Zombies have been a staple of horror films for quite some time dating back to Bela Lugosi in White Zombie, even Bob Hope encountered one in his 1940 film The Ghost Breakers, but they didn’t really come into their own until George Romero’s seminal classic Night of the Living Dead hit the scene back in 1968, a seminal moment that launched the zombie genre as we know it today. When Romero tackled the subject matter he ditched the Haitian roots of the zombie genre for his film but he wasn't the first to do so, which brings us to Sam Katzman’s Zombies of Mora Tau, a horror film where a group of fortune hunters face-off against undead guardians and a cursed treasure.
Sam Katzman’s Zombies of Mora Tau takes place on the isolated coastline of Africa where zombie mythology has its roots in the traditions brought to Haiti by enslaved Africans, which gives this film some credible historical merit, that it then quickly abandons once the story unfolds and we see that we are in an Africa that looks pretty damn Caucasian. Let the silliness begin. The movie opens with Jan Peters (Autumn Russell) returning to her childhood home only to discover that her great-grandmother’s (Marjorie Eaton) belief in voodoo is still very much prevalent and not just something she thought was a nightmare from her childhood. Later that night a group of treasure hunters, led by wealthy American tycoon George Harrison (Joel Ashley), arrive to salvage a fortune in diamonds from the wreckage of a ship that had sunk 60 years earlier, needless to say, a curse and a horde of walking dead complicate matters considerably.
"They're coming to get you, Barbara"
Upon reaching the shore George Harrison introduces his team to Grandmother Peters; there is his wife Mona Harrison (Allison Hayes) who is the resident bad girl and openly flirts with the group’s deep-sea diver Jeff Clark (Gregg Palmer), an activity that oddly doesn’t seem bother her husband, finally, there is Dr. Jonathan Eggert (Morris Ankrum) whose main job is to spout expository dialogue. What is surprising is how well this group handles the big reveal of several graves belonging to the previous expeditions that were looking for the sunken treasure; a British group who tried to recover the loot back in 1906, a German excursion in 1914, a second British group in 1923, Portuguese treasure hunters in 1928 and the first American group who perished in ten years later in 1938, but more startling is the fact that Grandma Peter already has open graves ready for these new treasure hunters. I guess greed lets a person overlook such things as personal safety and the chances of you being eaten by a zombie.
I wonder if Grandma Peters chargers for these tours of the damned.
And what exactly has everyone been hunting for all these years? Well, it seems a fortune in uncut diamonds was the principal cargo of a ship called Susan B. which went down just off the South African coast in 1894, unfortunately, it’s been guarded by the undead crew ever since. Dr. Jonathan Eggert is the one member not interested in monetary gain as he’s here to learn about the history of the area for the book he's writing and when he states that he’s “Not eager to occupy one of those graves” Grandmother Peters is quick to point out that “Only fools are afraid of the grave. There are worse things” as she informs Eggert that anyone who is not buried quickly enough will become the walking dead. One must assume she isn’t the one the government asks to write their tourist brochures.
Come for the scenery stay for the undead attacks.
As to what is the cause of this zombie infestation, well, it seems that Grandmother Peters’ husband was the captain of the Susan B. and on their last voyage they made a brief stop and decided to explore the nearby jungle which then led them to the discovery of the overgrown ruins of an ancient temple to which, of course, they proceeded to pilfer. According to legend, a fight broke out among the men and ten of them were killed, including the captain, and the surviving sailors brought the diamonds back to the ship only to have the supposedly dead sailors return from the jungle to slaughter their shipmates and scuttle the Susan B. All these years later Grandmother Peters hopes that someone will find and destroy the diamonds so that her cursed undead husband can finally rest in peace, a belief she still holds despite Jan pointing out that Harrison isn’t the type of man who would destroy a treasure trove cursed or not. What follows consists mainly of the treasure hunters trying to recover the diamonds from the sunken wreck, while fending off underwater zombies, and Jeff and Jan starting some half-assed budding romance. To say neither of these goals is fully achieved goes without saying. What is rather interesting here is that the zombies and their habit of kidnapping women and bringing them back to their mausoleum to be turned into more undead, a fate that sweet Jan escapes but poor Mona does not.
Question: Grandmother Peters makes it clear that fire is the only way to destroy the zombies so why hasn’t anyone simply tried torching the mausoleum? Surrounding a zombie with candles seems like a far less effective strategy.
Stray Observations:
• If your driver reacts to running over a zombie with the same blasé attitude you’d have after hitting a pothole it’s time to think about getting the hell out.
• Sam the chauffeur’s criteria for someone being a zombie is if they have seaweed hanging off them, I just hope he doesn’t run over any random swimmer who had an unfortunate encounter with kelp.
• Jeff still denies the fact he is fighting the undead even after burying an eight-inch blade into the chest of one of them and not getting a drop of blood on the blade. There is denial and then there is stupidity.
• That we have underwater zombies but don’t get a zombie versus shark moment is a definite missed opportunity.
• A cursed zombie treasure makes this film a pre-cursor to Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.
• We have a cursed treasure, wandering zombies and the family has a Great Dane, I think we have a Scooby-Doo mystery on our hands.
“And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling zombies!”
The plot may have a distinct Scooby-Doo vibe to it but Sam Katzman's walking dead flick was a landmark event for the zombie genre as no longer were witch doctors involved as this shambling horde clearly has its own agenda and director Edward L. Cahn did an excellent job building up the suspense and chills as our “heroes” were mercilessly stalked by the undead. Unfortunately, the film kind of runs out of steam in the last act when Grandmother Peters, whose repeated insistence that the diamonds must be destroyed to free the dead, finally wins over Jeff’s mercenary ambitions and he simply dumps the diamonds into the water, but only three feet from shore. That’s her idea of destruction? “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Regardless of how it turned out Zombies of Mora Tau still gets major points for expanding the cinematic zombie mythos even if it was greatly harmed by its anticlimactic and utterly nonsensical ending.
Or is it?
With a running time of barely over an hour one can at least say there isn’t a huge time commitment involved when sitting down to watch Zombies of Mora Tau but even if one were to let slide the rather dubious ending we still must deal with a cast of characters who don’t offer much in the way of people to root or care for; we have the grandmother who seems totally cool with dozens of people dying as long as someday her undead husband can be released from his walking dead purgatory, then there is her great-granddaughter Jan who is one step up from being an inanimate piece of cardboard but with less personality, and finally, we have Jeff and his treasure hunting comrades who are about as wanted as a case of genital warts. Zombies of Mora Tau is an important entry in the zombie subgenre but one must take its more questionable qualities into account if true enjoyment is to be found here.
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