A lot of very good horror movies came out in 1936: Dracula’s Daughter, Fahrmann Maria, Devil Doll, The Walking Dead, to name a few. Revolt of the Zombies didn’t make the list. In this follow-up to cash in on the success of White Zombie, not much happens with a great premise: raising an army of the dead. Christopher Workman and Troy Howarth, in their wonderful book, Tome of Terror, Horror Films of the 1930s, point out Dean Jagger’s nuanced performance and two striking scenes, but also the dearth of atmosphere, budget-creativity, and good plotting to generate anything remotely as effective as the poster art for this movie. The pressbook is a big meh, also. To make things worse, Revolt of the Zombies was sued to stop its screen play time, being released during a re-release of White Zombie, out of fear having two zombie movies running at the same time was unfair competition for the re-release. Later horror movies like Overlord would capitalize on the military zombie theme. Victor Halperin directed both White Zombie and this movie, and Bela Lugosi’s hypnotic eye close-ups from White Zombie were clipped and used here too. To really make this a bad call all around, the zombies aren’t even zombies: they’re just people drugged into a zombie state of invincibility. Bummer.
Download the zipped images: Revolt of the Zombies pressbook
