The Plague of the Zombies

Like, like, a lot of, like, um...

Like, we talked about this, I think it was in, uh, The Plague of the Zombies, where there was the sort of first zombie hand.

N- may- I can't remember what movie it was.

The first-

Now, if you're a hammerhound of any calibre, you recognise some of those names.

Barbara Ewing from Future Weirdy, Dracula Has Risen From The Grave, John Carson from previous weirdies The Plague Of The Zombies, Taste The Blood Of Dracula, and Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter.

And Rosalind Landor, who played Little Peggy in the greatest film ever made, The Devil Rides Out.

And, to top it all, Don Sharp, the director of previous weirdy Kiss of the Vampire.

Um, and he, he, he wrote a, a three-note Dracula theme that you will hear throughout.

Uh, but, you know, he did music for some of the Hammer Dracula and Frankenstein movies, The Damned, She, Plague of the Zombies, um-

Hmm

... two episodes of Hammer House of Horror, and Torture Garden, and, and other films for other production companies too.

So it was despite this, or perhaps because of it, that the two films were not released together.

Instead, Dracula, Prince of Darkness was released in January 1966 on a double bill with The Plague of the Zombies, complete with vampire fangs and cardboard zombie eyeglasses for audience members.

Oh, wow.

I wonder if any of those survived and are out on auction sites.

That would be a cool-ass Christmas gift.

That would be, yeah.

Let's see if eBay can hook us up with some classic zombie eyeglasses from The Plague of the Zombies.

I know you're going to mention it at some point, Mike.

And I've only got two to add because you made me take them out, and I'm not happy.

So The Plague of the Zombies.

Ooh, yeah.

Love that film.

So though they're all contenders, they're all bubbling under, but my 10, I will stand by the 10 that I gave.

Run us down again.

Again, it's Curse of Frankenstein, Quatermass 2, Dracula, Brides of Dracula, Taste of Fear, The Damned, The Gorgon, The Nanny, The Plague of the Zombies.

Now I feel like saying The Quatermass and the Pit because there's a lot of those, aren't there? But Quatermass and the Pit.

We're all about sharing the scare, and we want to hear from you.

Tonight we're talking about four wildly different films from Hammer Studios, all from the same year, 1966's The Plague of the Zombies, The Reptile, One Million Years B.C., and The Witches.

For nearly a decade, Hammer had built its reputation on sumptuous gothic horror with mysterious castles, suspicious villagers, and iconic monsters, usually with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing topping the bill.

But by 1966, Hammer was looking outward, experimenting with new monsters, new settings, and even entirely new genres.

With The Plague of the Zombies, starring Andre Morel, Diane Clare, Jacqueline Pierce, and John Carson, director John Gilling gives us a nightmare rooted in rural Cornwall.

where the dead are being turned into obedient, shambling workers.

Like George Romero's Flesh Eaters to Come, the film combines horror and social commentary built around a story of cultural appropriation, privilege, and the wealthy all too willing to sacrifice the poor for their own prosperity.

And rounding out our quartet, Barry Kaufman.

Yeah.

Or it wasn't Plague of the Zombies.

What was the one? You mean the Plague of the Zombies? No, what was the one with the Black Death and the Pure Water Will Cure You?

The terror creatures from the grave? Terror creatures from the

grave.

wonder if there's, like, a British connection to it, because, like, you get, like, City...

Is it the City of the Dead, 1916? And then, as I said, the Plague of the Zombies from 66.

Obviously, it is a British colony, so I wonder, like, how prevalent some of the British, like, Hammer and then some of the later stuff was.

wanted to interject here just a couple films that like were coming out early 70s stuff the Spanish and some of the

Yeah, definitely.

I do find the dream sequence in, uh, I mentioned it at the time, Plague of the Zombies, I found it unsettling.

Mm.

Um, I thought it was incredibly well done.