The Dead Don't Die

Scripted by Robert"Psycho"Bloch,the DDD is a very spooky movie indeed!George Hamilton is a man determined to find the TRUE killer of his brother's wife.He is drawn into a shadowy world where the dead won't stay dead!With creepy Reggie"Salem's Lot"Nalder as a scary dead/undead guy.Is everything George sees real or a nightmare?Ray Milland and Joan Blondel co-star.Very Spooky indeed.

"The Dead Don't Die" is a genuinely creepy and inventive 70's made-for-TV gem that regretfully ended up in total oblivion, and this in spite of the involvement of several really highly acclaimed names in the horror industry, like writer Robert Bloch ("Psycho", "Torture Garden"), director Curtis Harrington ("Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?", "What's the Matter with Helen?") and a long series of veteran cast members (Ray Milland, George Hamilton, Ralph Meeker, Reggie Nalder, …). Even more impressive than the names is the screenplay's ability to actually evoke real frights and maintain a continuously unsettling atmosphere. This is story-driven suspense without fancy make-up effects or spectacular stunts, but definitely with a handful of unforgettable jump scenes like, for example, the electric chair execution near the beginning and a corpse emerging from its coffin somewhere halfway through the film. George Hamilton stars as a former sailor called back home to attend the execution of his brother Ralph for a murder he swears he didn't commit. Don vows to clear Ralph's name and find out who really committed the crime his brother got punished for. Searching in sinister places and encountering uncanny people, Don discovers that his brother wasn't actually framed for murder but merely 'selected' for execution by an expert in the occult who wanted Ralph to serve in his army of the undead. The plot isn't exactly plausible, but nevertheless convincingly brought by cast and crew. The events supposedly take place in the 1930's and Curtis Harrington masterfully recreates the grim atmosphere of that decade with exact period details (like vehicles and costumes) and a cheap looking type of cinematography lacking color. Then there's also a copious amount of slick details that are just plain bizarre and indescribably eerie, like a dance hall full of near dead couples and one cute lady spontaneously combusting! Ray Milland is terrific and reliable as always, while Reggie Nalder is one of the creepiest actors who ever lived. "The Dead Don't Die" comes very much recommended, if you can find a decent copy of course.

Made in the heyday of the TV movie-of-the-week, "The Dead Don't Die" can be best thought of as "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" meets "Night of the Living Dead" meets "Chinatown." Written by Robert Bloch and directed by Curtis Harrington, who a couple years earlier had made a truly strange, old-fashioned horror MOW called "The Cat Creature," this film features a host of reliable Golden Age Hollywood actors in cameos, including Joan Blondell, Ralph Meeker, Milton Parsons and William Benedict. It also gives creepy Reggie Nalder a good role, and he's almost as frightening here as he was in "Salem's Lot," but without the extreme makeup. Some eerie zombie scenes and an effective score add to the film's pluses. The minuses, however, start from the top. George Hamilton is badly miscast as the hero who seeks to find out who really murdered the wife of his brother, who was tried and executed for it, but was, of course innocent. The character is supposed to be a tough sailor, but Hamilton gives more of an imitation of a hungover Bruce Dern, saying his lines with the conviction of a script girl. Ray Milland as a sleezy dance-marathon promoter, whom Hamilton manages to convince that he's sees dead people, including his brother, also phones it in. Linda Cristal as a French femme fatale with a Spanish accent at least tries. The period detail is superficial, with the men's hair styles and costumes straight out of the 1970s (as are Billy Benedict's modern eyeglasses). Given the particpation of Bloch and Harrington, the plodding, talky script and flat TV-style direction is particularly disappointing. This seems to have scared a lot of people in 1975, but now, even at 72-minutes, it seems to go on forever. And anyone who can't figure out who the villain of the piece really is must be a genuine zombie.

This rather unknown '70s telefilm from the artisan Harrington can delight any non-demanding moviegoer thanks to the mix of genres and its sinister atmosphere. Set in the 30s, the film mixes gangster movies with classic terror in a plot that includes zombies, a sect that practices voodoo, the dance marathons typical of the Great Depression that one knows from movies like 'They Shoot Horses, Don't The?' (Sidney Pollack, 1969) and disturbing sequences in morgues, cemeteries and funeral homes. In addition to an execution in the electric chair at the beginning of the film.

To this set of morbid ingredients is added a cast led by George Halmiton, who plays a sailor obsessed with laundering the honor of his brother executed with capital punishment after being accused of murder, and which also includes Ray Milland, Linda Cristal. or Joan Blondell. All of them do their job with solvency in a film in which the mystery and creepy sensations remain until the end.

In 1930s Chicago, a sailor attends his brother's execution, and then starts to see his dead brother everywhere. A mysterious woman warns the sailor to leave town, but instead he begins to look into his brother's past, with the help of a gruff police sergeant (Ralph Meeker) and the brother's former employer, a dance hall owner (Ray Milland). What he finds goes beyond what we consider reality. A very young and handsome George Hamilton stars as the befuddled sailor and Linda Cristal is the bewitching mystery woman. Curtis Harrington directed from a Robert Bloch story, and the atmosphere is creepy and at times nightmarish. Harrington leave no doubt about where things are going by starting off with the brother's execution followed closely by a scene in the dance hall featuring a bunch of marathon dancers looking like the living dead. Within the strict limits of a 1970s ABC-type TV movie, Harrington even lays on a bit of true horror, in a scene when when Hamilton is trapped in a funeral home with a walking corpse intent on murder (Reggie Nalder of "Salem's Lot" fame). There's also a taut sequence in a graveyard when Hamilton and the dance hall owner dig up the deceased brother's grave. And the final showdown takes place in an old-fashioned slaughterhouse that takes on the feel of a hospital morgue. Nicely done, although no one in the star-studded cast is called upon to emote much.