Valley of the Zombies

Valley of the Zombies (1946)

** (out of 4)

There is no valley and there are no zombies in this Republic Pictures horror flick that once again proves they certainly didn't know how to do the genre any service. In the film, Ormond Murks (Ian Keith) returns from the dead and needs plenty of blood to keep alive. A doctor (Robertin Livingston) and his nurse (Lorna Gray) get accused of one of the dead man's murders so they have to set out to clear their name and this is when they stumble across the living dead. I guess, to be fair, you could consider the murderer here a zombie but he actually plays out more like a vampire with his need for blood. It's also funny when you think that Keith was originally intended to play the title role in Universal's Dracula before the role eventually went to Bela Lugosi. As you'd expect, this "C" picture really doesn't have too much going in its favor but if you must see every zombie picture ever made then you might as well check this one out. I think the best thing you can say about the flick is that it runs a very short 55-minutes and it actually goes by rather fast. Director Ford at least keeps things moving well so the pacing never becomes an issue and at least he was smart enough not to wear out his welcome. The story itself is nothing special as we get one scene after another with the doctor and nurse trying to figure out what's going on even though the viewer was let in on the secret at the very start of the thing. The screenplay, being a Republic movie, offers up a wide range of events including a car chase, a gun fight and we even get a bunch of (bad) humor thrown in. Livingston and Gray are both fairly good in their parts but the same can't be said for Keith. He goes over the top so much that I'd compare his performance to what you'd expect to see from Tod Slaughter. VALLEY OF THE ZOMBIES is probably the rarest of the "zombie" films released after WHITE ZOMBIE and perhaps that's best as I'm sure most people are going to be disappointed with it. It's certainly far from a horrible movie but at the same time there's just really not much to it.