37° TORINO FILM FESTIVAL
SI PUÒ FARE! - DA CALIGARI AGLI ZOMBIE
THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES
by John Gilling
Country: UK
Year: 1966
Duration: 90'
Cornwall. The inhabitants of a town located near a tin mine are dying like flies. A doctor who has just moved there with his daughter investigates and discovers that almost all the tombs are empty. This is the beginning of the “missing link”: the first movie to combine the voodoo of Haitian catatonic zombies with the aggressive, post-1970, proletarian undead. A very modern, late-Hammer, muddy and blood-stained, which, in many scenes, anticipates Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.
Biography
film director
John Gilling
John Gilling (London, UK, 1912-1985) began working in cinema in 1933. After the war, he began writing screenplays and in 1949 made his first film, A Matter of Murder. In 1952 he directed Bela Lugosi in the farce Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire. In 1959, after a dozen films and many screenplays for Hammer, the infamous film production of fantastic and horror films, Gilling came to the attention with his film The Flesh and the Fiends, starring Peter Cushing. He then directed for Hammer The Shadow of the Cat (1961), The Pirates of the Blood River (1962) and in 1966 The Reptile and The Plague of the Zombies. After the third chapter of the Hammer mummy saga, The Mummy’s Shroud (1967), Gilling directed his last movie in Spain, La cruz del diablo.
FILMOGRAFIA
A Matter of Murder (1949), Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (1952), The Flesh and the Fiends (Le iene di Edinburgo, 1959), The Shadow of the Cat (L'ombra del gatto, 1961), The Pirates of Blood River (I pirati del fiume rosso, 1962), The Scarlet Blade (La lama scarlatta, 1963), The Brigand of Kandahar (Il bandito di Kandahar, 1965), The Night Caller (Madra, il terrore di Londra, 1965), The Plague of the Zombies (La lunga notte dell'orrore, 1966), The Reptile (La morte arriva strisciando, 1966), Where the Bullets Fly (1966), The Mummy's Shroud (Il sudario della mummia, 1967), La Cruz del diablo (1975)
Cast
& Credits
john gilling
THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES
Usa-Regno Unito/USA-UK, 1966, 90’, col.
regia/director
John Gilling
soggetto, sceneggiatura/story, screenplay
Peter Bryan
fotografia/cinematography
Arthur Grant
montaggio/film editing
Chris Barnes
effetti speciali/special effects
Bowie Films
scenografia/production design
Bernard Robinson
costumi/costume design
Rosemary Burrows
trucco/make-up
Roy Ashton
musica/music
James Bernard
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters
André Morell (James Forbes), Diane Clare (Sylvia Forbes), John Carson (Clive Hamilton), Brook Williams (Peter Tompson), Jacqueline Pearce (Alice Tompson)
produttore/producer
Anthony Nelson Keys
produzione/production
Hammer Film Productions
