Zombies on Broadway

Somewhat tepid but occasionally funny as Brown and Carney do their best to be RKO's Abbott & Costello. They play press agents for a nightclub who promise a "real live zombie", which their mobster boss insists they produce. This leads them to San Sebastian, Bela Lugosi, and the guy who was the zombie in "I Walked with a Zombie" and other films. Many scenes are played very straight -- of course, with bad jokes and puns thrown in. Lugosi, in particularly, is asked to play everything straight as a scientist after the secret of zombie making.

Uninspired, but Anne Jeffries does look great.

Although the comedy team of Wally Brown and Alan Carney never threatened Laurel&Hardy, Abbott&Costello, or the Ritz Brothers in popularity, the team which was cobbled together at RKO were amusing in several films they did in the early Forties. This film is particularly goofy in an almost Monty Pythonesque way.

Brown and Carney are a pair of press agents who are charged with publicizing the opening of Sheldon Leonard's nightclub which is named The Zombie Club. And the boys promise a real undead person for the opening.

Now normally these guys hiring someone to impersonate a zombie might go over with most folks. But Sheldon Leonard who's been the target of gossip columnist Louis Jean Heydt isn't having any. The boys are charged with finding and bringing back a real live zombie, and don't tell me that that is an oxymoron.

A tip from eccentric scientist Ian Wolfe sends Brown and Carney to the Virgin Islands where another scientist Bela Lugosi is doing experiments creating zombies. Now of course Lugosi is not only sinister, but he makes Wolfe look like Jonas Salk. The boys also meet up with Anne Jeffreys and the three of them have all kinds of fun with Lugosi and his zombies.

Nothing great about Zombies On Broadway, but it's a goofy fun type film and one to enjoy on a rainy afternoon.

It's very obvious when you watch this film that RKO was trying to rip off the Abbott and Costello formula. This was due to the incredible success of Abbott and Costello and because RKO's BEST comedy team at the time was the Ritz Brothers--who were about as funny as listening to dial tone on a telephone. While the two leads (Wally Brown and Alan Carney) are NOT all that reminiscent of Bud and Lou in acting and talent, the writing is often dead on the mark (a bad pun, I know). Many times during the movie, I found myself remembering very, very similar dialog and situations in several Abbott and Costello films. And, of all those films, I think this one is closest in style (but certainly not in quality) to ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN.

The duo is assisted in their attempt to overcome mediocrity by teaming them with Bela Lugosi as a mad scientist (I know this role must have really been a major stretch for Bela's talents). While Lugosi is fun in the film, he really doesn't have all that much to do--a bit of a waste of his talents. Also, Anne Jeffreys is the female lead in the film. Oddly, BOTH Jeffreys AND Lugosi were re-teamed just a year later with Brown and Carney in GENIUS AT WORK--you'd have thought that given the very limited success of THIS film they would have tried something different.

So did the attempt to copy the originals succeed? Well, yes and no. Yes, because the film was a diverting and mildly entertaining film--just like a real Abbott and Costello movie. But, a resounding NO because the duo did very few films together and now in the 21st century they are all but forgotten--just an odd little footnote in history. I guess this just goes to show you that "there ain't nothing like the real thing, baby".

Apparently this film was put together partly with leftovers from the classic Val Lewton film "I Walked With a Zombie." Even the title is somewhat similar and just about as ridiculous. Sir Lancelot is the calypso singer in both movies singing songs that partly predict what has happened and what is about to happen. The main zombie is played by the same actor, Darby Jones, using the same makeup. The stage setting for St. Sebastian Island looks similar to the setting for "I Walked With a Zombie." In some ways "Zombies on Broadway" is actually a parody of "I Walked With a Zombie" and of zombie movies in general.

Brown and Carney, a poor man's Abbott and Costello, do a fairly decent job in the comedy department in this film, though Carney's aping of Lou Costello becomes annoying after a time. Toward the end, a monkey is able to steal the show indicating the level of talent in the cast. Sheldon Leonard does well in his usual role as a mobster who talks tough but tends to be a pussycat. Bela Lugosi and the lovely Anne Jeffreys add a degree of dignity to the goings on. Too bad they were so often wasted in programmers since they were both such gifted performers.

The title is misleading since the movie is actually about press agents Brown and Carney trying to pan off a fake zombie named Sam to a nightclub mobster for his gala opening of the Zombie Club. Brown and Carney are caught and made to travel to St. Sebastian and bring back a real zombie. The movie is fast paced and there are a few belly laughs along the way. Don't expect anything on the level of "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" and you won't be disappointed.

1945's "Zombies on Broadway" marked the first of three titles under Bela Lugosi's new RKO contract, his first teaming opposite the studio's answer to Abbott and Costello, tall and thin Wally Brown with short and pudgy Alan Carney. Like the later "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla," he reigns in a studio jungle conducting sinister experiments, here a zombie master unlike Murder Legendre from "White Zombie," attempting scientific means to produce zombies using a special serum of his own making. Brown and Carney play their regular characters of Jerry Miles and Mike Strager, working as publicity agents for a new club owned by gangster Ace Miller (Sheldon Leonard), but in promising a genuine zombie for The Zombie Hut they are forced to journey to the Caribbean island of San Sebastian to seek out Lugosi's Dr. Paul Renault, on the advice of museum curator Hopkins (Ian Wolfe). Renault would rather the world believe him dead, delighted to test his new serum on Mike, kidnapped from his bed by actual zombie Kolaga (Darby Jones). Jones and unbilled calypso singer Sir Lancelot repeat their roles from Val Lewton's "I Walked with a Zombie," five zombie masks called for by makeup artist Maurice Seiderman, little more than bulging pop eyes for an effect both comic and creepy, Lugosi confined almost entirely to the film's second half with only 10 minutes screen time. He actually gets a chuckle when assistant Joseph (Joseph Vitale) tells Miles and Strager that Dr. Renault is merely studying a banana blight, but the doctor insists it is coconuts: "oh, Joseph is color blind!" The antics of Brown and Carney offer some amusement but the material for surefire laughs just isn't there, later reunited with Bela for a much better comedy, "Genius at Work," offering a larger part for Lugosi and a last pairing with master screen villain Lionel Atwill (only a few weeks after completing this mad scientist fiasco, he would be cast as Joseph in Val Lewton's Boris Karloff vehicle "The Body Snatcher").