King of the Zombies

(1941)  **1/2



"If there's one thing I wouldn't wanna be twice, zombies is both of them." – Jeff Jackson  

A lost WW2 fighter plane lands on a small island between Cuba and Puerto Rico.  Onboard is Mac the pilot, Bill Summers the stud, and Jeff the black manservant.  Jeff is incapable of completing a sentence without butchering the English language.   His poor grammar and patented petrified bug-eyed look provide all the comedy relief needed. 



  The men are offered lodging for the night by the mysterious Dr. Sangre.  Mac and Bill get their own rooms upstairs while Jeff is delegated to the servant quarters.  Here he meets Samantha the maid and Tahama the wretched old cook.   After a healthy dose of flirting, Samantha divulges Dr. Sangre's dark secret: he is using voodoo (which in this movie means hypnosis) to create an army of zombies for the Nazis.  The zombies will appear to do their bidding with a mere clap of the hands.  She demonstrates this and two zombies immediately appear.  Jeff reacts in typical fashion.

 
When he tries to tell his companions, Samantha denies everything and the room has a good laugh at his expense.   Samantha explains to him later "Mister, there's something that ain't never no good for nobody to do no time much less going around blabbing off your big mouth about it."  To which Jeff replies "You mean Mr. Sangre don't like no for nobody to know that he got zombies around here?"   Precisely.  

Dr. Sangre soon zombifies Jeff as his antics have become a nuisance.  It's now up to Bill and Mac to stop his diabolical scheme.   Samantha joins the cause as her feelings for Jeff give her a conscience.  

King of the Zombies is more entertaining than most early zombie movies I've come across, partly because they aim for laughs.   The blatant racism may look staggering to modern audiences but it serves as a good stick to measure just how far we've come in the past 7 decades.