Dead Men Walk [PG]

The pure and good-hearted Dr. Lloyd Clayton has put his evil twin brother Elwyn in his grave, but the nightmare of Elwyn’s evil is far from over. Rising from his coffin each night as a vampire, servant of the Devil with a purpose to strengthen his life by stealing the lives of others, Elwyn vows to strip Lloyd of everything that he holds in dear in revenge for ending his mortal life. Soon Lloyd’s niece Gayle becomes ill and grows steadily weaker and weaker. With the help of Gayle’s fiancé, Lloyd determines to find the missing body of Elwyn and burn it so that the town may no longer be threatened by his evil. 

Yes, we’re back into the old B-grade horror movies that make up my obscure ’50 classics’ box set and which, undoubtedly, nobody has ever heard of or determined to see. It seems to me that the reason behind this is for the fact that many of these movies, aside from the odd one being a gem and the odd one being a massive hunk of crumbling mudcake, practically all the movies in this box set are predictable, generic horror flicks. Dead Men Walk is no exception. Whilst there is nothing inherently awful about this movie, it’s really generic and predictable in practically every step of the way, although the ending was a bit of a hot spark I have to say. 

The pure and good-hearted Dr. Lloyd Clayton has put his evil twin brother Elwyn in his grave, but the nightmare of Elwyn’s evil is far from over. Rising from his coffin each night as a vampire, servant of the Devil with a purpose to strengthen his life by stealing the lives of others, Elwyn vows to strip Lloyd of everything that he holds in dear in revenge for ending his mortal life. Soon Lloyd’s niece Gayle becomes ill and grows steadily weaker and weaker. With the help of Gayle’s fiancé, Lloyd determines to find the missing body of Elwyn and burn it so that the town may no longer be threatened by his evil. 

To get the mundane out of the way first and foremost, predictability is the major flaw of this movie. This is not to say that it’s bad, just a tad… boring. We’ve got the undead, we’ve got two heroes working together to try and riddle the mystery out, we’ve got the one insightful character that is disregarded as crazy, and the central ‘tension’ comes in the form of a predictable mob riot complete with torches and small-town hicks with hats. I mean what’s to say that has not been said before? 

To lighten up this review though, I will draw attention to the film’s soundtrack and give that a little bit of applause. Whilst I’m not entirely convinced that it really worked with the film, in inspiring the right sort of thrills and suspense, it was a nice little theatrical accompaniment that actually put me in mind of the earlier Disney movies that had orchestral music filling each moment of silence it seemed. I greatly appreciated that. 

Starring George Zucco, Mary Carlisle, Nedrick Young, Dwight Frye, Fern Emmett, Robert Strange, Hal Price, and Sam Flint, Dead Men Walk is a mildly entertaining film that was just brought down by its predictability making it boring. Filled with drama, suspense, and romance, it’s ok. That’s all I can really say for it, it’s ok. It’s not brilliant and I don’t think that I would watch again any time soon, but it’s ok.