Prior Viewings: 1
Like a lot of Hammer movies, The Plague of the Zombies has gorgeous aesthetics (lush colours, beautiful sets, foggy atmospheres, bright red blood) that are slightly bogged down by a dry and talky story.
Actually, the setup for this one isn't too bad. I like the mysterious, almost Twilight Zone-esque premise, which makes for some immediate intrigue. And even though you can feel the absences of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in something like this, André Morell more than makes up for that by bringing a similar sense of charisma and weight to the proceedings.
But once this intrigue is out of the way, the movie starts to lose a lot of steam by leaning on long dialogue scenes and drawn-out set pieces. And there just generally aren't many scares here (maybe three total, with one of them being a fake-out dream sequence). The strengths are still good enough for me to call this a worthy entry in the Hammer canon, but I'd have to imagine that it already seemed like an ancient relic by the time Night of the Living Dead came out two years later.
Grade: B
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