Zombie Flicks: Zombies on Broadway (1945)

This one really sounds like a winner, doesn't it? It was another movie in that four-film Karloff and Lugosi DVD set which also contained You'll Find Out, and was the only that Lugosi had to himself, which doubly sucks since he's actually a supporting character here. Unlike You'll Find Out and The Boogie Man Will Get You, I'd known of Zombies on Broadway for many years, thanks to The History of Sci-Fi and Horror, but I knew little about it other than it featured Lugosi, as well as Darby Jones playing virtually the same character he did in I Walked With a Zombie, and, according to Butch Patrick's narration, it wasn't that good. When I finally got to see it in that set, I had to agree that it was pretty lame. It's not one of the worst horror-comedies ever, and it's far from the worst thing Lugosi was ever part of, but it's still a pretty lackluster flick, starring a comedy duo who are very much a wannabe Abbot and Costello with none of their comic genius, okay but hardly impressive production values, and humor and comedy that never quite hit the mark. Lugosi, as always, gives his absolute best in the role of the villain but it's such a shallow role that his talents are ultimately wasted, and seeing him outwitted in the manner he is comes off as something of an insult. Other than him and some interesting connections to I Walked With a Zombie, there's little else to recommend it, save for only the most diehard old film or zombie movie fanatics.

New York nightclub owner Ace Miller is opening a new club on Friday, May 13th, one with a unique gimmick: the Zombie Hut, which promises to feature a genuine zombie. Miller's press agents, Jerry Miles and Mike Strager, plan to make up a former boxer as a zombie since no one's ever seen an actual one, but they make the mistake of telling Miller that, for radio publicity, they went to Douglas Walker, who's a well-known personality but can't stand Miller. Even worse, Walker stops by the club and both reveals that he knows the man they've hired to play the zombie, as well as makes his intentions to publicly humiliate Miller crystal clear. Enraged, Miller, who's also a gangster, threatens to have Jerry and Mike killed if they don't produce a real zombie on opening night. The two of them go to a museum and meet with Prof. Hawkins, the curator, who tells them of an old school chum of his, Dr. Renault, who long ago traveled to San Sebastian, an island in the Caribbean that's said to be the only place where real zombies can be found. He advises them to go to the island, find Renault, if he's still alive, and have him tell them what he knows. Instead, the boys attempt to skip town to California, only to run into Miller, who knows what they found out, as he had one of his henchmen tail them, and orders them onto a tramp steamer leaving for San Sebastian that night. Arriving on the island, the boys are spied upon by Joseph, who works for the very much alive Dr. Renault and who, in the laboratory in his large house within the island interior, is trying to create zombies in the same efficient manner as the natives with their voodoo practices. Stopping by the nearby cafe, Jerry and Mike meet Jean La Dance, a lovely cabaret dancer, who promises to lead them to a possible source of zombies and voodoo in exchange for passage off the island. But, when she leads them into the jungle, they're followed by Kalaga, a native zombie under Renault's control. Kalaga abducts Jean and brings her to the doctor as an intended test subject, while Jerry and Mike are pursued by the natives and find their way to the doctor's home themselves. Renault acts as an accommodating host, allowing them to stay the night, but denies knowing anything about zombies. Not wanting them to return to the United States and tell anyone that he's still alive, Renault now plans to use them as guinea pigs along with Jean.

Zombies on Broadway was directed by Gordon Douglas, who, nine years later, would direct the giant monster classic, Them!, over at Warner Bros. It was part of a span of low budget films, mostly comedies, Douglas made at RKO in the early to late 40's, including four films based on the popular radio show, The Great Gildersleeve, 1944's Girl Rush, which featured the same comedy duo that appear in this film, and 1948's If You Knew Susie, as well as entries in the studio's popular Falcon and Dick Tracy series, specifically 1944's The Falcon in Hollywood and 1946's Dick Tracy vs. Cueball. Douglas left RKO in 1948, first working for Columbia, where he directed, among other films, the 1950 Robin Hood film, Rogues of Sherwood Forest, and the swashbuckling adventure, Fortunes of Captain Blood, before moving on to Warner Bros., where he had his greatest period of success. Besides Them!, he made several films with James Cagney, like 1950's Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, 1951's Only the Valiant (which also starred Gregory Peck) and Come Fill the Cup; several movies with Alan Ladd, like 1952's The Iron Mistress, 1955's The McConnell Story, 1956's Santiago, and 1957's The Big Land; Mara Maru, with Errol Flynn; and Young at Heart, with Doris Day and Frank Sinatra, among many other movies. By the time he retired from filmmaking in 1977, he'd had a career that spanned five decades. He died in 1993, at the age of 85.

When I described the comedy duo here, Wally Brown and Alan Carney, as a "wannabe Abbot and Costello," I meant it in that it's what RKO wanted them to be after seeing the success Universal had been having with Bud and Lou since the beginning of the decade. However, unlike their inspiration, who worked as a team from the mid-30's to the mid-50's, Brown and Carney only lasted for eight movies made over four years (the last of which also featured Bela Lugosi). While I haven't seen the other films they appeared in together, judging from Zombies on Broadway, I can say that, while they may have been profitable enough for RKO, they were very much lame clones of Abbot and Costello. It's the exact same dynamic: Brown's Jerry Miles is a tall, fast-talking blowhard who's the boss of the two, despite not being as smart as he thinks he is, while Carney's Mike Strager (in many of the movies they starred in together, their characters had these same names) is short, fat, and dopey, coming off as even dumber than Costello sometimes was. Jerry tries to pass off the best-sounding ideas they come up with as his own, only to then blame them on Mike when they fall apart, while some of Mike's actual ideas, such as looking in a mail order catalogue for a zombie, are beyond stupid. Also, Mike, predictably, is a real scaredy-cat and, as often happened in Abbot and Costello's horror comedies, there are instances where he sees something scary, like an actual zombie, only for it to disappear when Jerry comes running, making him think he's seeing things. Other familiar gags and routines with these two include them badmouthing their boss, unaware that he's behind them; the two of them bumbling through the jungle while being followed with by the zombie Kalaga and Jerry, at one pointing, holding the zombie's hand, thinking it's Mike; the two of them digging holes, only for Mike to unknowingly fling the dirt from his hole over into Jerry's; Mike freaking out at the sight of Kalaga while they're in their room at Renault's place; and Mike ultimately being used in the mad doctor's experiments.

