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user\nI think Dolph Lundgren had potential at being a big action star a la Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and even Van Damme to certain degree. He had some big moments in his career but he also made some poor choices and this is definitely one of them although made later in his career. The strange thing about Jill The Ripper (or Jill Rips...or Tied Up) is that I honestly think they seriously thought they were making a provocative and serious thriller? It shows in the way that they describe it on IMDb, on the DVD case, in the commentaries, and this film is not serious. To call it campy would be a huge understatement. The film tries to be complex and intelligent when in fact it's nothing more than shallow, confusing and gratuitous. On top of that they put Lundgren, who is known for action films, in an attempt at a serious role which makes it even more campy because his range as an actor is pretty limited. The entire film revolves around the kinky sex world and yet they attempt at making it a serious thriller? Just the plot and premise immediately make it a B-Movie Porn at very best.
Dolph Lundgren plays disgraced former cop and raging alcoholic Matt Sorenson who decides to play Detective when his brother is murdered. I mean put aside the numerous plot holes that has Lundgren getting free roam to investigate crime scenes, and witnesses and everything else even though he's not a cop anymore and you still have a pretty strange and rather lack luster performance from Lundgren. Danielle Brett is Lundgren's eventual love interest and his brother's widow. Brett plays her role decently enough considering the script and campy story. The supporting cast is huge and no one particularly stands out in their performances unless it's on the negative side such as the absolutely horrible performance by Victor Pedtrchenko who seems to go by several different names in the film, boasts an awful accent and is a really awful villain.
I honestly tried to get into the mystery and film and watch closely but there wasn't any reason to because it was all a jumble of ridiculous plot and gratuitous sex games including a downright ridiculously hilarious scene where Lundgren goes under cover and is strung upside down nearly naked. To explain how classy and well done this movie is (sarcasm...sarcasm) the back of the DVD I picked up (it was really cheap) has Lundgren's character listed as \"Murray Wilson\" (not the name of his character in the film.) While somehow Lundgren manages to be usually watchable the film falls flat on it's face trying to be serious. Considering director Anthony Hickox is infamous for really B-Movie Horror flicks it only makes sense even though I think he was really trying to be serious. Hard core cult Lundgren fans will have to see it...no one else should...certainly for any sort of mystery or suspense. 3/10
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user\nProbably the worst Dolph film ever. There's nothing you'd want or expect here. Don't waste your time. Dolph plays a miserable cop with no interests in life. His brother gets killed and Dolph tries to figure things out. The character is just plain stupid and stumbles around aimlessly. Pointless.
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user\nDolph Lundgren broods and scowls his way through this incoherent mystery/thriller that's not nearly as cool as the box would have you believe. He is actually quite good here, but the story is a mess of B-movie cliches (detectives, revenge, tycoons, hookers, S&M) that looks like it was made up as they went along. The film picks up a bit in the second half but for a more decent Lundgren flick, rent RED SCORPION instead.
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user\nThis unpleasant film has little to recommend it. Dolph Lundgren gives a performance that is better than either this script or his other action films have allowed. And there are occasional snippets of dialog that suggest the film might have been able to provide some insight into a bizarre subculture.
But no. Motivations are either murky or trite. Most of the acting is sub-par. The script creates needless confusion. And the director's needless fascination with focusing on gore is distracting.
It's hard to imagine who the audience is for this film.
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user\nI saw this film under the title of \"Tied Up\". In general I have enjoyed Dolph's movies, so gave this one a try. It wasn't worth it. I have read some of the previous comments about the box enticing viewers. Don't be fooled. This is a poor film at best. The acting is nonexistent. The plot, what little there is of one, is very predictable. The movie in places seems to be chopped together. This one just plain stinks the place up. Not even worth the price of a cheap night rental. As a bit of a Dolph fan, I kept waiting to see him in action. By the end of the movie, you will still be waiting. Best to avoid this film, and spend your time watching almost anything else.
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user\nIt just seems to run true to form, any movie starring Dolph Lundgren is bad! I don't know if it is the fact that the storyline in full of holes, or that Dolph is such a bad actor. No spoiler here, He seems to overdue the pushing and shoving and grabbing and touching thing in this movie. In my opinion it is a wonder that some of these projects find venture capital to get in the can and to the theatre.
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user\nThis is the worst movie I have ever seen. The Avengers held this dubious honor but no longer. The acting in \"Jill the Ripper\" is terrible and was only eclipsed by the plot. This movie is as intellectually stimulating as the Telletubbes. It doesn't know whether it wants to be an S&M flick or a really bad thriller. Only watch under extreme intoxication or if you're bed ridden and need a leather clad distraction. This script should be reworked into a porn, it wouldn't take very much effort and would have a longer shelf life. A porn, even a bad porn, wouldn't do the damage to Dolf Lundgren's career the way that this movie has.
