Horror Classic 16 of 50: DEAD MEN WALK

So, it's not Monday. It's later than Monday. I've been trying to stick with the Monday night update schedule on this here blog, but for some reason it's just not working out, as evidenced by the fact that it's today is the type of Monday that is a Wednesday. So here's the deal: from now on, I'm updating this thing on Wednesday evenings. Mark your calendars.

This week's horror classic is Dead Men Walk. It's a drama from 1995 starring Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon, which covers the controversial topic of -- wait a minute. Sorry, that's Dead Man Walking. Dead Men Walk is a 1943 cheapo starring veteran actor George Zucco, which covers the controversial topic of vampires. It does so very... very... slowly. Everything in this movie happens slowly. It's only 64 minutes long, but it could have easily been 32 if they had just picked up the pace. But enough of my Alive Man Complaining.

Synopsis

The first thing we, the viewers, see is a spooky face speaking directly to us, scolding us (slowly) for not taking seriously legends of vampires, werewolves, witchcraft and the like. Did this kind of thing ever actually scare anyone? For all the grave warnings of this floating head, I mostly felt like giggling. Or yawning.

Then the story begins. Elwyn Clayton has recently died, and attendees at his funeral include his brother Dr. Lloyd Clayton, his daughter Gail, and Gail's bland boyfriend David. There's also a funeral-crasher: Kate, the town eccentric, who comes in and rants about how evil Elwyn was, what with his dabbling in the dark arts. They totally kick her out of the church, which means she probably won't be at the reception afterward to swap anecdotes and eat butter cookies.

That night, Elwyn's faithful hunchback servant visits his grave... and he ain't plantin' no flowers, nosiree. Servant guy unearths the coffin (slowly) and opens it, and like a snake in a can of fake peanuts (but slower), dead Mr. Clayton pops up ready and rarin' to go. See, he's a vampire now, though it's never explained how that happened, as he was never bitten by another blood-sucker. This movie has its own set of vampire rules, and it's not going to tell us what they are.

In fact, Elwyn insists he was murdered by none other than his brother Lloyd, and he (slowly) vows his revenge. He pays Lloyd a little visit, glaring and bragging about how awesome he is now, and the whole thing leaves Lloyd pretty shaken up. When Lloyd tells David about the encounter, David immediately believes every word of his story. Ha! Just kidding. Can you imagine that happening in one of these movies?

Elwyn next visits Gail, and after watching her sleep and droning on for a while about how evil he is, he bites her neck. Now, I don't know if you've ever come down with a bad case of Vampire Bite, but over the next week Gail proceeds to fall ill, and then iller, and David and Lloyd feel pretty terrible about it.

So they resolve (slowly) to do something, but their attempts at bringing down Vampire Elwyn are hindered when the aforementioned town eccentric Kate winds up murdered, and the townspeople accuse Lloyd. (He didn't do it.) The whole thing builds to a climactic fight scene that really brings down the house.*

Is It Scary?

A thousand times no. George Zucco as Elwyn didn't make for an intimidating vampire at all... He seems more like the nice old man at church who gives you a high five and a quarter every Sunday.

Lessons I Learned

• Heed the warnings of the local crazy lady.


• Be nice to your brother, or he might come back as a vampire and haunt you.


• Not all vampires are the same... Some, for example, are boring.

My Favorite Line
David, after Lloyd suggests they visit Elwyn's grave to see if he's risen from it: "But that's ridiculous! I'd feel like a fool... or worse!"

Body Count

Four.

Comments
•It's a good thing so many of these movies are so short. This one wasn't bad so much as horribly, unbelievably, painfully, head-crushingly dull. The actor playing David was, like so many young romantic leads in this genre, stiff and emotionless, and while George Zucco was convincing enough as Lloyd, he just didn't bring the necessary menace to his other role as Elwyn.

•Speaking of which, I didn't notice until the climactic fight scene that it was the same guy playing both parts. They did actually appear in the same shot a time or two, standing on opposite sides of the room, which is about as impressive as the effects ever get in a film like this.

•I think the score was taken from another film by the same studio and thrown onto this one without any regard for whether it matched the mood of any given scene. Sometimes Elwyn was acting all scary, but the music sounded like something from a Donald Duck cartoon. It seems like that's happened before with these classic horror movies. Did I comment on it? I'm not motivated enough to go look.

•My favorite scene was when Elwyn's servant faces off in a duel against Lloyd. The servant thrusts frantically with a big stick, his face contorted with the effort... and Lloyd is calmly holding a chair in front of himself to block it, just kind of chillin'. I guess you'd have to see it to appreciate it, but the next time I get in a fight, I want to be Dr. Lloyd Clayton.

•Unless I missed something (possibly because I was paying attention to something more interesting than the movie, like my toenails), we never found out whether Lloyd actually murdered Elwyn as the latter charged. But I guess we can assume that the word of a doctor is more trustworthy than that of a vampire.

•Despite the plural noun in the title, only one man dead man actually walks in this film. LIARS!

•Dang, this movie was slow.

Letter grade for Dead Men Walk: D+

Next movie in the 50-movie set: The Mad Monster, which stars George Zucco again. I wish it were The MAD Magazine Monster, a horror film about a creature who terrorizes the populace by giving snappy answers to stupid questions.

*I could have said it "literally brings down the house," because by the end of the fight the house is destroyed, but I'm so sick of hearing the word "literally" used incorrectly all the time that I can't even bring myself to use it correctly, lest I sound like one of Those People. It's a sad day for the English language when a perfecty useful adverb is tainted like that.