Friday, August 14, 2009

Movie review - “Dead Men Walk” (1943) **

Entertaining, if creaky, low budget combination of vampire and evil twin film – George Zucco plays two identical brothers, one a nice doctor, the other a vampire twin. The nice Zucco killed his brother in self defence and now the brother is back fro the dead to get revenge by making it seem like the nice Zucco is a killer. It gets off to a bright start – the bad Zucco is already dead by the time the opening credits roll (there’s a whole film – or at least a first act – in the backstory); but it slows down during the middle section, before recovering for a decent enough finale.

Additional interest is provided by Dwight Frye, looking very old and haggard, as the Renfield-like hunchback assistant for the vampire Zucco; the romantic male lead is Ned Young (very wooden), who later became an Oscar-winning blacklisted screenwriter.

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