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user\nI wont take too much time here, just wanted to state that Darkman 3 is awesome. I have all 3 on DVD, added these to my collection of DVD movie sets. Darkman ranks up there with the best, like Indiana Jones, Aliens, Star Wars, Die hard, you get the point. There isn't too many good horror, thriller, sets out there. Many thanks to the whole crew, and set for giving us the Darkman trilogy. By the way if your wondering how I came across this one on DVD. I purchased it through the internet, it is however region 4, as you know most US DVD players are region 1. If you own a Sony Playstation 2, you have the best DVD player since it is an all region player. Just go to set up then choose witch region setting you want ( 1-9 ).
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user\nOK,but does that make this a good movie?well,not really,in my opinion.there isn't a whole lot to recommend it.i found it very slow,tediously,in fact.it's also predictable pretty much through and through.number one and two were somewhat predictable,but not as much.i also felt this movie was quite campy at times,which i didn't really think fits this series and the character.Jeff Fahey plays the main bad guy in this installment.he's a decent enough actor,but i felt he played his character too over the top.i guess that fit with the tone of the movie,which would have been great if i had liked the movie.plus,there were some pretty bad one liners.Arnold Vosloo returns in the title role,but is given little to work with in this movie.the character has not really evolved,as i had hoped.oh well.this is just my opinion.anyway,for me,while this movie is not abysmal,it is pretty bad.my vote for Darkman III: 3.5/5
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user\nNormally I'm quite disposed to like low budget gonzo films, but Darkman III is so appallingly unengaging that I feel nothing but contempt for it.
It looks and feels like a TV show, and a particularly shoddy one at that. The sets are sparse, the lighting flat, the score and effects disjointed, and the camerawork is film school 101. There's no plot to speak of, the characters are one dimensional, and the actors are sleepwalking. Most of the cast look like they should be doing soft core porn..... In fact, the only reward that I got from this mess was spotting the startling squint faced Roxann Biggs-Dawson (B'Elanna from Star Trek: Voyager) without her Klingon bumpy head makeup on. Her skin tone is about two shades lighter than it is in Voyager; either she's been bleached down for this role, or blacked up for Voyager. Very strange either way.
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user\nDarkman 3: Die Darkman Die is directed by Bradford May, the same guy who made the first Darkman sequel too. Darkman 3 is worse than Darkman 2, and is nothing special, in my opinion. Larry Drake is no more as a main villain, who is now played by great Jeff Fahey, whose character once again wants to get Darkman's work and create this time some ultra strong humans in order to get the leadership of the whole city. The film is pretty much the same in plot and execution as Darkman 2, but I was mostly irritated by the presence of many scenes from Darkman 2. These sequels were made in short time and with little money, so these kind of decisions had to be made. Couple of scenes are pretty stylish and exiting, but still this is pretty tired film and often irritatingly stupid, too. The characters scream and laugh too much and it is very annoying. There is no any philosophical depth in the film, and this is like a remake of Darkman 2 which it still cannot equal. Darkman 2 had many great scenes and stylish camera work, and Larry Drake's ability to play great villain. Darkman 3 offers only some nice scenes and moments, but mostly this film is tired and full of cliches. The few positive things in this movie are flashback edits (Westlake's nightmares) and couple of truly surprising plot turns and tricks. And worth mentioning is also pretty nasty death scene of the main villain which was pretty comic book like and inventive without any gore. Far more interesting than the death of main villain in part two.
Darkman 3 is worst in the whole series, and we must remember that these two sequels were made directly to video and they don't come even close to Raimi's original Darkman with Liam Neeson. Darkman 2 was okay actioner with plenty of great scenes and suspense, but this last (?) entry is tired and often stupid and boring piece of sequel. It has some merits as mentioned, but overall feeling is that this should not been made in the first place. May is talented director so hopefully he can get some more noteworthy projects in the future.
3/10
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user\nThis third Darkman was definitely better than the second one, but still far worse than the original movie. What made this one better than D2 was the fact that The Bad Guy had been changed and Durant was not brought back again. Furthermore there was actually some hint of character development when it came to the bad guy's family and Darkman himself. This made my heart soften and I gave this flick as much as 4/10, i.e. **/*****.
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user\nThis show comes up with interesting locations as fast as the travel channel. It is billed as reality but in actuality it is pure prime time soap opera. It's tries to use exotic locales as a facade to bring people into a phony contest & then proceeds to hook viewers on the contestants soap opera style.