Mike is injected with Renault's zombie serum and becomes bug-eyed and mindless, with no will of his own and only able to act under the directions of others. Renault then tries to use Jerry in his experiments, along with the captured Jean La Dance, but thanks to her intervention, as well as the antics of a little monkey, he's able to escape and they manage to make it back to the ship along with the zombified Mike. Thanks to him, they're able to get past the angry natives, and Jerry intends to

use him as the genuine zombie for the opening of the Zombie Hut. Unfortunately, when they arrive at the club on opening night and wait for Ace Miller to meet them in a dressing room, the serum wears off and Mike returns to normal. Jerry still tries to pass Mike off as an actual zombie, but it goes down the tubes when Miller kicks Mike in the leg and he reacts by hopping and yelling in pain. Miller is about ready to kill them both for the public humiliation he's going to receive because of their foul-up, but Jean injects him with more of the serum and he himself becomes the show's star zombie. However, Jerry doesn't escape totally unscathed, as just as he and Jean are about to become an item, he sits on the syringe containing the serum and ends the movie now a zombie himself.

Jean La Dance (Anne Jeffreys) is a cabaret singer and dancer whom Jerry and Mike meet at a cafe on San Sebastian and who, overhearing them talking about looking for real zombies, meets up with them when her act, which involves throwing knives, is concluded. Having been stuck on the island for two years and eager to leave due to there being other dangers there besides zombies (you can probably guess what she's alluding to), Jean tells them that, while she's not sure if there are any truly there, she has a feeling the voodoo drums she hears in the night have something to do with them and offers to lead them to the source. She has them follow her out into the jungle, unaware that the zombie Kalaga is following them on orders to bring Dr. Renault more specimens to experiment on. When they reach the site of a voodoo ceremony, Jean, unbeknownst to the boys, is abducted by Kalaga and take to Renault's home. Before Renault can inject her with his serum that turns people into zombies, he's interrupted by Jerry and Mike finding their way onto the grounds and decides to experiment on them first, just in case the serum has the same lethal effects it's had before. Jean is locked in a hidden room in the lab and is later tied up and gagged by Renault's henchman, Joseph, in order to keep her quiet. However, Joseph sucks at tying knots, and Jean is able to easily slip out of the ropes, knock him unconscious, save Jerry when Renault tries to inject him with the serum, and the two of them work together to defeat Renault before escaping with the zombified Mike. As promised, she's allowed to sail with them off San Sebastian and returns with them to New York in order to perform at the Zombie Hut. When Mike comes out of his zombie state at the worst possible time, Jean injects Ace Miller with the serum before he can kill the boys, but she's unable to save Jerry from sitting on the syringe and getting turned into a zombie himself at the end. As you can tell, as a female lead, Jean's a fairly shallow character but, if nothing else, she has moments of being proactive and helpful.

Another shallow, typical character is Ace Miller (Sheldon Leonard), Jerry and Mike's gangster boss who, at first, is impressed with the job they've done getting publicity for the Zombie Hut and is willing to go along with their idea of making someone up as a zombie, but he gets steamed at them when they tell him they went to his archenemy, Douglas Walker, for radio coverage. When Walker comes by, mockingly tells Miller he's going to publicly humiliate him, and reveals that he knows the person they're making up as a zombie, ruining their ultimate plan, Miller warns them to get a real zombie by opening night or he'll have his henchmen, Gus and Benny, bump them off. To ensure they do as he says, he has them tailed and learns what they found out at the museum regarding the island of San Sebastian. Before they can escape to California, Miller pays them a visit in their apartment, lying hidden on their back-facing couch and listening to them badmouth him before making his presence known. Casually holding a gun in his hand, he tells them they're going to San Sebastian that very night, courtesy of a tramp steamer, and has Gus and Benny make sure they don't miss the boat. When they return to New York on the Zombie Hut's opening night, Miller, knowing that Walker is in the audience with some experts on zombies and is ready to humiliate him, is himself about ready to kill Mike and Jerry. And when the serum wears off on Mike before Miller heads backstage to see them, he comes close to making good on his threat. That's when Jean injects him with the serum and he himself becomes the show's genuine zombie.

When Mike and Jerry go to the museum to learn where they can find zombies, they meet Prof. Hopkins (Ian Wolfe) and, posing as fellow scientists, ask him about it. After dramatically intoning, "Zombies," Hopkins tells them about the island of San Sebastian and Dr. Renault, whom he attended university with, advising them to seek him out. When asked about Renault, Hopkins describes him as, "A great scientist. Yes. Some people said he

was crazy. I don't think he was crazy. Well, uh, not very crazy, anyway." While they're talking, Worthington, the museum janitor, is cleaning an open mummy case behind Hopkins, when the mummy falls out and onto Mike, who promptly panics. Hopkins, however, is more concerned about the mummy, whom he calls Cleo, and attends to her as if she were alive, asking if she's alright, gently admonishing her for "popping out," and assures Mike that she's actually very friendly. With that, Mike and Jerry decide they've heard enough and rush out; after they're gone, Hopkins notes how "weird" they are to Worthington. Speaking of Worthington (Nick Stewart), he's a typical wide-eyed, easily scared African-American man you often see in films during this period, especially horror-comedies like this, and he's also a tad effeminate, too. After Jerry and Mike talk their way into the museum, despite it being after hours, and tell him they're scientists like Hopkins, Worthington leads them down to the professor's office, but freaks Mike out when he talks about how he tends to work with skeletons and mummies. Mike says they'd best wait until he's done, but Worthington tells them, "Sometimes, he don't come out for days and days. I declare, that man does love skeletons." After he introduces them to Hopkins, he sticks around, eavesdropping on their discussion, and nearly runs off when Hopkins describes zombies as the living dead, telling him, "Please don't say that livin' dead stuff, boss! I'm one of the livin' livin', but you gives me the feelin' that, if I stays around here, I'm gonna be one of the dead dead!" He continues nervously listening while he cleans up around Hopkins' office, causing the mummy to fall in Mike's lap, and when Hopkins describes them as "weird fellows" after they leave, Worthington has an expression that seems to say, "Look who's talking."

