Zombies of Mora Tau

One of the sillier 1950s fright night flicks, and directed with little imagination. An unlikable search party arrives at a small African plantation with hopes of retrieving a cargo of diamonds from the bowels of a ship that was sunk some 60 years earlier. The only problem is that the treasure's being guarded by a small band of sleepwalking-style zombies (the original sailors who went down with the ship when it sank) and they've done a fine job so far of killing every other search party that has intervened over the decades. The elderly wife of the zombified captain is still alive and wants the diamonds too, but only to destroy them so she may give rest to her husband's wandering soul.

That description is much more interesting than the way the movie actually pans out, but at least we've got the stunning Allison Hayes to gawk at as she plays the bitchy babe with the killer figure. There are some very weird underwater simulations when the divers are attacked by the dutiful zombies, who somehow are able to walk straight across the ocean floor without floating to the surface. ** out of ****

For all of the critics who rated the film less than 5 stars, well... It is a campy example of 50's B movie making. It isn't supposed to be anything more than that! To its credit, the film has some atmospheric moments. The sets are pretty good and the acting is better than bad. Mona (Allison Hayes) steals the show with her good looks and crazy persona. There are not a lot of production flubs given the low budget. This film compares favorably with other B efforts of the 50's. Check out Allison in the 50 foot woman flick. This was her most famous science fiction role. My advice: watch 'Zombies' it and 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.

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.

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.