Creature of the Walking Dead

Jerry Warren had an odd niche back in the day. He would buy the rights to Mexican films and then cut them to pieces, include some new footage and narration and then release them in the States. This was not unprecidented...American International did this with Japanese and Russian movies many times! In most cases, the results are far from stellar....though perhaps "Creature of the Walking Dead" (originally, "La Marca del Muerto") is an exception.

The film starts with some pointless narration. Soon, the story begins long ago. An evil mad scientist has been experimenting in order to try to live forever. His secret? Stealing the blood of unsuspecting young women! He's soon caught and executed and the story jumps to the present day...and folks are discussing this old crime....just to make sure the audience REALLY knows what happened!

Soon, you see an ancestor of the evil man move into the old mansion and soon he discovers the old dead reprobate's experiments as well as the cells (and skeletons) where he kept his victims as he drained them! I think at this point, I would have moved out and sold the place! Instead, the idiot begins replicating the evil experiments and manages to bring the murder back to life! And, to keep him alive means more victims! All in all, his relative is a real idiot!

So is this any good? Yes and no. The film is not nearly as bad as its overall rating of 2.8 would imply. But the movie has a lot of problems, including a bat clearly on a string, long-winded voiceovers in portions instead of actually SHOWING what was happening as well as the silly notion that the mad scientist and a distant relative look nearly identical (and are played by the same actor). On the other hand, the story is creative and interesting...and very similar to the German film "The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism", the execution scene was brilliantly lit and filmed (the cinematographer was very good), and the movie did keep my interest...mostly because the Mexicans appear to have done a decent job with the original movie. Worth watching though far from being a must-see film.

Had to do some research on this one. This film was originally a Mexican film directed by Frederic Corte and titled 'La Marca Del Muerto' American director Jerry Warren bought the rights, threw in a few new scenes, took out a lot of the dialogue and dubbed the rest in English. Mostly instead of dialogue he gave it narration explaining what you are viewing. You can really tell the difference from the original scenes and the ones that were added by Warren. The original footage seemed to have great atmosphere had a neat Gothic look about it. The added American scenes are terrible. The constant narration is aggravating and the scenes added by Warren are almost laughable. I have to say almost laughable because it's really a shame that he probably butchered the original 'La Marca Del Muerto'. It might have been nice to see it before the hack job and with legitimate dubbing. Creature of the Walking Dead is a pretty bad movie. It's not worth your time to view this film only to end up disappointed.

Creature of the Walking Dead (1965)

** (out of 4)

The horror. The fear. The terror. Jerry Warren strikes back with another hack job.

This time he takes the Mexican horror film LA MARCA DEL MUERTO and adds voice-over narration, new scenes with American actors and hacks up the original film. The "original" movie was about a mad scientist who discovers eternal life so he kills young women for their blood. The scientist is eventually killed for his crimes but centuries later a relative, also a scientist, digs up his body, gives it a blood transfusion and the old mad scientist is back alive and committing more crimes.

Obviously it's impossible to fully judge the original film since it's dubbed here, edited down and of course there's the new footage. With that said, watching the footage here certainly makes me want to seek out that film because there was some nice moments in it including a rather good looking monster, some nice atmosphere scattered throughout and it has a fairly interesting story. The sets are all rather cheap and silly looking but at the same time that adds a little charm.

Director Warren made some movies on his own like TEENAGE ZOMBIES and FRANKENSTEIN ISLAND. Whenever Warren made movies on his own they were usually downright awful with very little actually going for them. He often bought the rights to foreign movies and did hack jobs like this one here. His most popular was probably HALF HUMAN with John Carradine. So, how is this film? For the most part it's entertaining thanks in large part to the original footage. The narration added here is all rather silly and there's no question that the newly added footage is horrible. As with his other hack jobs, the new footage is just a group of American actors sitting around and talking about stuff.

A demented pseudo-scientist Dr. Malthus (Fernando Cassanova) prolonged his life injecting an elixir of human blood is executed, and later resurrected by his no less ill-fated ancestor in this likeably lurid cut n' paste's Mexican/US creature feature! Once reawakened, Malthus Sr.'s deranged bloodlust returns undiminished by death, and his devilishly gruesome rampage draws the authorities ever closer to his monstrous laboratory. Creakier than a medieval codpiece, there's still much ripened psychotronic grisliness to be found in this cheap and fearful 60s creep-fest!

The delightfully grisly methodology of Dr. Malthus's fiendishly blood-sucking apparatus is still pretty grim to behold! Creature of the Walking Dead is generously stuffed with more cheesy corn than a bargain Burrito! This moodily monochromatic, shriek-slathered, blood-sodden B-Terror titbit unearthed from the musty vaults of gaudy Drive-in double thrills remains a horrific hoot! Creature of the Walking Dead explodes in a vile, shocking miasma of perversely purloined blood-plasma! No humane soul will remain untarnished after witnessing the diabolically degenerated lusts of that malign dessicated revenant, Dr. Malthus!

This is far from being a good film but I think it's a little bit better than awful. I found it on the interesting side even though it is a chopped up version of 'La Marca Del Muerto' with extra footage, dubbing and cutting out scene from the original film.

I am one of the weird people that found Jerry Warren's 'Face of the Screaming Werewolf' strangely appealing - and that is an awful film. 'Creature of the Walking Dead' isn't quite as bad as 'Screaming Werewolf' to me. Something about both films bad films that I like - I think it's the oddness of the films that attracts me.

Creature of the Walking Dead is not a film that horror fans should see - it's one to easily pass up but is watchable for some.

6/10