It also borrows from an early CBS game show pioneer- Beat The Clock- by inventing situations for its contestants to try & overcome. Then it rewards the winner money. If they can spice it up with a little interaction between the characters, even better. While the game format is in slow motion versus Beat The Clock- the real accomplishment of this series is to escape reality.
This show has elements of several types of successful past programs. Reality television, hardly, but if your hooked on the contestants, locale or contest, this is your cup of tea. If your not, this entire series is as I say, drivel dripping with gravy. It is another show hiding behind the reality label which is the trend it started in 2000.
It is slick & well produced, so it might last a while yet. After all, so do re-runs of Gilligan's Island, Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies & The Brady Bunch. This just doesn't employ professional actors. The intelligence level is about the same.
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user\nHow has this piece of crap stayed on TV this long? It's terrible. It makes me want to shoot someone. It's so fake that it is actually worse than a 1940s sci-fi movie. I'd rather have a stroke than watch this nonsense. I remember watching it when it first came out. I thought, hey this could be interesting, then I found out how absolutely, insanely, ridiculously stupid it really was. It was so bad that I actually took out my pocket knife and stuck my hand to the table.
Please people, stop watching this and all other reality shows, they're the trash that is jamming the networks and canceling quality programming that requires some thought to create.
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user\nYou do realize that you've been watching the EXACT SAME SHOW for eight years, right? I could understand the initial curiosity of seeing strangers co-exist on an Island, but you'd think that after watching unkempt, stink-ladened heroes run roughshod through the bush with an egg on a spoon for half a decade would be enough to get you to commit to something a little more original (and interesting).
And I'm not even speaking of the shows validity which for the record I find questionable. It's just hard to suspend disbelief for \"Bushy Bill\" eating a rat when the entire crew of producers and camera people are housed in an air conditioned make-shift bio-dome sipping frosty mochcinno's with moxy.
What's the appeal here? I don't care about these people or their meandering lives. I just don't get it. But if you DO find yourself being captivated by hairy, unwashed people, I suggest you turn off your TV and just take a trip to your local bus station where you can see people like this in their TRUE habitat. They call them HOMELESS PEOPLE, and free of charge, you can sit back and marvel in their uncanny ability to retrieve various cigarette debris from a plethora of garbage canisters, eventually striking \"pay-dirt\" and fashioning a homemade Dr. Frankenstein-styled cancer-stick, all the while begging people for change for food when the stink of \"Aqua Velva\" on their breath is enough to suggest otherwise. And the best part? Much like Survivor, every week one member of the tribe \"Leaves\" the \"Island\" when they are unceremoniously sent packing to the local Institution when the frightening unmedicated state of full-blown schizophrenia kicks into gear! Now THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT!
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user\n\"This might mean the end of the white race!\" gasps a general as a dozen Native Zombies wander around the battlefields of Europe during the \"Great War\". An expedition sets out tor the long-lost, back-projected city of Kennif-Angor to stop this sort of thing and keep the battlefields clear for decent honest white people to slaughter each other by the tens of thousands.
It is a bit hard to tell when people are zombies or not in this film as the acting is so wooden. Even by 1936 standards the acting in this film is bad. From a previous decade. It looks like it came out of a correspondence school text book on 'How to Act'
------------- Chapter Three: Emotions -------------
\"How to express fear and loathing (Female) Clench both fists. Place fist of one hand on heart. Open mouth as it to scream. Place other fist, palm out, against mouth. Hold pose for 10 seconds longer than is comfortable then quickly turn head 90 degrees away from direction of loathed object and sob\".
\"How to have difficult, heavily emotionally charged scene with ex-fiancé explaining your love for someone else. Do NOT make eye contact. Do not move. Do not show any emotion. Do not move your eyes too much as you read your lines off the studio wall.\"
To give us a respite from the leaden acting the director cunningly cuts in long pauses where nothing much happens except that film keeps running through the projectors. Thus 35 minute's worth of story is padded out to 60ish minutes.
The revolt of the zombies when it comes is so slow! Released from mental bondage the armies of ex-zombiefied minions turn on their former master by ambling slowly up hill and then sort of stabbing a door a bit and smashing a window. \"Yea... let's... oh, I dunnno yeah. Let's get him grrr. Frankenstein must be destroyed - manana.\" (though I have just found a bit of hidden symbolism. Jagger is shot by a Native as some sort of ironic counterpoint to all the Natives being shot by the Germans at the start of the flick. see, even downtrodden Natives don't want the end of the White Race!) The chase (it you can call it that) through the back-projected swamp is hilarious and worth the admission price alone. Roy D'Arcy has a hell of a time camping it up, but is totally wasted, as Col. Mazovia.