Whenever you see Bela Lugosi, you can be assured of one thing: even if the role is very small or has little substance to it, he's going to give it nothing but his absolute best, and his role here as Dr. Renault is no exception on both accounts. Renault is a dime-a-dozen mad scientist, working in seclusion on San Sebastian, trying to create zombies in the same manner as the natives, but keeps running into problems, as his zombies either die or the state doesn't last. On the same day that Jerry and Mike arrive on the island, Renault receives a chemical he hopes will be the answer to his problem and sends Kalaga, a zombie native he's had under his control for twenty years, to bring him new test subjects, telling him to go for those that aren't native. This prompts him to go after Jean La Dance, and when she's brought to Renault, the doctor comes very close to injecting her with the serum. However, Jerry and Mike's blundering onto the property stops him and he has to play the part of an accommodating host to them, although he becomes enraged at hearing the name of Prof. Hopkins, growling that he hates him. He also denies knowing anything about zombies, saying he came to the island to study a coconut blight, and says of Hopkins, "Hopkins always was strange. People said he was crazy, but I don't think he was crazy. Not very crazy, anyway." Telling them to make themselves comfortable while he heads back down to his laboratory, he comes up with the idea to test his serum on them first, planning on keeping Jean around for further testing should it not work on them. He has Joseph manipulate the boys into digging graves for themselves in that case and, when Mike falls through a trapdoor while digging and winds up in the room in the basement where Kalaga sleeps in a coffin, Renault decides to use him first. He has Kalaga go upstairs and bring Mike down, injecting him with the serum. Once he's a zombie, he exerts total control over Mike, telling him to go back up to his room and sending Kalaga after Jerry next. But, thanks to the intervention of Jean and a little monkey who's been tagging along with the group, Jerry manages to escape being inoculated. Renault chases him and Jean throughout the house, and when Jean accidentally smashes a vase over Jerry's head in the confusion, Renault comes very close to recapturing them. The way he's defeated, though, makes him look really dumb: Jean calls for him and he turns his back on Jerry, who comes to and jumps him. Jerry manages to disarm him of his pistol and Renault, in a panic, yells for Kalaga, telling him to kill them, but Kalaga, randomly, smashes Renault over the head with a shovel, carries him outside, and tosses him into a freshly dug grave.

Renault's henchman, Joseph (Joseph Vitale), sees Jerry and Mike arrive on San Sebastian and tells a calypso singer to let him know where the two of them, obviously meaning he intends to bring them to Renault to use in the experiments. And yet, Joseph never mentions them to Renault and Renault, by extension, doesn't specifically tell Kalaga to go after them, making that first scene with Joseph pointless, save for his picking up a package for Renault. (Later, it seems as though Joseph did tell Renault about them at some point, and he claims to have tried to find them earlier, but in the end, it doesn't matter, really.) Kalaga's abduction of Jean gets Joseph far more excited than Jerry and Mike would, as he clearly has an interest in her that's unscientific, which doesn't go unnoticed by Renault. However, Jean is the one who does Joseph in, as she manages to wriggle out of the ropes he ties her up with and knocks him out with a whack over the head.

In the Val Lewton movie, I Walked With a Zombie, Darby Jones made for a very eerie presence as Carrefour, the tall, creepy zombie guardian of the area where the voodoo worshipers gathered. Here, he plays virtually the same character in the form of Kalaga, the native zombie Renault has under his control, but since this is a corny horror-comedy, you'd expect him to not be creepy whatsoever. However, like Renault, he's not played for laughs at all. He's still imposing due to his great height, is made out to be a real threat to Jerry, Mike, and Jean in how he stalks them at the cafe and follows them into the jungle, zeroing in on Jean specifically to take back to Renault, and there are shots of him with those big, bulging eyes that are still kind of unsettling. However, he does little else other than mindlessly follow Renault's orders, bringing him whoever he instructs him to and filling up the makeshift graves to keep people from falling through the hidden trapdoor the way Mike did. Then, during the climax, when Renault orders him to kill Jerry and Jean, Kalaga, for no reason, turns on his master, smashing him over the head with a shovel, carrying him outside, and dropping him into one of the graves, making me wonder what I missed (if anything). It seems like the writers were faced with a quickly-approaching deadline and hastily came up with a way to dispose of Renault.

Another link between this film and I Walked With a Zombie, in addition to the setting being the island of San Sebastian (which also featured in The Ghost Ship, another Val Lewton production), is the appearance of Sir Lancelot as a calypso singer who greets Jerry and Mike when they arrive on the island, singing a pleasant and welcoming song, one which describes the island as being one of "golden dreams." But, after they've tipped him and walked away, he, as he did in I Walked With a Zombie, begins singing a much more macabre song, describing how the two of them wouldn't be so happy if they were aware of who was watching them (Joseph) and that, if they stay until the full moon comes out, they won't have a chance to escape, ending on the line, "And blood on the ground will mark their fate." Both of the songs he sings are in the same melody as the one he sung in the Lewton film, and it looks as if he's going to be a recurring character when Joseph orders him to keep tabs on Jerry and Mike, but, as I said, nothing comes of that and the singer is never seen again after that one scene.

