The Plague of the Zombies

The Plague of the Zombies (1966), directed by John Gilling, remastered, encoded in 10 bit HEVC with AAC sound, including original theatrical stereo and English subtitles.

IMDb : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060841/

Video encoded in two-pass 11.0 Mbps x265 10bit with the veryslow preset for archive quality image.

Note : More Hammer horror, often considered one of the better ones, this film came out only a couple of years before The Night of the Living Dead, and is said to have influenced it. It's certainly an unusual take on the zombie myth, using the idea of the Haitian zombie, but implying that it's actual black magic doing the work. Unlike Terence Fisher's films, the upper classes are the villains in this, although the hero is also upper-class, but an academic. It also answers the question, if you could raise the dead to do your bidding, what would be the absolute stupidest and most banal use you could put them to, and why do you deserve to die in a fire for even thinking of it?

A professor of medicine receives a letter from his former student requesting urgent help, and goes to a small Cornish village with his daughter. There, they find that many of the villagers have died after a mysterious illness involving malaise, strange behavior, pallor, and the loss of the will to live. Soon after, the doctor's wife is also struck with the sickness, and is found sneaking out at night, and the professor discovers that the graves of the recently dead are all empty. The local squire and his band of sneering upper-class fox hunting elitists might have something to do with it, but where are all the dead bodies ending up?

This is a pretty good remaster, although there's some weirdness in color, optical effects in particular have a greenish tint in the fades, and the whole film is a bit yellow, but it's not at all bad looking. The stereo track sounds fine. Shame about the lack of commentary.

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