There is one interesting moment in this film. A nice little montage of the zombied natives and white cast members falling under the evil eyes spell. face after face, cross-fade into one another. It works, though there is a strange little blip in the middle of each close up like a frame has been cut. I guess these must be Neg Cutters' frames between the fades.
Best watched with friends and in a silly mood.
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user\nThough the title includes the word \"zombies\", this film is not what you'd expect from a movie made today, though for 1936 the concept is played out about as well as would probably be expected. Dean Jagger portrays Armand Louque, an officer in the French Army of World War I, who has stumbled upon an ancient tale of soldiers turned into automatons, or \"zombies\", who are impervious in battle and may hold the key to victory in the war, though on whose side is not certain. At first he has trouble convincing his superiors of this phenomenon, but eventually French General Duval (George Cleveland) orders a non military expedition into the ancient Cambodian city of Angkor to find the secret of the zombies and destroy it.
The story is played out against the backdrop of a love triangle involving Louque, Duval's daughter Claire (Dorothy Stone), and Clifford Grayson (Robert Noland), all a part of the expedition. When Louque laments over his lack of forcefulness and resolve, Grayson offers him advice to go after what he wants in life with all his power. That advice begins to transform Louque, particularly after he's successful in obtaining a stone tablet resembling a photo from the ancient city. Having followed a temple priest into a swamp, Louque now appears to hold the secret he had been seeking, though it's not made clear how he has instantaneously been able to command the power of \"zombiefication\". All it takes is placing his right fist to the forehead simulating a third eye, and casting his thoughts out to those he wishes to control. This comes in handy for winning back his girl, and taking Grayson's early advice as he comments to his servant, \"Buna, we're learning to be ruthless\".
Fans of early \"B\" horror flicks will recognize the use of Bela Lugosi's signature eye stare, plucked from the 1932 film \"White Zombie\", also from director Victor Halperin. Of the two movies, \"White Zombie\" is preferably superior, both in story content and in it's depiction of the undead, where the zombies have a more sinister appearance and are more threatening. In \"Revolt\", the zombies are enemy soldiers with a glazed over look that merely react to their mentor's commands. In fact, the actual revolt of the title occurs only when Louque releases the soldiers from his mental command in deference to his love for Claire; they overrun his compound and kill him in the process.
Not to be too harsh on the film, it plays out decently within the parameters of it's story outline, but if you're thinking \"zombies!!!\" within the traditional context, you'll probably be disappointed. If you want to sample an early treatment of the subject, the aforementioned \"White Zombie\" with Bela Lugosi is the way to go.
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user\nREVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES (2 outta 5 stars) No, this is not a long-lost ancestor to the classic George A. Romero zombie flicks. This is a low-budget potboiler from 1936 that probably seemed very cool to audiences of the time... but seems awfully routine these days. There is actually a pretty good scene at the start of a soldier firing off his pistol into a horde of approaching zombie soldiers... and a close-up of bullets entering the bare chest of one of them. The effect looks hopelessly fake these days but in 1936 I'm sure it had audiences gasping. The story concerns the search for the secret of mind control... ostensibly to create an unstoppable zombie army... but later as a means for one character to win the woman he loves. The movie is barely an hour long but moves at a snail's pace so it seems feature-length, believe me! There really isn't much to recommend it... you may get some amusement from the faked studio shots of the star \"wading\" through a \"swamp\". The ending is interesting... so I'd say the movie is worth seeing at least once. More than likely you will see it as an extra feature on some cheap \"4 movies on 1 DVD\" compilation at Wal-Mart for five bucks. Hey, it's well worth the money...
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user\nThis film is something like a sequel of \"White Zombie\", since it is made by the same man (Halperin) and features zombies. Halperin, the George A. Romero of his day, fails to deliver with this one, though.
We have a man who can control the minds of people in Cambodia, and a search to destroy the source of his power so the zombies can be sent free. Also, a love interest for the evil man.
Where this film really excels is in the imagery. The Cambodian temples and dancers are very nice and the zombie look very powerful in their large numbers. Unfortunately, we don't really get to see much of the zombies in action and the love story seems to play a much too large role for a horror film (though this has a valid plot reason later on).