In some ways, Zombies on Broadway is kind of a pseudo-sequel to I Walked With a Zombie, but one thing the two movies don't share is the earlier one's surprisingly sophisticated look, given its low budget. This movie kind of wears its low production quality on its sleeve, with unremarkable and mostly flat cinematography by Jack MacKenzie (who, ironically, did shoot one of Val Lewton's movies, Isle of the Dead), instances of stock footage, and sets that, while fair enough, aren't that memorable in their design or creation. It's obvious the entire film was shot at RKO Studios,

especially in the jungle scenes, which were reused from the studio's Tarzan series and, while coming off as nicely spacious, they look very much like a sound-stage, including the little spot where the trio comes across the natives practicing their voodoo. The port of San Sebastian, the immediate exterior of the cafe, its interior, and the exteriors of Dr. Renault's house and the property around it fare better, again due to those sets' widths, and the interior of the Zombie Hut nightclub is okay, going for the tropical island theme with fake

palm trees and dancers dressed in stereotypical native garb, with grass skirts, leis, and flowers in their hair, but it's nothing amazing. Prof. Hopkins office in the museum isn't that memorable, either, and is nowhere near "the creepiest place you ever did see," as Worthington describes it, having little more than some old bones, relics, the sarcophagus containing the mummy he calls Cleo, and a stuffed ape that's another leftover prop, this one from You'll Find Out. Worst of all, even Dr. Renault's

home and laboratory are nothing to write home about. The immediate interior, such as the foyer and the sitting room, look fine, and there's a spiraling staircase leading up to the second floor, where the guestrooms are, but Renault's laboratory down in the cellar looks quite small and unremarkable, decorated with all sorts of chemistry equipment, like test tubes, beakers, and flasks, some of which have bubbling, steaming liquid

in them, and a table onto which his test subjects are strapped. One section of wall is actually a sliding panel that opens up to a brick room with a small alcove in one wall that holds the coffin wherein Kalaga rests. When Jerry and Mike are made to unknowingly dig their own graves in the yard, Mike falls through a hidden trapdoor that leads into an underground area where he's able to look through a split in the wall and see Kalaga rise from

his coffin... and yet, when he runs up the stairs, he somehow comes out of an open door on the upper side of the house. And speaking of Kalaga, he's able to take a hidden path through the house that leads to a panel behind the bookcase in Mike and Jerry's guestroom, allowing him to easily abduct and spirit them away.

As you could probably guess when I was talking about the character of Worthington, this is a movie that, inevitably, has some stereotypical depictions of African-Americans and other ethnic groups. It's not as egregious as other movies of the period, and Worthington and Sam, the guy who Jerry and Mike initially plan to make up as a zombie, aren't that horribly stereotypical (although Sam, who's wearing white makeup for the act, does say "boss" a number of times), but it is there. Plus, the natives of San Sebastian who create zombies through their

voodoo are depicted as primitive, spear and shield-wielding savages in the vein of the natives of Skull Island, and voodoo itself is, of course, depicted as nothing but black magic. Unless you're one of those oversensitive SJWs who are looking to be offended by everything, you're not likely to be upset by any of the stuff in this movie (though, the moment where Mike disguises himself as one of the natives by rubbing soot on his face and they actually fall for it is borderline), but I figured I might as well acknowledge it, even if it's the least of the movie's problems.

When Jerry and Mike blunder into the native voodoo ceremony, there's a moment where Jerry hides in a wicker basket that was full of monkey and shoos all but one of them out. This monkey, who's wearing little circus-style clothes and looks like one of the monkeys featured in the little show in The Son of Kong, becomes a recurring character all his own, as he follows the boys to Dr. Renault's house and, after Kalaga takes Mike away, slips into the bed he was going to sleep in. After Jerry is taken down to the laboratory to be experimented

on, the monkey finds his way down there and saves his life by taking the syringe containing the zombie serum. While Renault tries to get the syringe away from him, Jean is able to sneak in and unstrap Jerry. But then, when Renault sees this and struggles with Jerry, attempting to stab him, the monkey smashes a skull on Jerry's head, knocking him out and seemingly dooming him, until Jean knocks Renault on the head as well. When the two of them escape with the zombified Mike, the monkey follows them

back to the ship, acting like a zombie in the same manner Jerry and Jean do in order to slip by the natives. And, at the end of the movie, the monkey saves Jerry and Mike's necks when Ace Miller is about to do them in by giving Jean the syringe with the serum, enabling her to inject Miller and turn him into a zombie. There are some other animals that appear in the film, such as some cockatoos and Joseph's barking and howling guard-dogs, but none are as memorable as the monkey. However, there is a moment in the jungle where Mike gets shoved to the ground by Kalaga and falls right next to a real alligator, which opens its mouth and growls at him. I bring this moment up because it looks as if they did that for real, rather than matting Alan Carney into the same scene as the alligator, and, unless that gator was really docile, I can't imagine how dangerous that must have been.

According to this movie, all zombies, whether they're created through voodoo or scientific means, have two things in common. One is big, bulging eyes that, as you can see, look scary on some and goofy on others. The other is how, as Renault explains, they exist in, "A state of suspended animation... capable of functioning only under thought suggestions not [their] own," allowing Renault to have full control over Kalaga and Jerry to get the zombified Mike to do what he says. They always look straight ahead, walk in a fairly slow, shambling manner, and while there are moments where they break from their

mindlessness, with Mike smiling as Jerry helplessly raves while being carried off by Kalaga and the previously mentioned moment where Kalaga turns on Renault, they mostly just do what they're ordered to. Going back to notion of zombies being created through different means, there's an interesting plotpoint about Renault being unable to replicate through his science what the natives are able to do with their voodoo ceremonies, as his test subjects either eventually come

out of their zombie states or die altogether. Joseph even goes as far as to suggest the reason for his failures is because true zombies have supernatural, possibly even satanic, origins, which is why Kalaga has remained in the zombie state in the twenty years since Renault took him, but Renault derides this is as nonsense, confident that he can accomplish what the natives are able to. That could be an interesting angle to explore further but, this movie being what it is, it's instead only brought up for exposition purposes.

