse, Forbes declares it's an undead creature created through witchcraft by someone in the village, which he says he knows because of his afternoon of research. He then suggests he fears Alice may be the next to rise from her grave and that he and the vicar are going to watch over the grave all night long. Tompson insists he join them, ignoring Forbes' wishing that he didn't, considering what might happen.

The next scene starts on a close-up of a wreath with a card that reads, "With Deepest Sympathy, Clive Hamilton," a sentiment Tompson doesn't care for. Forbes wakes up the vicar, who's been sleeping in a corner of the cemetery, and tells him he'd best go home, given how late it is. The vicar gets to his feet and makes his way out of the cemetery and to the village street, unaware that he's being watched by Hamilton, dressed in his voodoo high priest garb. He motions at one of his cronies, who's wearing a horned mask and follows after the vicar, cornering him in a narrow alley, grabbing him by the throat, and choking him until he slumps down against the wall and passes out. His yells bring Forbes and Tompson running, while his attacker flees the scene, and Hamilton rushes to the cemetery. Reaching the vicar, they find he's only winded, and because of his attacker's mask, he's unable to say who he was. The two of them walk him home, while in the cemetery, Hamilton instructs his men to quickly dig up Alice's grave. After they've finished escorting the vicar, Forbes tells Tompson they'd best get back to the cemetery, rightly thinking the attack was a diversion. In the cemetery, no sooner has Alice's coffin been unearthed and opened, when Hamilton and his men hear the sound of approaching, running footsteps. They run for it, but Forbes and Tompson manage to catch a very brief glimpse of them when they round the corner back to the cemetery. Tompson is about to chase after them, when Forbes directs his attention to Alice's grave. They rush to find her open coffin, and as they watch, the skin of her flesh slowly decays as the seconds pass, until her eyes snap open. The two of them back away, as Alice climbs out of her grave, stands erect, and slowly approaches with a disturbing smile on her face. The back of Forbes foot hits a discarded shovel on the ground and he quickly grabs it and swings it, decapitating Alice and traumatizing Tompson to the point where, after recoiling and hiding his eyes against a guardrail, he collapses to the ground.

Some time later, he wakes up in the cemetery alone to find it filled with swirling mists and with Alice's decapitated body still lying on the ground. He steps along past her severed head, only to see hands clawing through and faces rising up through the soil of the graves all around him. Within seconds, he's totally surrounded by zombies, who shuffle menacingly towards him, stomping through a puddle of blood on the ground from Alice's decapitation, and push him back towards a small tree, where one waits to take him from behind. As soon as the one zombie grabs the back of his neck, Tompson bolts up off of a couch in his home, and Forbes and the vicar come in to check on him. Forbes comforts him, telling him he's had a nightmare, but has to add that the part about Alice becoming a zombie actually happened, that he fainted after she was decapitated and they brought him back home. However, he assures him that they reburied Alice properly and the vicar gave her absolution. Once the vicar leaves, Forbes asks Tompson to tell him about his dream, saying doing so tends to help, and he tells him, "I dreamed I saw the dead rise. All the graves in the churchyard opened, and the dead came out. All the graves were empty." That last statement appears to strike a nerve with Forbes, as in the next scene, he's had Sergeant Swift and his constable unearth all the graves. Sure enough, they're empty. Swift demands to know what's happened to the bodies but Forbes tells him they need to get the graves filled in before any of the villagers find out. Once they've accomplished that task, Forbes asks to speak with Tom Martinus and they escort him over to the jailhouse. But, when they reach Martinus' cell, he's nowhere to be found. Forbes wonders if he's now become a zombie like the others, adding that if not, he likely will soon. He then asks if Martinus had any visitors the day before and the constable remembers that Squire Hamilton stopped by to talk with him about something. Though he didn't listen in on their conversation, the constable comments that Hamilton, at one point, fetched a glass of water for Martinus, only to have broken it. Forbes correctly guesses that Martinus cut himself on the broken shards but leaves without telling them how he knows that little fact.

