Victor Halperin's WHITE ZOMBIE (1932) was a decent example of the undead movie, the first zombie film and featuring a great performance from Bela Lugosi as an evil black magician. This semi-sequel, blatantly cashing in on that movie's success, has neither Lugosi nor zombies, other than in a one-minute sequence at the film's opening. This scene, set during an unspecified war, sees foreign soldiers, under mind control, overwhelming their enemies. In one classic moment, bullets riddle a man's chest and don't even slow him down. I loved this moment when I saw it, and I was all ready to love the rest of the movie...but after a while I realised that was all the horror we were getting.Instead this film goes along the lines of melodrama, with a half-baked love triangle exacerbated by the lead's transformation from love-struck guy to total madman. Along the way he puts plenty of people under mind control; somehow clapping a fist to his forehead achieves this (pretty cheap, I know). Halperin desperately tries to add atmosphere to the proceedings by using close-up shots of Bela Lugosi's eyes, ripped from WHITE ZOMBIE, but this is nothing other than a cheap gimmick. The mildly exciting revolt of the title happens in the last couple of minutes but comes as too little, too late. Dean Jagger, familiar from his later turns in such fare as X THE UNKNOWN and GAME OF DEATH, appears here as the madman in what is a wooden performance. All talk and no action, REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES is a real bore, a clichéd cash-in with little to recommend it.

1st watched 8/21/2009 - 6 out of 10 (Dir- Victor Halperin): Well written early zombie movie that is more about a man's obsession for a woman and the extremes he goes for her than it is about zombies. Zombies in this early movie are just people who are hypnotized to follow a person's commands -- not the dead risen(how this trend started I'm not sure). Anyway, this movie is about a gift that the Cambodians have of making their soldiers follow commands to kill relentlessly and how an American attains that power and uses it for his own purposes. This past statement and a love triangle are the core of the movie. Two friends are investigating this power when a woman steps in the way and mesmerizes one of them first, then the other. The first man's jeolousy brings him to use the power he finds from the ruins to bring her back to him. The movie is slow at times, and sometimes not acted well, but it is captivating none-the-less because of it's story. I'm surprised the movie hasn't been remade because it would make the good basis for a modern redo. It's really a love story with kind of a monster movie side-story(similar to Frankenstein or Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde) except with a hypnotizing mad man. This old gem should be seen and possibly be restored so it can be viewed in a better way, if possible.

After going to Best Buy to buy the 50 Movie Pack Horror Classics 12-DVD Collection, I decided that the first movie to watch was this. This was just a random selection, and I didn't really know what this movie would be about except that it would contain zombies and an army. Well, this is incorrect. This movie is far from being about war, although you may see people in military uniforms. This movie is mostly a love story, and contains the plot of a mad man trying to win his girlfriend.This movie was very confusing, mainly because the plot switches continuously and the story doesn't stick with one character. You see the story of many characters, and that's too hard to shove in your brain. If this movie seems easy for whoever watches it, go right ahead. But, I just thought that there were too many characters.The acting is quite alright. Actually, it's excellent. This is quite hard to find in movies of this era. Well, not really.I don't really recommend this movie unless you are really bored.

Revolt of the Zombies has no redeeming features. I'm tired of people arguing that it's not that bad, and that the effects must have packed more of a punch in 1936. I suspect this isn't true: it's not like IQ's have risen sharply in the last 7 decades. The average viewer in 1936 was probably just as bored by this rubbish as the average viewer today. Why? Just try watching the first scenes, and count the pauses between things happening, the awful choice of when to cut to close-up, the slapdash editing that seems to include an extra two seconds on every shot to pad out the running time. Pay attention to the utterly redundant dialogue: "I'm going to make some tea/go outside/read my book now." "Are you?" "Yes, I am." That sort of exchange happens several times. Normally I would love that, being a HUGE fan of bad movies, but watch the listless actors mumbling their trite and tedious lines, and all desire to laugh at the movie slowly fades away. This sort of disinterested, pot-boiling time-waster is far worse than energetic, imaginative mind-blowers like Plan Nine From Outer Space or Santa Claus Conquers The Martians. Those who claim that this is "better" than those more interesting movies have a backwards idea of entertainment. This movie is not bad in the sense that your jaw hangs open in astonishment: it's bad in the sense that your eyes slowly close in boredom. Which is far worse.