For about the first fifteen minutes of the movie, the comedy, such as it is, comes from the dynamics of Jerry and Mike's characters, with their publicity plan for the Zombie Hut going south when Douglas Walker gets involved. There's a hint of what's to come later when they meet with Prof. Hopkins and Jerry gets spooked a couple of times by the weird stuff in his office, and it culminates when they try to skip town, only to find Ace Miller waiting for them in their apartment. Not knowing he's

lying on their couch, they talk about how they're going to put one over on him and badmouth him, talking about how he deserves a good punch in the face and Mike adding he'd do it himself if he had time, when they see him standing behind them, holding a gun. Instead of out and out threatening them, he passively-aggressively tells them they're leaving on a boat for San Sebastian that very night and asks them to pick out a really good zombie for him. And to make sure they get on the boat, he has

Benny and Gus drive them to the harbor. Arriving there, Jerry tries to escape by pretending he's going to go buy some cigars but Benny tells him they have cigars and anything else they could want in a package they hand to him. Just as they're about to walk up the gangplank, Benny shakes hands with Mike, only to zap him with an electric hand-buzzer, much to his aggravation. Gus also warns them not to try to skip out on their job and that they'd best be on the boat when it returns to

New York. In what seems like no time at all, they reach the island, and when Mike asks the captain if it's a nice place, he answers, "Huh! To an undertaker, a cemetery's a nice place!", and walks off laughing. But, when they depart the ship, the island doesn't look that threatening, especially when Mike sees a nice-looking native girl walk by and they're greeted by the calypso singer and his pleasant tune. Of course, after they've paid the man for his song and walked away, he starts a singing a more macabre and doom-laden version, as we're introduced to Joseph, who tells him to keep tabs on Mike and Jerry, before going to pick up a package for Dr. Renault. (There's a moment where the image suddenly becomes darker, as if they forgot it was supposed to be a night scene and put the filter in, then decided to forget about it, as it quickly goes back to normal.)

Jerry and Mike head into a cafe, are shown to a table, and there's a gag here I didn't get at all at first: Mike says he's going to order something "tripical," and when Jerry tries to correct him, that he meant "tropical," Mike says, "No, I mean tripical. I'll have a tripical rum punch. I'm thirsty." It wasn't until the waiter went to the bar and put in their orders as, "Two rum punches, one triple," that it hit me, and I had to groan over how corny it was. We're then introduced to Jean La Dance,

who sings a short number and then starts doing an act where she takes a set of knives, dances around with them, and randomly throws one at a target she decides. For instance, she throws one at a guy with a cigar in his mouth, sticking it to the wall, and when Mike and Jerry see that, they promptly remove their own cigars from their mouths. The guy who runs the cafe is suspicious about the boys and tells his waiter to find out what they want on San Sebastian when he serves their drinks;

Jean then throws another knife and smashes a bottle in a guy's hand as he's taking a swig (that wouldn't impress me, that would piss me off!). The waiter brings Mike and Jerry their drinks and inquires about what they're doing on the island. He manages to get out of them their intention to buy something and asks if it's any kind of fruit or tobacco, both of which he gets a "no" to. Mike suggests they tell the waiter what it is they're after and, while Jerry is initially hesitant for fear that the price for zombies will go up if word gets around,

he whispers it into the waiter's ear, sending him running off in a panic, yelling, "No!" The boss comes by, asking why they scared his headwaiter off, and they explain what they told him. Like the waiter, when he hears the word "zombie," the boss becomes freaked out, telling them not to joke about it, and when they insist it's no joke, he backs away, frantically insisting zombies don't exist, adding, "Even to speak of them is death!", before running off. Jean, who overheard them, walks over to the table and puts one of her knives to Jerry's throat, saying she must talk to him; Mike asks, "How can he talk to you if you cut his throat?" She goes back to her dancing and Jerry and Mike attempt to slip out before she comes back, when she throws the knife into their table, encouraging them to stay and wait for her.

Finishing her dance, Jean walks back over to their table and tells them she wants passage on their boat in exchange for leading them to where she believes real zombies can be found. As she talks to them, the zombie Kalaga watches from a nearby window, having been keeping his eyes on Jean this whole time. She goes to her dressing room to change, while outside, Kalaga, in a scene that feels straight out of a true horror movie, walks around to the back of the cafe and watches her change her

clothes through the window. When she's fully dressed and walks out of the room, turning the lights out, Kalaga shambles into it through the rear door and heads for the main one when she opens it back up briefly, apparently thinking she forgot something, but searches her purse and finds everything in it. Kalaga does reach for her but she walks on, unaware he was ever behind her, and he heads back outside and around to the front of the cafe (this whole scene looks like it wouldn't be out of place in one of the Lewton's productions). There, Jean, Mike, and Jerry walk out into the street and she starts leading them into the jungle, as Kalaga watches and then shambles after them.

As they make their way through the jungle, Mike keeps leaning heavily on Jerry's back out of fear, when they hear the sound of the voodoo drums (Jean mentions it's a full-moon, although the place is way too brightly lit to be nighttime, full moon or not). Jean tells them those drums are a "death-beat," and Jerry asks how they would recognize a zombie, to which she answers, "If you see a corpse walking around, that's a zombie." They follow her deeper into the jungle, unaware that Kalaga is

not far behind, when Mike slams his foot into the cracked nasal cavity of a steer skull lying on the ground. Jerry yanks the skull off and Jean says it's a voodoo symbol and they're on the right trail. Jerry hands the skull back to Mike, who quickly tosses it aside before following them on. Mike complains about being tired and that this was supposed to be like taking a walk in the park, when a loud squawk makes both him and Jean grab onto Jerry in fear. Jerry sees the noise came from

a couple of cockatoos sitting on a vine, and when Jean mentions she was scared, he tries to get her to like him, patting what he thinks is her hand and saying he'll protect her. When she walks off, he sees he's patting Mike's hand and pulls himself free. He then makes Mike go out in front since he's scared, when he runs into some vines and yanks one, causing the body of a dead black panther to tumble down in front of him. Like with the steer skull, Jerry has to show Mike that it's dead and can't hurt him, while Jean says it's another sign that

they're getting close. Mike starts lagging behind as a result of getting tangled up, while Kalaga catches up to him and repeatedly knocks into his backside. Mike grumbles, "Hey, quit pushing!", not stopping to think about who could be behind him, and when he's shoved twice more, he turns around to yell at him. Of course, when he sees Kalaga, he gasps loudly and gets knocked down and lands next to an alligator. He gets up and runs off while letting out some girlish yipes, while up ahead, Jerry reaches behind him and tells Mike to take his

hand, only to unknowingly grab Kalaga's. He comments on how cold his hand is and tells him to turn any zombie he sees over to him. When they come to a fork divided by a fallen log, Kalaga flings Jerry to the right side and follows after Jean, who took the left. Still having not seen Kalaga, Jerry argues with Mike, who catches up with him, about letting go of his hand and doesn't believe him when he says he saw a real zombie, insisting he had him by the hand the whole time and admonishes him for not grabbing the zombie he says saw.