Arriving back at the Tompson house, Forbes becomes somewhat panicked when it appears as though Sylvia isn't there, but she then responds to his calls for her. He then asks how the cut on her finger is and she says it's almost healed, but doesn't allow him to look at it, quickly heading upstairs when he motions for it. Having a bad feeling, Forbes tells Tompson when he comes in that he shouldn't let Sylvia out of his sight during the time he's out, saying she's in danger. He heads out the door and, after nightfall has come, makes his way up to Hamilton's house. He rings the bell and is greeted by Denver. Pushing his way past him and into the house, he asks to see Hamilton, and ignores Denver saying that he's busy, stating, as he hangs his hat and walking cane on the arms of a large, stuffed grizzly bear, "I, too, am a busy man, but as I have found the time to come all the way out here to see him, I think that he could come out to see me. Will you tell him that, please?" Denver reluctantly heads upstairs to tell Hamilton of this and Forbes takes the initiative and unlocks a window by the front door, leaving it very slightly ajar. He heads back into the den, as Hamilton appears on the stairs, demanding to know what he wants. Forbes entices him to come down the stairs, saying he wants to talk to him... alone. Hamilton then tells Denver to leave them, and, once they're alone, Hamilton, again, asks Forbes what he wants to talk with him about. He answers, "About Alice Tompson, about young Martinus, about my daughter, Mr. Hamilton... And about many others who should be at rest now, at rest in their graves. What has happened to them?" Hamilton denies knowing what he's talking about but Forbes says he knows he does, inquiring about his time abroad, specifically in Haiti, and if he learned anything about voodoo there. Angered by these questions, Hamilton demands he leave, but he refuses to. However, he's forced to when Denver shows up with the rest of the Young Bloods, who approach him menacingly. Grabbing his hat and cane, he bids Hamilton good night and walks out the front door. Once he's gone, Hamilton tells his men that he's ready for the next ceremony, and rushes upstairs, while they head down the corridor next to the staircase. Outside, Forbes waits until the light inside the house goes out and then sneaks through the window he left open. Walking to the den, he watches Hamilton come down the stairs and make his way through the corridor. He cautiously follows his path, as Hamilton lights a candle in his study and removes the materials he uses in his ceremonies, such as the high priest shroud and mask. Forbes listens to him rustling around in the study before heading on, as Hamilton holds up the voodoo doll meant to represent Sylvia; over at the Tompson house, Sylvia, who's knitting, feels what's happening and glances at Tompson sitting nearby. By the time Forbes sneaks into the study, Hamilton has already exited through the secret panel.

Dressed in his outfit, Hamilton makes his way through the mines, pushing past the enslaved zombies who are being repeatedly whipped as they're forced to mine the tin. Beyond the main chamber, he comes across the now zombified Tom Martinus and motions for his crony to send him out. He then walks over to the table in the ceremonial chamber, his presence prompting the drummers to begin their work, and he holds up the voodoo doll tied to Sylvia and starts chanting an incantation. At the Tompson house, Sylvia repeats the incantation, but not quietly enough, as Tompson overhears her. He asks her what she said but she mindlessly turns to him and tells her it was nothing, prompting him to go back to the book he was looking through. Hamilton then commands, "Come to me. You will come to me." Sylvia stands up from her chair, then acts as if she's about to faint, spurring Tompson to jump up and help her keep her balance. She asks for some water and he sits her down while he goes to fetch it. Once he's left the room, she gets up and quickly but quietly slips out the front door. He immediately sees that she's gone and calls for her, but she's already halfway down the street. Back in Hamilton's study, Forbes heads over to the desk and is startled when the grandfather clock in the room chimes very loudly. He starts rifling through the desk, sifting through various papers in the drawers, though none of them appear to mean anything. But then, he finds a drawer that can only be opened through a secret switch on the desk's underside, and when he hits it, he finds the tiny coffins containing the voodoo dolls, and opens one to find a doll covered with blood. He then finds two more such dolls in the coffins that were sitting next to the one he was just looking at. Meanwhile, at the outside of the mine, Sylvia meets the undead Martinus.

Forbes packs all the tiny coffins up in a satchel and is about to leave, when he hears the sounds of approaching footsteps. He blows out the lit candle on the desk and ducks behind it, but when he waits for the person to enter the room, he hears the footsteps approach and then recede. But, just when it looks like he's in the clear, Denver emerges from the secret panel behind him and comes at him with a knife. Hearing him, Forbes swings around and manages to grab his arm and knock him to the floor with the satchel. The two of them get into a struggle that sends Forbes crashing through a wooden table and he, again, uses the satchel to fight Denver off (in one shot, a modern day fire extinguisher can be seen up against the wall behind Forbes, likely meant as part of the safety precautions for the second part of this sequence coming up). He also manages to hold Denver back when he tries to stab him in the face, and although he gets shoved back and slams against the desk, he grabs a brass candle-holder that fell to the floor and uses it as both a shield and makeshift bludgeon, lunging and swinging at Denver with it. He bangs into the grandfather clock and Denver tries to stab him, but he sticks the knife in a wooden shelf instead. Forbes bashes him in the back of the head with the candle-holder, causing him to fall towards the fireplace, which sets the large, loose sleeve of his ceremonial robe ablaze. While he's distracted by that, Forbes grabs the knife and stabs it into his left shoulder. In shock, Denver makes one last futile move towards Forbes but quickly expires from his injuries. Forbes then grabs his satchel and runs for the study's door, only to find it locked from the outside. Seeing that the fire is now starting to spread, he goes for the window, only to find bars on the other side. Desperate, he runs to the secret panel and pounds on it, trying to find a way to open it, while elsewhere, Tompson follows Sylvia's trail to the mines. Forbes is unable to find out how to open the secret panel, and with the fire now having spread across the floor and starting to engulf the desk, he runs back to the door and pounds on the glass window, yelling for help, and tries a switch he finds next to the door, but it does nothing. He even rips off the window's drapery and tries to smother the flames, but by this point they're too large and out of control for it to work. Trapped, he helplessly leans up against the corner of the door.

