Boris Karloff as a zombie. Or no, he's not a zombie. Or maybe he is. We really aren't sure.
Intro.
As Halloween approached, I realized that I had reviewed a Bela Lugosi film, but not a Boris Karloff one. Recently my friend Catherine has been lending me copies of the comic book series The Walking Dead, so I took it as no coincidence when I saw the listing on TCM for a film by the same name. I decided to watch and realized that it was unlike any monster movie I had expected.
Overview
The Walking Dead begins with the conviction of a man associated with a group of high-society racketeers. Although everyone thinks he'll be acquitted, the judge sentences him to ten years without parole. His partners, still outside the law, decide to hire a hitman to kill the judge. Meanwhile, John Ellman (Boris Karloff) has just come out of prison after serving his time and gets a job from a detective to shadow the judge, who is suspected of adultery. Things take an unexpected turn when the hitman kills the judge and leaves him in Ellman's car. The only two witnesses are Nancy (Marguerite Churchill) and Jimmy (Warren Hull), but the hitman threatens to kill them if they utter one word about it. Ellman discovers the judge's body (and it's the same judge who sentenced Ellman years ago), and is arrested for the murder. One of the racketeers, Nolan (Ricardo Cortez), is a lawyer and defends Ellman at trial. And by defends, I mean, makes certain that Ellman is convicted and sentenced to the electric chair. So right at the eleventh hour, Jimmy and Nancy come forward to try and save Ellman's life, confiding in their boss, the scientist Dr. Evan Beaumont (Edmund Gwenn). Nolan intercepts the call and purposefully delays getting a stay of execution. The governor's phone call finally comes to the jail at midnight, just seconds after Ellman is electrocuted. He's declared dead, but Dr. Beaumont insists on collecting his body instead of sending him to the morgue. Conveniently, Beaumont happens to have all the equipment needed to hook up Ellman's body and jolt it back to life. It's never been done before, but he and Nancy and Jimmy succeed at bringing Ellman back from the dead. It isn't all happy endings though, as Ellman comes back with no memory and no ability to walk or talk or anything. With a lot of work, he is finally able to walk (though he seriously walks like Romero's zombies) and slowly regains both memory and speech, aided by his love of the piano. Dr. Beaumont hosts a concert for Ellman, with the purpose of showing off his amazing scientific achievement. The police also arrange for all of the racketeers to arrive, to judge their reactions to seeing Ellman alive. Sure enough, Ellman somehow knows exactly who was responsible for his death, and goes after each man in the nights afterwards. He confronts each one with the question "Why did you have me killed?" and one by one each man dies, though not all by Ellman's hands. On his last night with Beaumont, Ellman sneaks out to the cemetery. But he's followed by Nancy, who is concerned for his safety, and she in turn is followed by the racketeers. It all comes to an end in the cemetery where Ellman dies and this time stays dead, keeping his knowledge of the afterlife a secret.Highlights
I have to admit, this film took me by surprise. I expected it to be a typical B-horror film from the 30's with plenty of women screaming and creepy monsters lurking about. Instead, I found it to be a psychologically thrilling film that really has a lot going for it. Boris Karloff, first of all, is amazing. I know he's often cast as Frankenstein and you can't really look at him without imaging bolts coming out of his neck, but as a wrongfully accused musician, I found myself feeling very empathetic towards him. It's heartbreaking to watch the delays that occur during his execution - if only those prison guards had answered the phone sooner instead of talking! Equally fascinating is how after they brought him back, he wasn't just magically okay. We see the long process of recovery and rejoice when he finds a piano and can remember how to play. Though the movie doesn't dig too deeply into the subconscious, or stay too long on deeper topics, there are a few mentioned that deserve to be reviewed. My primary example is Dr. Evan's growing fascination with what Ellman witnessed during the time when he was dead. He keeps after him, even as Ellman lies dying in the caretaker's cottage of the cemetery. Ultimately he is left without more of an answer than just the words "after the shock, I felt peace." I also appreciated the fact that Nancy was an equal in standing with Jimmy as a worker in Beaumont's lab - not a secretary or a nurse, but a scientist. Nancy is my favorite character in this film because she's also the one who pushes Jimmy into finally stepping forward and afterward nurses Ellman back to health and refuses to slack on her obligation to him. I should also add (while I'm thinking of it) that the title is a nice play on the "Dead Man Walking" term used in prisons for men on death row. Ellman is literally a dead man walking who then becomes the walking dead. Or can he really be called the walking dead?
One of the questions that I kept asking myself was whether or not Ellman could be considered a zombie. After he is brought back to life, he gains control over his mental capacity and doesn't go around eating people (although that part of the zombie culture wouldn't arrive until much later). Basically, he is in control of himself and not subject to the wills of other forces, so how can he be a zombie? Well, it is said several times that he seems possessed by a supernatural force, and has become an instrument of some otherworldly power. How he can now sense those responsible for his death is beyond comprehension, unless he learned it while he was dead. In fact, Boris Karloff's facial expressions are outstanding in this regard - he can switch from calm and complacent to manically furious in moments. In the scenes where he confronts the men who framed him, he seems like he really is possessed, and as each man meets his death, we see a close up of Boris Karloff looking like he's coming out of a trance and looking in horror at what's happened. Perhaps that is why he then goes to the cemetery, a place where he feels he belongs. While Ellman may not be a traditional zombie, one thing is for certain. He does embody the fear of our own death, which is at the heart of many zombie films**. But with his return to life, he also holds that fear at bay until people like Beaumont insist on getting answers and insight into that one thing for which we have no hard evidence - what happens after we die? Truly, we each have our faiths and beliefs, but could we really resist asking someone who has been there and returned? It's an interesting situation and one I was not expecting from a horror film.
Review and Recommendation
I highly recommend The Walking Dead not just to zombie-enthusiasts, but to everyone. Great acting by Karloff and some great camerawork (love the work with those shadows!) make for a good movie, and the added moral questions makes it even more enjoyable. Definitely not a film to pass over!**I just finished the second volume of The Walking Dead comic book series by Rick Grimes, and in the back there is an epilogue by Simon Pegg. Pegg writes that zombies embody our fears of death and our fears that we are little more than animals running on sheer impulse. It's a great write-up and also a great series - you should check them out!