Jean reaches the edge of the spot where the natives are performing their ceremony and warns Jerry and Mike about how dangerous those carrying spears are. When Kalaga reaches around for her, Jean turns and promptly faints upon seeing him. Kalaga picks her up and carries her off, while Jerry and Mike reach the edge of the clearing themselves. They attempt to get closer and sneak into a nearby hut, crawling through a window, and continue to spy on the ceremony through a window near the door

that's barred with bamboo. Watching them pull a coffin-like box out of the ground and carry it over to a pedestal, Jerry figures there's a zombie inside. Two natives are then ordered to head towards the hut the boys happen to be in and they scramble to find a hiding place. Jerry opens up a big, wicker box and, after shooing out the monkeys inside, climbs in, while Mike takes cover in a curtained alcove in the corner. Jerry has to deal with one last monkey still inside the box, while Mike grabs

some soot out of a pot on the floor and slathers it on his face. The two natives walk in, pick up the box, and start carrying it outside, yanking part of the drapery off the corner of the room and exposing Mike. Thinking he's one of them due to the soot, the one native orders him to take a spear and head outside with them. He nervously walks out into the thick of the dancing natives and joins them in their dancing around the coffin, while the two carrying the wicker box set it down next to them. The natives begin stabbing into the box with

their spears each time they dance by it, either jabbing Jerry in his rear end or the small of his back (sometimes, he doesn't even react to being stabbed), as well as coming close to getting him in the head. When Mike's turn comes, he hesitates to stab into it but, with no choice, does so. When he tries to pull his spear back out, Jerry grabs the tip and pulls, yanking it off. The force of this sends Mike falling onto some hot coals and he jumps up, yelling and fanning his flaming behind. Jerry's legs come through the bottom of the

wicker box and he takes off running, with the natives giving chase after him (one of them lets out a wild scream that's a recycled sound effect from King Kong). While he's chased through the jungle, Mike, who remains behind, yells for him to get away, when a zombie rises up in the coffin he's standing next to. Seeing that, he immediately takes off running too.

Jerry, still running with the wicker box on him, rounds a bend and hunkers down, while the natives run in the opposite direction. Mike then comes across the box and sits on its edge, prompting Jerry to pull out a knife and stab up into him. Mike jumps off, again yelling and rubbing his bum, when Jerry climbs out, telling him, "You're so scared, you turned black!", and also says he looks good that way. Hearing the natives coming, they run for it, with the little monkey that was also in the box following

after them. They run to a dark spot in the jungle, only for Mike to slam into something solid in the brush and fall to the ground. Seeing it's a wall, Jerry has Mike give him a boost, i.e. let him stand on his back, to see what's on the other side. Seeing it's a house, he thinks they're saved and the two of them climb over the wall. Mike asks about Jean but Jerry is sure she's fine, as she knows her way around the place, only for the film to cut and reveal that Dr. Renault is about to test his zombie serum on her. Just as he goes to inject her,

he and Joseph hear the sound of the guard dogs in the yard barking and he sends Joseph to see who it is. As expected, the dogs have treed Jerry and Mike, and it doesn't take long for Joseph to find them with a flashlight. He orders them down and, recognizing them, changes his demeanor and invites them in, saying Dr. Renault will be pleased to meet them. They're then introduced to the doctor, who decides to use them as his next test subjects before Jean, and has Joseph talk them into digging graves for themselves in case they should die from the serum.

Later, while Jerry is digging his own grave, Joseph inquires as to how tall Mike is and then has him lie down on the ground in order to make the hole correspond better to his shape. Naturally, Mike gets suspicious and asks why he's so curious about it, as well as why they're digging the holes anyway, but Jerry calls him an ungracious guest and that they should just do what Renault asked them to do. Mike apologizes to Joseph, lays back down, and he's able to make the necessary measurements. Joseph heads back inside, telling

them that, when they're done, he'll show them to their rooms. Mike tells Jerry he finds Renault to be kind of untrustworthy, saying it doesn't seem like a good time of year to start planting things, but Jerry says he's probably going to plant something unusual and adds that the exercise will make him sleep well that night. The two of them get on with their digging, humming and singing to themselves, and after some time, they've managed to dig some very large and deep holes. There comes a moment where Jerry gets onto Mike for flinging the dirt from his

hole over into his (though, to be fair, Jerry was doing the same thing), at one point whacking him in the face with it. They keep on digging, when Mike hits and stomps on a trapdoor at the bottom of his hole, which sends him falling into an underground chamber. Getting to his feet and looking up at where he fell in, he walks forward, comes to a section of wall with a large split in it, and looks through to see Kalaga rise up

in his coffin. The zombie looks right at him and Mike panics, runs back through the corridor, up the stairs, and somehow comes falling out an upper story door in the house, which is behind where he and Jerry were digging. He falls into his hole and then lies there, moaning unconsciously, as Jerry tosses dirt onto him from his hole. Hearing him, Jerry climbs out, commenting, "You're making more noise digging that small hole than they did digging the Panama Canal," and looks down at him. Mike comes to and

tells Jerry he saw Kalaga again but, like before, Jerry tells him he didn't see anything in the jungle or down in the hole, adding, "Unless he's a midget zombie and you're sitting on him." Jerry helps him out and Mike explains how he fell through the trapdoor, saw Kalaga, ran back up the stairs, and fell through the door in the house, only to see that said door has now been replaced by a brick wall. Joseph comes out and asks what's going on, and while Mike tells him what he saw, Jerry insists he was hallucinating. Joseph shows them to their rooms, suggesting that Renault give Mike a sedative, but Mike insists he's going to keep his eyes wide open the whole time they stay there.

Joseph goes down to Renault's laboratory, tells him that Jerry and Mike are in the guestrooms, and he can take them whenever he wants. Renault proceeds to awaken Kalaga, when Joseph tells him what Mike said about falling through the trapdoor and seeing Kalaga. Renault decides it'd be best to experiment on him first and thus orders Kalaga to bring Mike down to the lab. Up in their room, Mike, who's wearing what he thinks is a nightgown but is actually a hospital gown that ties up in the back, frets about dreaming about the zombies.