I would have loved to see some 1930s zombies attack helpless city folk, but this film just did not deliver. And no strong villain (like Bela Lugosi) was waiting to do battle against our heroes. And the use of Lugosi's eyes? A nice effect, but misleading as he is never in the film... why not recreate this with the new actor's eyes? Overall, a film that could be a great one with a little script re-working and could someday be a powerful remake (especially if they keep it in the same post-war time frame). Heck, if they can fix up \"The Hills Have Eyes\" then this film has hope.
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user\n\"Revolt of the Zombies\" proves that having the same director revamp and recycle an idea doesn't necessarily make lightning strike twice.
The Halperin brothers, responsible for the horror classic \"White Zombie\", made this trite piece of garbage a mere few years later to cash in on its popularity and even recycled close-ups of Lugosi's eyes from that previous film. There was a court battle with the \"White Zombie\" film's rights owners, who didn't want the Halperins to be able to use the word 'zombie' in this title. That word was the only thing that could help this film, because, as everyone knows, bad films can make much more money simply by having the word 'Zombie' appear in the title. Knowing what Victor Halperin was capable of a few years before only makes this uninteresting film more insulting. It seems he never directed another horror film after this debacle. The zombies here seem not to be true walking dead, but simply hypnotism victims.
Wanna create a mind-controlled army of zombies? Be ready to crack a few eggs, including your own.
THE LAME PLOT: Man falls in love with scheming woman who plays with his heart and becomes engaged to him only to make his friend, whom she loves, jealous. This sends man into a spiral of madness in which he tries using zombie mind-control techniques to change things to his advantage in an attempt to win over a woman who isn't worth spit.
This includes one of the most blatantly obvious plot developments I've ever seen. You'd have to be blind or stupid not to see the ending coming. The acting isn't even good. This movie makes the racially insensitive \"King of the Zombies\" (which appeared on the same double bill DVD I bought) seems like an atmospheric horror masterpiece by comparison and reminds us that not every black and white film is a classic. It makes the atomic age sci-fi alien zombie cheese fest \"Invisible Invaders\" seem like a serious drama. This is one big ball of cheese so ridiculously melodramatic it could probably make many a Korean film fan twitch (South Korean films are often known for their use of melodrama). The credits list the ironically named company Favorite Films. I'm not sure whose favorite film this would be, but they're obviously an idiot.
Not recommended for fans of: zombies, romance, or classic films.
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user\nWhile this film certainly does possess the stench of a bad film, it's surprisingly watchable on several levels. First, for old movie fans, it's interesting to see the leading role played by Dean Jagger (no relation to Mick). While Jagger later went on to a very respectable role as a supporting actor (even garnering the Oscar in this category for 12 O'CLOCK HIGH), here his performance is truly unique since he actually has a full head of hair (I never saw him this way before) and because he was by far the worst actor in the film. This film just goes to show that if an actor cannot act in his earlier films doesn't mean he can't eventually learn to be a great actor. Another good example of this phenomenon is Paul Newman, whose first movie (THE SILVER CHALICE) is considered one of the worst films of the 1950s.
A second reason to watch the film is the shear cheesiness of it all. The writing is bad, the acting is bad and the special effects are bad. For example, when Jagger and an unnamed Cambodian are wading through the water, it's obvious they are really just walking in place and the background is poorly projected behind them. Plus, once they leave the water, their costumes are 100% dry!!! Horrid continuity and mindlessly bad dialog abounds throughout the film--so much so that it's hard to imagine why they didn't ask Bela Lugosi or George Zucco to star in the film--since both of them starred in many grade-z horror films. In many ways, this would be a perfect example for a film class on how NOT to make a film.
So, while giving it a 3 is probably a bit over-generous, it's fun to laugh at and short so it's worth a look for bad film fans.
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user\nSeriously, I absolutely love these old movies and their simplicity but I just watched this for the first time last night and it easily slotted itself into my bottom five of all time. Was this supposed to be about the love story or the zombies??? This movie was so bad that after it mercifully ended all I could do is laugh at how ridiculously bad it really was. Thankfully I'm too anal to turn a movie off without seeing the entire thing or I wouldn't be able to brag about watching this all the way through in one sitting! I like to think something positive can be said about anything in life so in keeping with that theory I will acknowledge this film's most positive asset, it was very short for a full length film.
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user\nWell, first off, if you're checking out Revolt of the Zombies as some very early Night of the Living Dead (1968)-type film, forget it. This is about \"zombies\" in a more psychological sense, where that term merely denotes someone who is not in control of their will, but who must instead follow the will of another. The \"zombies\" here, as little as they are in the film, are largely metaphors for subservience to the state or authority in general, as in wartime. It is quite a stretch to call this a horror film.