The Martinus zombie arrives down in the mines with Sylvia using an old elevator, and picks her up bridal style and carries her to the ceremonial chamber. Hamilton motions for him to put her down and, after he does, he removes his mask. Sylvia's blurred vision from her trance clears somewhat, as Hamilton comes around, picks her up, and places her on the table. He bends down and kisses her, as the Young Bloods head to join him in there. Back in his study, Forbes is still trapped with the ever-spreading fire, when Hamilton's servant comes through the door. Forbes immediately grabs him, putting him in an arm-lock, and demands to know where Hamilton is. The servant feigns ignorance, but when Forbes threatens to throw him into the fire, he tells him that Hamilton is in the mines. Tompson, meanwhile, reaches the mine and, finding Sylvia's handkerchief, as well as seeing that the old pulleys are working, rushes to the elevator, as Forbes makes his way there as well. Down in the ceremonial chamber, the Young Bloods join Hamilton as he, after washing his hands, unsheathes a large knife, the sight of which terrifies Sylvia, snapping her totally out of her entrancement. Tompson reaches the mine through the use of the elevator and rushes past the zombies, who are starting to spontaneously smoke and burn, due to their voodoo dolls having been left near the fire in Hamilton's study. They start smacking at the smoking parts of their bodies and become more frantic when it doesn't work. Tompson rushes into the ceremonial chamber as Hamilton is about to stab Sylvia, but he distracts him just as she screams. He runs at Hamilton and tries to disarm him, but is restrained by the Young Bloods, and left open to being stabbed himself. The zombies, who are now on fire like their voodoo dolls, stumble into the chamber, causing enough confusion and chaos to where Tompson is let go and rushes to untie Sylvia. Hamilton yells for the Young Bloods to get to the shaft and, avoiding a zombie, joins them when they rush out. Tompson manages to untie Sylvia and, after pushing away a couple of zombies, the two of them rush down the corridor. The Young Bloods are cornered and attacked by the zombies, while Hamilton manages to slip through. Forbes reaches the tunnels using the elevator, just in time for Tompson and Sylvia to come rushing at him. Hamilton tries to attack Tompson from behind with a large stone but ends up striking a zombie instead and falls to the ground. Tompson and Sylvia join Forbes in the elevator and close the door, as Hamilton futilely runs to it and yells for them to let him in as well. He's grabbed from behind and pulled away, as the elevator heads up. A cave-in starts in the tunnel, where the zombies are stumbling around crazily, burning, and the place itself begins to catch fire and explode. Forbes, Sylvia, and Tompson manage to make it to the surface and get a safe distance from the mine. They watch as a large explosion erupts through the mine-shaft and causes the elevator to completely collapse, before heading back to the safety of the village, the plague now vanquished.

James Bernard really took the ritualistic, tribal aesthetics of the film's subject matter to heart when writing his score, as he makes use of native drumming and percussion throughout it, with his main title theme being a kinetic, relentless percussion, accompanied by blaring horns that blast out a typically bombastic theme. Most of the time, though, the foreign, tribal pieces of music are used mainly as actual instrumentation during the ceremonies or for background accentuation, sometimes with a more familiar-sounding piece playing along with it. Case in point, when Sylvia encounters the zombie of John Martinus at the mines, which has some hollow drumming that's heard amidst a whirling string piece that then transitions into really loud horns when she sees the zombie. If you haven't already guessed, James Bernard has most returned to his traditional "un-subtle" self here, as the horror and action scenes are all very blatant in their scoring. Tompson's nightmare about the dead rising around him is scored with a high-pitched, otherworldly-sounding piece played against a constant, low thrumming and a horn bit that builds and builds and crescendos when the one zombie grabs Tompson from behind. Horns are also used to accentuate the horror of what's going on in the mines, while Forbes' fight with Denver and the subsequent blaze in the study is played against a string piece that starts out low and grows higher and higher in pitch as the situation becomes more dire. And, as you might expect, the music during the climax is just as bombastic as it can be. Really, the only parts of the score that are somewhat subtle are the truly atmospheric bits for the more quiet, suspenseful scenes. That's not meant as a criticism, though, as, like with many of Bernard's scores, the music is often very exciting and thrilling to listen to.

For Hammer's only foray into zombies, The Plague of the Zombies ultimately proves to be a well-crafted and enjoyable flick. Its strengths are its visuals, like the production design, cinematography, and the creepy makeups for the zombies themselves, as well as good instances of atmosphere, many exciting and memorable scenes, particularly during the climax, and a well-done music score, and it also has the benefit of some deeper layers to its story that you don't often get with Hammer films. Where it runs into problems, in my opinion, are some of the characters and the actors: Andre Morell makes for a capable lead but I would have preferred someone with a bit more charisma, I don't really care about Sylvia or Tompson, and Squire Hamilton doesn't do it for me as a villain. There are some other minor quibbles, like the bad day-for-night cinematography and the occasional lackluster costume and continuity error, and some may find the lack of threat from the actual zombies to be problematic, but the characters are really my only bit of contention. Other than that, this is a Hammer film I would put on the recommended list, but somewhere in the middle, specifically, as I like it and think it's good, but I don't totally love it.