Movie List Z

Zamba (1949)

ZAMBA (1949)
(a.k.a. ZAMBA THE GORILLA)
Article #1053 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-1-2004
Posting Date: 6-30-2004
Directed by William A. Berke
Featuring Jon Hall, June Vincent, Jane Nigh

A mother and her son are separated after bailing out of a malfunctioning airplane. The son develops amnesia, but is befriended by a gorilla who watches after him.

What kind of movie is this? It’s the kind of movie in which there is a lot of fretting about the fates of the mother and the son, but no one sheds a single tear over the death of the father. Maybe spending some time to do so would have cut into the comic relief footage of the cowardly file clerk. We must have priorities.

This is the type of the movie where the credits say that Zamba is played by N’Bonga. This, of course, implies that Zamba is played by a real gorilla rather than an actor in a gorilla suit. I don’t know if Ray “Crash” Corrigan should see that as an insult or a compliment.

This is the type of movie where a person falls from a great height, hits his head, and gets amnesia. He then falls from a rock, hits his head, and recovers his memory.

This is the type of movie where people spend a lot of time treed by wild animals (usually a lion, once a hyena) and spend what feels like hours calling out someone’s name. (“Tommy! Tommy! Tommy!” or “Zamba! Zamba! Zamba!”)

This is the type of movie where the potential romantic couple spends the whole movie insulting and yelling at each other until you-know-what happens in the final reel.

This is the type of movie where I’m tempted to do my review by coming up with a ditty to the tune of the old Oscar Meyer commercial theme, but I give it up after coming up with only a couple of lines, viz.

“My gorilla has a first name; It’s Z-A-M-B-A….”

On the other hand, I do have to give the movie one thing; for a jungle movie, it keeps the safari scenes from taking over. The cast also features a young Beau Bridges (as the amnesiac child) and Darby Jones (as Keega, one of the natives on the safari).

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Zeta One (1969)

ZETA ONE (1969)
(a.k.a. THE LOVE FACTOR)
Article #675 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 1-19-2003
Posting date: 6-18-2003

Spies investigate a man who is trying to destroy a planet of women.

There are many naked and topless women in this movie. I’m getting this comment out of the way because I highly suspect that this is most likely the movie’s primary appeal. It’s certainly not the story, which sits there idly for almost twenty minutes at the beginning while the spy flirts with a female visitor and ends up playing strip poker with her; it’s obvious in this case that the plot is the filler, not the strip poker. Despite the superspy approach, there’s really not much in the way of action or violence; even the scene where the bad guys torture one of the women for information seems rather toothless in this regard. Even the alien women who attack in the last part of the movie defeat their enemies by gesturing at them, which causes them to fall down. To sum up, it’s better than ORGY OF THE DEAD (though not as funny), classier than DRACULA: THE DIRTY OLD MAN, and less pretentious than RAPE OF THE VAMPIRE, though it’s probably as stupid as any one of them. The most noteworthy moments in this movie (that don’t involve nudity) are the world’s fastest revolving door and the world’s rudest elevator.

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Zombies of Mora Tau (1957)

ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU (1957)
Article #634 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing date: 12-9-2002
Posting date: 5-4-2003

Adventurers attempt to lay their hands on diamonds in an underwater ship that is under guard by zombies.

This is perhaps the first movie with underwater zombies, a fairly small subgenre, to be sure. Somehow, this is fitting; the movie has the languid, lethargic pace of zombies walking underwater. It is produced by Sam Katzman, directed by Edward L. Cahn, and features Gregg Palmer, Alison Hayes, Gene Roth and Morris Ankrum. Though these names hardly portend great star power, they do give the movie a strong B-Movie appeal, which is a good thing. This appeal may explain why I never quite found myself bored, despite the slowness of the pace and the fairly mundane plot; seeing all these familiar faces and names kept me relaxed and in a good frame of mind for the movie’s seventy minutes of running time. Sometimes, it just helps to like this type of movie.

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Zombies on Broadway (1945)

ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY (1945)
Article #342 by Dave Sindelar
Posting date: 7-9-2002
Viewing date: 2-20-2002

Two dunderheads are sent to San Sebastian by the owner of a nightclub to get a real-life zombie for the opening act.

Bela Lugosi may have had a chance to work with Abbott and Costello, but he also worked with some of the most pathetic comedy acts of all time. The guys he works with this time are pretty bad, but not as bad as some of the others, but that only means they’re not as bad as the Martin-and-Lewis imitators in the Brooklyn Gorilla movie. There is a bit of atmosphere, thanks to Bela, Sir Lancelot and Darby Jones of I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE fame, but for the most part this is a movie about two comedians who can’t manage a single punch line between them. Still, there is Sheldon Leonard and Ian Wolfe to add to things..

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