The film is set during World War I. A \"French Cambodian\" contingent had heard strange stories about zombification--supposedly Angkor Wat was built by utilizing zombies--and there are tales of zombie armies easily overcoming foes. Armand Louque (Dean Jagger) brings back a priest who supposedly knows the secret of zombification, but he won't talk. So Louque and an international military contingent head to Angkor Wat on an archaeological expedition designed to discover the secret of zombification and destroy the information before zombies have a chance to \"wipe out the white race\".
One of the odd things about Revolt of the Zombies is that it seems like maybe writer/director Victor Halperin decided to change his game plan while shooting the script. The film begins as if it will explore the zombie/military metaphor, and maybe even have adventure elements, but after about 15 minutes, it changes gears and becomes more of a love triangle story.
Halperin does stick with a subtext about will and power (and a Nietzschean \"will to power\"). The film is interesting on that level, but the script and the editing are very choppy. This is yet another older film for which I wouldn't be surprised if there is missing footage, especially since some scenes even fade or cut while a character is uttering dialogue.
Amidst the contrived romance story, Halperin tries to keep referring to the zombie thread, but little of the zombie material makes much sense. Louque discovers the secret of zombification, but it doesn't mean much to the viewer. The mechanics of the zombie material are vague and confusingHalperin even resorts to using superimposed footage of Bela Lugosi's googly-eyes from his 1932 film, White Zombie, but never explains what it has to do with anything. There are big gaps in the plot, including the love story. Promising, interesting characters from early reels disappear for long periods of time. One potential villain is disposed of unceremoniously before he gets to do much.
If you're a big fan of old, creaky B movies, Revolt of the Zombies may be worth watching at least once--the acting isn't all that bad, and if you've got a good imagination, you can piece together an interesting story in your mind to fill in all of the gaps. But this is the second time I've seen the film, with the first only being about five years ago, and I could barely recall anything about it--so it's not exactly memorable.
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user\nEver since the cinema-loving universe made acquaintance with a guy named George A. Romero, the word \"zombie\" automatically gets associated with blood-soaked horror images and non-stop acting sequences. It's safe to say that his \"Night of the Living Dead\" formed the zombie movie as we know it now. Yet, in the earliest years of cinema, the premise of reanimated corpses was merely used in slow, nearly action-less psychological thrillers. Jacques Tourneur's \"I walked with a Zombie\" is a perfect example and so is \"White Zombie\", starring Bela Lugosi. This \"Revolt of the Zombies\" could have been another example but unfortunately it's a failure over the entire line and easily one of the most tedious movies I ever saw. Dreadful acting, a very poorly written screenplay and a complete lack of atmosphere and tension! The film only lasts 65 minutes and yet the first half hour is entirely wasted on stupid love-story intrigues and unexciting monologues. The setting in the legendary Cambodian city of Angkor surely could have resulted in a more compelling story but all we ever see are interior shots. The lead actress (Dorothy Stone, textbook blonde with curly hair and an ugly nose) irritated me enormously and I kept hoping a ravenous undead would suddenly appear out of nowhere to devour her. Unlucky again. If you manage to struggle yourself through 60 soporific minutes, you'll be rewarded with a fairly decent finale. Still, this is far too little to give this film a positive rating, let alone a recommendation. Avoid! This is the type of movie you should only see in case you already saw everything else.
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user\nAfter watching Revolt Of The Zombies starring future Academy Award winner Dean Jagger I was left with one burning question. How was a society that created these ultimate warrior fighting machines ever defeated in the first place?
That's the question you'll be pondering if you take time to watch Revolt Of The Zombies. Towards the end of World War I, the French discover a cult from occupied Cambodia where these undead creatures who cannot be stopped with bullets form a brigade of monks who go over the top and dislodge the Hun.
This scares the living fecal matter out of everyone concerned so an international expedition is formed to find out destroy the secret of these zombies so no nation can get their hands on it and rule the world.
But we've got some dissent in those ranks. First is Snidely Whiplash villain Roy D'Arcy who murders the Buddhist monk who has the secret and second is Dean Jagger. Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac as we all know and he's determined to woo Dorothy Stone away from rival Robert Noland.
I think you've got some idea how this comes out, especially since a race of zombies didn't conquer the world for one country. Dean Jagger as he got the Oscar for Twelve O'Clock High must have shuddered every time he thought about this film and the awful dialog he tried to give a spark of sincerity to.
Moral of the story, you might make an ultimate warrior with the zombie potion and the zombie chant, but you can't make an ultimate love slave.
