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Together with detective Larry Adams (Robert Lowery) and doctor Keating
(Barry Macollum), Scott Warrington (Mauritz Hugo) pays a visit to doctor
von Altermann's (John Carradine) place deep in the Louisiana swamps to
investigate the death of Scott's sister Lila (Veda Ann Borg), von
Altermann's wife. There is something about von Altermann's place, about
his seemingly lifeless servants, and about Altermann himself, who is a bit
evasive about everything while still trying to play the perfect host. And
then there's Lila's body, which disappears and reappears several times,
and at one point Scott, Larry and Keating all see her on her feet walking
... Interestingly, it's Scott's black driver Jeff (Mantan Moreland),
who's least interested in all of this and would love to be a million miles
from here, who first gets an idea what's going on thanks to von
Altermann's black staff (Sybil Lewis, Madame Sul-Te-Wan): Doc von
Altermann has taken to creating zombies out of living people, and his own
wife Lila only seems to be his latest achievement. What Jeff has not
found out though is that von Altermann is actually working for the Nazis,
attempting to build Hitler a zombie army. But when he tries to demonstrate
his progress to a Nazi agent (Bob Steele), he has to realize his
zombiefied wife doesn't obey him any longer, instead makes another
disappearance. That Lila's body has disappeared yet again gets Scott and
company on edge, and when Keating is on the verge of finding something out
but then disappears as well, Scott insists on calling the sheriff - who
promptly arrives, too - but it's only the Nazi agent from earlier, trying
to cover for von Altermann. However, when von Altermann later tries to
zombify Scott and Larry, the Nazi agent saves Larry and turns out to be a
federal agent, and soon the two of them and Jeff face von Altermann in an
effort to save Scott. Doc von Altermann though calls his zombie army to
turn the tide in his favour - but he hasn't taken into account that the
zombies have since been taken over by zombie Lila and listen to her
commands, and she wants vengeance on the doc - and ultimately, she sees to
it that he becomes a victim of the swamps ... A silly and
underbudgeted zombiefilm, this is still fun to watch. After all, it's got
Mantan Moreland's spot-on comedy, cowboy star Bob Steele playing a Nazi
(and apart from his accent he comes across as quite convincing), and of
course the villainy of John Carradine, who admittedly might not have had
one of his better days when doing this one, but his performance still
works. Sure, the whole thing is directed without imagination, it's
storyline features the occasional plothole and leap of reason (like why
does a Nazi scientist work in the Louisiana swamps), and the lack of
budget at times painfully shows ... but isn't all of this part of the
charm of 1940's B-horrors churned out by studios like Monogram?
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