Zombies of Mora Tau

I react to movies the same way people react to music. In other words, when people hear an old song on the radio it takes them back to a time and place when they first heard the music, or its sounds evoke some private memories based on its atmosphere or tone. When I think of a film, above and beyond recalling the emotions it gave me, I also think of what was going on in my life at the moment of that screening. And if you've actively sought a title like this on this site, perhaps you do too.

ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU is certainly a juvenile, sometimes cardboard, horror movie, not least because zombie monsters were pretty juvenile after Victor Halperin and before George Romero. However this effort was made to please the juvenile within someone of any age. Why this film affects me is that I happened to watch it during the time in which I was preparing to leave my home town (and simply, my home) to go to school in the city. This was on a Thursday night just before the last true weekend of my youth, in which I was severing some ties while still grasping onto others. What I often did in this not-endless summer when I had the house to myself was take the VCR upstairs and hook it up to my little black-and-white TV in my bedroom-- having my own space, yet still being dependent on a bigger unit to do it. During this time I had an obsession with 1950's science fiction or horror movies, big or small, good or bad, simply because they took me to a comfortable inner landscape which these films idealized. The world still felt safe and unthreatening, and my youth still felt innocent before seeing "the real world" which existed outside my mind or my own little world. Perhaps subconsciously, this too explains why I have felt the need to re-visit these films again over the past few years. Only now, these innocent movies emerge as places in which I attempt to retrieve that last youth.

Now this behaviour may sound naive, but let's face it, so are a lot of these films that we escape to. Whether they're good or bad, big or small, these genre efforts of a bygone era can be now viewed as moving testaments to a safe place that we want back, yet nonetheless acknowledge we cannot have. It may also sound naive to subscribe such psychological stuff to a flick that's titled ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU, but there is a beautiful poetry at work in this movie if the viewer is willing to meet it on its own terms.

Despite that this movie somewhat lumbers to the adult within us, it still speaks to the child in that same body. I saw this film at a time when current horror films of the day attempted to scare people with blood and guts. This film is disarming in its innocence which invites the willing into its simple world-- it still manages to deliver the goods with such simple means as a creepy scene in which candles surround someone with "zombie fever". Plus, teenage boys of all ages still had a crush on Allison Hayes even 30 years after her films were made. Not for nothing did she become the fifty foot woman.

Having to return this 99-cent rental back to the country grocery store before it closed, I was in my car driving through the night, with the lights of the town behind me, pushing forward in the darkness. It was then that I realized that this sly metaphor encapsulated my life at that moment. And I also learned that because I had a soft spot for movies like this, that I was still trying to hang onto was receding in the background of my life. There was a wealth of memories, a state of being, that I admit I could not and cannot relive, but then as now, they remain as vital pieces of my human baggage.

A bunch of people go to the island of Mora Tau. Right off the coast of it, a ship sank with diamonds aboard and they want them. There's nice guy Jeff Clark (Gregg Palmer), Dr. Eggert (Morris Ankrum), George Harrison (!!!) (Joel Ashley) and his slutty wife Mona (the immortal Allison Hayes). What they don't know is that the ship is guarded by zombies who kill anyone who tries to take the jewels.

Admittadely novel idea is almost completely destroyed by a silly script and some pretty bad acting. The "underwater" scenes are actually pretty hysterical. They're obviously shot on a sound stage with the actors moving very slow and having bubbles pour out of their diving suits! Notice how the plants on the "ocean" floor never move.

Still I have a certain fondness for silly movies like this. It takes me back to my childhood where these popped up on Saturday afternoon TV constantly. It does have a little creepy scene when the zombies attack at the end and Hayes (a seriously under rated actress) is very good in a nothing role. Also I saw a nice, clean, letter-boxed (!) version of this on TCM. Silly but fun.

One of the many plot implausibilities in this enjoyably awful Sam Katzman-produced dreck occurs when Allison Hayes, she of the killer figure, is murdered by diamond-loving zombies and becomes one of the walking dead. She's clearly a zombie; Marjorie Eaton, trying to preserve her dignity as the Maria Ouspenskaya-like hideous matron, tells everyone she's a zombie; she walks like a zombie, and her face is even blanker than when she was alive. But the rest of the avaricious crew treats her like a real live girl, vowing to get her to a doctor as soon as possible for a diagnosis. That leads to plot extensions that add on another 20 minutes or so, though the entire nonsense clocks in at a little over an hour. A pretty high body count for '50s horror, direction and production values not far above the Ed Wood level, and hilarious "underwater" photography round out this Grade Z programmer, which is inept but not dull.

Fortune hunters try to recover diamonds from a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea off the coast of Africa. They don't have much luck thanks to the seaweed-covered zombies that guard the treasure. They spend most of the movie on the island of Mora Tau with an old lady who tells them that the diamonds must be destroyed to put an end to the zombies.

Fun B movie from producer Sam Katzman. I don't see why it gets so much flack. Sexy Allison Hayes is always a treat to watch. One of my favorite B movie queens. She plays the trampy bad girl here and steals every scene. Marjorie Eaton is good as the old woman. Cutie Autumn Russell plays the bland female lead. The men in the film are mostly a forgettable lot but fine for the parts they play. For a 70-minute movie it's fairly effective. It's got a decent plot and reasonable atmosphere. It isn't going to scare you but it is entertaining as a time-passer. Don't expect too much and just enjoy it for what it is.

Adventurers tangle with zombies who can walk underwater. (Did George Romero ever catch this?)

The fifties were a fallow decade for the walking dead. Scary zombies may have roamed INVISIBLE INVADERS and CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN, but they were sci-fi generated. (PLAN 9, anyone?) MORA TAU more or less sticks to the hoodoo playbook, but its finale is unforgivably weak, and the underwater scenes, which should have been a highlight, are blatantly bogus. If the story were rewritten on land, it would have spared lots of trouble and unintended laughter.

On the plus side, quickie director Ed Cahn always aced day-for-night shots, and nearly all of the action here occurs in darkness. The film is free of stock wildlife footage and white dudes dressed as natives. The cast seems to appreciate scripter Bernard Gordon's snappy dialogue. Cult actress Allison Hayes pulls double duty as a shrewish moll and a zombie. Can't act worth stale jujubes, but still a treat to watch. There's also plenty of gaffe guffaws, my favorite being the portly zomb who "chases" victims down a staircase as he clutches the railing.