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user\nWimpy stuffed shirt Armand Louque (blandly played by veteran character actor Dean Jagger in a rare lead role) joins a group of researchers who want to find and destroy the secret technique of creating zombies. Armand falls for the lovely Claire Duval (fetching blonde Dorothy Stone), who uses the meek sap to get Armand's colleague Clifford Grayson (the hopelessly wooden Robert Noland) to marry her. Furious over being used and spurned by Claire, Armand uses his knowledge of voodoo to get revenge. Sound exciting? Well, it sure ain't. For starters, Victor Halperin's static (non)direction lets the meandering and uneventful talk-ridden story plod along at an excruciatingly slow pace. Worse yet, Halperin crucially fails to bring any tension, atmosphere and momentum to the hideously tedious proceedings. The mostly blah acting from a largely insipid cast doesn't help matters any; only George Cleveland as the hearty General Duval and E. Alyn Warren as the irascible Dr. Trevissant manage to enliven things a bit with their welcome and refreshing hammy histrionics. The drippy stock film library score, the painfully obvious stagebound sets, and the crude cinematography are pretty lousy and unimpressive as well. In fact, this feeble excuse for a fright feature is so crummy that not even the uncredited starkly staring eyes of the great Bela Lugosi can alleviate the brain-numbing boredom. A dismally dull dud.
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user\nWhat? You were not aware that Scooby-Doo battled zombies? Well, you might also not be aware of this little film that was directed by Victor Halperin, who had also directed White Zombie four years earlier. That would probably make it the second zombie film made.
No, don't go looking for Dorothy Stone to expose her breasts as you would expect in most zombie films, and don't even look for any brains being eaten. This is 1936, you know.
So, what you will see is typical of the period - lots of talking.
You do get to see Dean Jagger (Twelve O'Clock High ) and Bela Lugosi's eyes, but that is about it. Zombies in Cambodia, indeed!
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user\nRevolt of the Zombies has no redeeming features. I'm tired of people arguing that it's not that bad, and that the effects must have packed more of a punch in 1936. I suspect this isn't true: it's not like IQ's have risen sharply in the last 7 decades. The average viewer in 1936 was probably just as bored by this rubbish as the average viewer today. Why? Just try watching the first scenes, and count the pauses between things happening, the awful choice of when to cut to close-up, the slapdash editing that seems to include an extra two seconds on every shot to pad out the running time. Pay attention to the utterly redundant dialogue: \"I'm going to make some tea/go outside/read my book now.\" \"Are you?\" \"Yes, I am.\" That sort of exchange happens several times. Normally I would love that, being a HUGE fan of bad movies, but watch the listless actors mumbling their trite and tedious lines, and all desire to laugh at the movie slowly fades away. This sort of disinterested, pot-boiling time-waster is far worse than energetic, imaginative mind-blowers like Plan Nine From Outer Space or Santa Claus Conquers The Martians. Those who claim that this is \"better\" than those more interesting movies have a backwards idea of entertainment. This movie is not bad in the sense that your jaw hangs open in astonishment: it's bad in the sense that your eyes slowly close in boredom. Which is far worse.
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user\nI think the biggest failing something can have is to be boring. Bad is actually better than boring. This thing has no breath. It does have the interesting fact of taking place in Cambodia. How many American made films of the 30's take place in Cambodia. Nevertheless, the conflict there is a little hard to figure out. Even the troop movements are a little confusing. What drags it to a resounding halt is the love story. Why those two guys are so totally transfixed on the dippy blonde I don't know. I thought he should continue to use his Zombies (such as they are) and forget all about her. The movie just plods along. The perfect microcosm is where one of the principle characters follows a Cambodian priest through the water to get to the secret place where the hieroglyphics (or whatever) that explain how to turn people into zombies is kept. I thought they would never get there. One guy takes two steps. He stops. He looks around. The other guy hides behind some columns. He takes two steps. He stops. He looks around. The other guy hides behind some bushes. This is the movie in a nutshell. Then there is the bad acting and insipid dialogue. I actually have a lot of patience when it comes to B movies. This one is insufferable. By the way, a more apt title would be Revolt of the Hypnotized.
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user\nI'm working my way through the Horror Classics 50 Movie Pack Collection and REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES is one of the movies in the set. I am watching them with my soon-to-be seven-year old daughter, which makes most of these movies a laugh riot.
I had high hopes for REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES, after watching White Zombie, which is really the precursor to so much that is the mainstay of zombies in cinema (think Clive Barker's Serpent and the Rainbow and James Bond's Live and Let Die funeral scene, NOT Night of the Living Dead).
