Review: The Undead

Val Dufour plays a researcher for the American Institute of Psychical Research. He picks up a prostitute (Pamela Duncan) to take to psychiatrist/professor Maurice Manson for a unique psychological experiment. He wants to prove a point to Manson by putting Duncan under hypnosis for a 48 hour period so that she can travel back in time to a past life. That time appears to be vaguely Medieval, where Duncan is now an accused witch. Richard Garland plays her Medieval love interest, whilst Allison Hayes and Billy Barty play a witch and an imp respectively, who want to sell Garland’s soul to The Devil (Richard Devon). Dick Miller plays a leper, Mel Welles a verbose gravedigger.

 

Mixing Medieval trappings with an eerie Bridey Murphy-esque psychological story involving hypnotism and past lives, this curious 1957 Roger Corman (“A Bucket of Blood”, “The Intruder”, “Tomb of Ligeia”) film sure is one of his more ambitious films. That ambition won out for me over some of the lumps and bumps in the execution of it. Director Corman and screenwriters Charles B. Griffith (“A Bucket of Blood”, “Little Shop of Horrors”, “Death Race 2000”) and Mark Hanna (Corman’s “Not of This Earth”, the infamous “Attack of the 50 ft Woman”, the solid blaxploitation action film “Slaughter”) were trying something different here and I appreciated it. Could the execution have been better? Sure, if it were more fleshed out and if the budget were bigger.

 

A lot of the Medieval dialogue is clichéd “Dungeons and Dragons”-speak, sometimes not persuasively delivered by the modestly talented actors. A miscast Richard Garland particularly struggles with it, he’s out of his depth here. Mel Welles gets on one’s nerves a bit but delivers a more professional performance than some here. Allison Hayes isn’t much of an actress (she was the star of “Attack of the 50ft Woman”, lest one forget) but she’s hot and has a certain presence here that I liked.

 

To be honest, I was pretty amazed that Corman made this interesting and unusual film at all. Every time it threatens to get dull or too talky, Corman throws in something interesting, eerie as hell, or just plain weird. We even get a baby-faced Dick Miller playing a leper who doesn’t look like a leper because Roger likely didn’t have the funds to convincingly make that happen on screen.

 

A mixture of Grimm’s fairy tale and psychological horror-drama, this is a strange but interesting low-budget experience. Look for this one and give it a go, it’s a little lumpy but you might just be charmed by it as I was. It’s one of the most unique films in Corman’s long filmography and the IMDb rating of 4.7 should be considered a crime if you ask me (critics seem to like it much better, it seems). It’s got something, and something is much better than nothing especially considering it was all filmed in a disused supermarket (!).

 

Rating: B-

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