Jerry, again, tells him he didn't see anything, when Mike turns and sees Kalaga coming through a hidden panel behind a bookcase on the wall. Naturally, he panics and yells for Jerry, but by the time he walks out of the closet where he's hanging up his clothes, Kalaga has ducked back out. Mike doesn't help himself when he frantically describes the zombie as having been twenty feet tall and coming through the wall, and Jerry loses his patience, telling him to stop talking about zombies or he's going to make him sleep in another room by

himself. Mike promises to be quiet and Jerry goes back to the closet, only for Kalaga to come through the panel again and stomp towards Mike as he turns down the sheets and is about to get into his bed. When he sees Kalaga standing over him, Mike, either out of sheer terror or remembering what Jerry said, is unable to scream and can only mouth frantically. As he does, Kalaga scoops him up in his arms and takes him back through the secret panel, all behind the oblivious Jerry's back. When they've

gone, the monkey from before climbs through the window and crawls into Mike's bed. Jerry comes out of the closet and turns out the lamp, saying Mike's not acting like himself, adding, "You're changing," when he looks and sees the monkey lying in bed. At first, he thinks he is Mike, but then opens the door and yells for Mike down the hall. Thinking he went to look the place over or to go get that sedative, Jerry, who's been absentmindedly telling the monkey all of this, decides to get in his bed and try to get some sleep.

In the lab, Renault has injected Mike with the serum and, listening to his heart and checking for a pulse, comments that this serum has worked faster than any he's used before. He looks down at Mike, who's totally zombified, and says he hopes it will last. He and Joseph unstrap him and Renault orders him to sit up. He does and Renault then orders him to go back to his room. As Mike's on his way back upstairs, Renault orders Kalaga to bring Jerry down, and then orders Joseph to silence Jean, who's yelling for help in the hidden

room. Mike walks back to his room, entering through the secret panel Kalaga used, and gets back into his bed, chasing the monkey out. Jerry, who was snoring before, awakens and tells Mike he was lying there, worrying about him. He tells him to go ahead and keep talking about seeing zombies, when Kalaga walks through the secret panel and enters the room. Finally, Jerry sees him and sits up in bed with a start, as he stomps over to him and scoops him up like he's nothing. Panicking, Jerry yells for Mike to help him, saying he believes him

now, and while the zombified Mike makes no move to do so, he does turn his head and smiles in a dopey fashion. Down in the room where she's being held captive, Jean manages to slip out of the ropes tied around her, ungag herself, and then smash Joseph over the head with a wrench while his back is turned. He falls into Kalaga's coffin, which slides back into the panel in the wall where it's contained. In the lab, Renault and Kalaga strap Jerry to the table, after which Renault orders the

zombie to go fill in the grave containing the trapdoor. When Kalaga opens the door on his way out, the monkey manages to slip through, as Renault, while preparing the serum, tells Jerry that Mike is now a zombie and he will soon be one, too. But, as he's talking, the monkey climbs onto the table behind him and takes the case containing the syringe with the serum. Seeing this, Renault goes for the case, only for the monkey to duck into a dresser drawer. While he struggles to get at the

monkey, at one point getting bitten on the hand, Jean slips into the room and unstraps Mike from the table. The monkey pops out of various drawers in the dresser, bopping Renault in the leg and then whacking him in the side of the head as he tries to corner him, when he sees Jerry and Jean are escaping. While Jean runs out the door, Renault comes at Jerry with a knife and the two of them struggle, shoving each other across the lab, until Jerry gets knocked to the floor. He attempts to wrestle the knife out of Renault's hand, when the monkey throws a skull and it hits him, knocking him unconscious. Renault prepares to kill Jerry, when Jean hits him in the head with the end of his examination table. This only stops him temporarily, and Jerry and Jean rush out the door.

Jerry tells Jean to run upstairs, as he holds the door closed, while Renault pulls a gun out of a drawer. When he's unable to open the door, he shoots a hole through it, sending Jerry running upstairs in a panic. Upstairs, Jean hides around a corner and peeks out to see Renault. With a bottle in her hand, she ducks back around the corner, waiting for him to come through the doorway, but he instead goes the other way. However, Jerry then wanders through the doorway and gets smashed over the head with the bottle. Knocked senseless, he falls to

the floor, and Jean tries to awaken him, spraying him in the face with a seltzer bottle, when Renault enters the room. Saying he will revive Jerry himself, he sends her upstairs and warns her the dogs will tear her apart if she tries to escape. He calls for Kalaga, who's outside filling in the grave with the trapdoor, when Jerry starts to come to, only to pretend to still be unconscious when Renault turns his attention back to him. Having seen this, Jean distracts Renault by calling to him and Jerry is able to jump up and grab him from

behind. They struggle and fight throughout the sitting room, Renault shooting his gun blindly and yelling for Joseph and Kalaga. Jerry manages to wrest the gun from him and toss him aside, before running for and grabbing it. He points it at Renault, who quickly gets to his feet and runs out of the room, yelling for Kalaga. He opens a pair of doors to find Kalaga standing there and yells for him to kill. That's when Kalaga inexplicably strikes him over the head with the shovel he's wielding, and while

he carries Renault outside and dumps him in one of the graves, Jean and Jerry rush upstairs to bring the still zombified Mike with them. They leave the house, with the little monkey tagging along, and though they're confronted by the guard dogs, they take off running at the sight of Mike, sensing he's a zombie. They continue on through the jungle and reach the port, where one of the ships is preparing to leave. However, the natives whose voodoo ceremony they interrupted are gathered in front of

it, and just when it seems like it's hopeless, Mike shambles on towards the ship. Seeing him, the natives charge, ready to attack, only to realize he's a zombie and back away, intoning the words "zombie" again and again. Having seen this, Jean and Jerry walk past them in the same manner as Mike, fooling them and managing to board the ship, and the monkey does the same.