However, even though the title includes the word \"zombies,\" it is little more than a love triangle, involving anthropologist Armand Louque, who is smitten with Claire Duval; who in turn is taken with his companion Clifford Grayson. What a yawn-fest, my daughter fell asleep half-way through.
I had a real hard time deciphering who these people worked for -- the allies or the axis; but, I guess that doesn't really matter.
I was shocked to see Bela Lugosi in the credits for this movie; but, of course those were his eyes (from White Zombie) serving as the mind-control device for the zombies.
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user\nBefore the release of George Romero's genre-defining Night of the Living Dead, zombies were relatively well-behaved creatures. They certainly had much better table-manners in the old days. But social etiquette aside what thrills did these early zombies offer to the movie-going public? Judging by this film, none whatsoever.
The story is about an expedition to Cambodia, whose purpose is to find and destroy the secret of zombiefication. One of the party discovers the secrets on his own and sets about building his zombie army.
This film is basically a love triangle with zombies. But seeing as this is a 30's movie, the said zombies are more like somnambulists than the flesh-eating variety we think of today. They seem to respond to mind-control, rather than insatiable appetites. And, quite frankly, the 'revolt' is somewhat underwhelming too. The whole thing is really very dull. Aside from the lack of horror, there isn't any over-the-top melodramatic theatrics to keep us entertained. It seems unlikely that this could've provided much entertainment even 70 years ago. See it if you have to see everything with 'zombie' in the title but otherwise I would advise skipping this one.
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user\nThe Revolt of the Zombies is not the worst movie I've ever seen, but it is pretty far down on the list. When an expedition is sent to Cambodia to discover the trick to making zombies after World War I, one of the members decides to use the knowledge for his own evil ambitions. And he succeeds, at least at first. A love triangle complicates the story some.
This really was a tedious movie, with horrible acting that made it difficult to tell who were zombies and who weren't. The dialog was little better and the plot was unbelievable (not the zombie part of it but parts related to the \"romance\"). And while I am not any student or expert on cinematography, the camera work didn't seem to help the film much either.
While I have seen a few movies that are worse, this is unlikely to please anyone. It's bad, and NOT in a so-bad-that-it-is-good kind of way.
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user\n\"After World War I, an expedition representing the Allied countries is sent to Cambodia to stop the efforts of Count Mazovia in creating a zombie like army of soldiers and laborers. Hoping to prevent a possible outbreak of war due to Mazovia's actions, the group presses through the jungle to Angkor Wat in spite of the perils. The group includes Armand who has his own agenda contrary to the group's wishes,\" according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.
Heads up! the zombie make-up department revolted before the cameras started to roll.
Also, this \"Revolt of the Zombies\" has little to do with its supposed predecessor \"White Zombie\" (1932) *****, which starred Bela Lugosi. If that film's zombies didn't thrill you, this one's certainly won't. A younger-than-usual Dean Jagger (as Armand Louque) stars as a man obsessive with blonde Dorothy Stone (as Claire Duval). A couple supporting performances are good: devilish Roy D'Arcy (as Mazovia) and subservient Teru Shimada (as Buna); however, neither are given enough material to really pull this one out of the dumps.
** Revolt of the Zombies (1936) Victor Halperin ~ Dean Jagger, Dorothy Stone, Roy D'Arcy
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user\nOf the many problems with this film, the worst is continuity; and re-editing it on VHS for a college cable channel many years ago, I tried to figure out what exactly went wrong. What seems to have happened is that they actually constructed a much longer film and then chopped it down for standard theatrical viewing. How much longer? to fill in all the holes in the plot as we have it would require about three more hours of narrative and character development - especially given the fact that the film we do have is just so slow and takes itself just so seriously.
That's staggering; what could the Halperins have possibly been trying to accomplish here? Their previous film, \"White Zombie\", was a successful low budget attempt to duplicate the early Universal Studios monster films (The Mummy, Dracula, etc.), and as such stuck pretty close to the zombie mythology that those in North America would know from popular magazines.
Revolt of the Zombies, to the contrary, appears to have been intended as some allegory for the politics of modern war. This would not only explain the opening, and the change of Dean Jagger's character into a megalomaniac, but it also explains why the zombies don't actually do much in the film, besides stand around, look frightening, and wait for orders - they're just allegorical soldiers, not the undead cannibals we've all come to love and loathe in zombie films.
I am the equal to any in my dislike for modern war and its politics - but I think a film ought to be entertaining first, and only later, maybe, educational. And definitely - a film about zombies ought to be about zombies.
Truly one of the most bizarre films in Hollywood history, but not one I can recommend, even for historic value.
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