Onboard the ship and heading back to New York, Jerry writes a letter to be sent ahead via cablegram, informing Ace Miller that they're arriving that night with a genuine zombie, as well as a "sensational girl singer." At that moment, in New York, Douglas Walker goes on the air, announcing he'll be at the opening of the Zombie Hut that night and will have a big laugh at Ace Miller's suspense, while Miller himself is about ready to kill Jerry and Mike, whom he hasn't heard from yet. That night, as the club opens with an act

involving dancing girls, Miller watches as Walker and several zombie experts with him are shown to a table, the two of them sneering at each other from across the way. Meanwhile, Jerry and Jean get off the ship and he introduces her to Gus and Benny. Gus goes to shake Mike's hand, only to be surprised when he gets no reaction from him. Jerry tells them that Mike is the zombie, but while Gus doesn't believe it, and is ready to dump both of them in the river per Miller's orders, he insists he's telling the truth. He leads Mike to the car, while Benny and Gus

decide to make sure Mike is a zombie. After they pile into the car and drive off, with the monkey riding on the back, Benny gives Mike a zap from the hand-buzzer, and he and Gus are both shocked when he doesn't react to it. Gus then tells Mike to stick out hand and he places a matchbook in it and lights it. Again, Mike just sits there and doesn't yell or anything. Now just about convinced, the two of them turn back around. Jerry whispers for Mike to put the matches in Gus'

pocket, which he does, and he quickly reacts to the burning, with him and Benny trying to smack the fire out. At the Zombie Hut, the audience is getting impatient, chanting, "We want a zombie!", and Miller, seeing the smug look on Walker's face across the way, is about at his wits' end and tells one of his men to let him know when the boys arrive. Out back, the car pulls up and Jerry leads Mike up some steps and through a door leading into a dressing room. He has him sit down in a chair and Gus, who's now thoroughly freaked over knowing Mike really is a zombie, goes to tell Miller they've arrived. He tells Benny to stay there but he's also unable to deal with it and runs after him.

Jerry and Jean have a cigarette, thinking they've arrived just in time, when Mike begins to come out of his zombie state, as he sees a lovely girl dressed in native garb nearby and returns her smile, as well as waves and blows a kiss to her. When Jerry sees this, he about has a conniption, and it gets worse when Mike completely returns to normal and asks where he is. Jerry closes the door, explains to Mike that Miller is going to be there any minute, expecting to see a zombie, and tells him he needs to act like he still is one. Mike refuses,

even when Jean asks him, but Jerry smashes a vase over his head and he dizzily gets the picture, as Miller and his men come through the door. Jerry starts passing Mike, who blankly stares straight ahead, off as a zombie, telling Miller he gave his life for his career as a press agent, but Miller isn't totally convinced. Gus suggests they burn him again to prove it but Jerry nixes that idea, saying he's been through a lot and still has to go out there to the audience. He gets Mike up and starts walking him forward, when Miller decides to test their claim

that he feels no pain by kicking him in the shin. Mike, of course, starts jumping up and down, yelling that he smashed his leg, and Miller knows he's been had. He tells Gus and Benny to wait outside the door, as he pulls a gun on them. Jean then sees the monkey is in the room and he hands her the case containing the syringe with Renault's serum. Just as Miller corners them and is about to shoot, she turns out the light. A number of shots flash in the dark, and out in the club, the audience

is startled by the bangs. The bandleader, however, thinks it's their cue to start playing. When they do, the lights dim and four guys dressed in native garb carry out a native coach and set it down on the floor. The drape on the front is pulled open and a zombified Miller, wearing beads around his neck, is revealed, to the astonishment of Walker and Miller's men. Nearby, Jerry whispers commands to Miller, making him stand up and walk forward.

Walker's experts, one of whom is Prof. Hopkins, confirm they are indeed seeing a zombie, and Jean and Jerry head backstage to celebrate their success. But, when Jerry sits down in a loveseat next to Jean, he sits on the syringe and the movie ends with him turning around and facing the camera, now a zombie himself.

As was common for RKO's films during this period, the music for Zombies on Broadway was composed by Roy Webb, making for another tie between this and Val Lewton's films. However, while certainly more memorable than what actual score he was able to come up with for You'll Find Out, Webb's music here is still kind of weak. The opening title music is probably the best part, as it's a mixture of a tribal aesthetic and jazzy music of the period, transitioning into typical, bustling music for the opening shots of New York and then over-the-top, silly music when you see the publicity machine for the Zombie Hut, which involves dumping fliers for it down from an airplane, in action. Surprisingly, much of the score is done as straight horror and thriller music of the time rather than comedy, as Dr. Renault's introductory scene is scored with a soft, creeping bit of music, and Jerry, Mike, and Jean's trek through the jungle is done with a low-key, constant, driving bit of music. All of the scenes with Kalaga, from his stalking Jean at the cafe to Mike and Jerry's encounters with him, are scored as serious and frightening, with the moment where he carries Mike off being played to a pretty eerie and ethereal piece of music. In fact, when the boys gets to San Sebastian, the only funny bit of music there is this little, tinkling flute bit for the monkey, while the movie ends on a comedic flourish when Jerry is revealed to have sat on the syringe and been zombified. Besides the score, you have the band and tribal music that plays in the Zombie Hut, the short song that Jean sings when she's introduced in the San Sebastian cafe, the song the calypso singer plays for Jerry and Mike, and the constant drums during the scene in the jungle and at the voodoo ceremony, the latter two of which are the most memorable to me.

Zombies on Broadway is one of those movies that's not a horrendous slog to watch, as it's only 67 minutes long, but it still has very little to recommend it, aside from Bela Lugosi doing the best he can with a standard mad scientist role, Darby Jones managing to be about as creepy and intimidating here as he was in I Walked With a Zombie, and the notion that this is a kind of companion piece to that film. Wally Brown and Alan Carney can hardly be called absolutely hilarious, Jean La Dance may be helpful and tough at points but she's still hardly an exceptional female lead, the humor and gags are often quite predictable to those who've seen the work of better comedy acts of the day, it's clear the movie was made on the cheap, as its sets are either recycled or aren't that remarkable and the cinematography is mostly flat and uninspired, aside from a couple of noteworthy shots, and the music score, while fine and surprisingly serious for the most part, is hardly memorable. Unless you're a hardcore Lugosi or zombie movie fan, I'd advise you to just go watch any of Abbot and Costello's horror-comedies and not bother with this.