Zombies on Broadway

Although the comedy team of Wally Brown and Alan Carney never threatened Laurel&Hardy, Abbott&Costello, or the Ritz Brothers in popularity, the team which was cobbled together at RKO were amusing in several films they did in the early Forties. This film is particularly goofy in an almost Monty Pythonesque way.

Brown and Carney are a pair of press agents who are charged with publicizing the opening of Sheldon Leonard's nightclub which is named The Zombie Club. And the boys promise a real undead person for the opening.

Now normally these guys hiring someone to impersonate a zombie might go over with most folks. But Sheldon Leonard who's been the target of gossip columnist Louis Jean Heydt isn't having any. The boys are charged with finding and bringing back a real live zombie, and don't tell me that that is an oxymoron.

A tip from eccentric scientist Ian Wolfe sends Brown and Carney to the Virgin Islands where another scientist Bela Lugosi is doing experiments creating zombies. Now of course Lugosi is not only sinister, but he makes Wolfe look like Jonas Salk. The boys also meet up with Anne Jeffreys and the three of them have all kinds of fun with Lugosi and his zombies.

Nothing great about Zombies On Broadway, but it's a goofy fun type film and one to enjoy on a rainy afternoon.

Advertising that the opening act of the "Zombie Hut" nightclub will be a real live honest to goodness Zombie the two press agents Mike & Jerry, Alan Carney & Wally Brown,come up empty by trying to pawn off a punch drunk boxer, with what looks like a face packed with talcum powder, as a walking dead man. This has them both put on the sh*t list of the gangster owner of the nightclub Ace Miller, Sheldon Leonard.

Needing a Zombie in order to save their necks Mike & Jerry bust their way into a closed midtown museum, thinking that theirs Zombie's in it, and despite the half-hearted objections of the museum janitor Worthington (Nick Stewart),who never thought of calling the police, the two buffoon's end up with the nutty curator Prof. Hopkins, Ian Wolf. Prof. Hopkis tells them that the only person who can get them a true live, or dead, Zombie is the mysterious Dr. Paul Renault (Bela Lugosi), if he's still alive, who was last known to be residing on the small Carribriean island of San Sabastian.

Put on a banana boat by Ace and the boys Jerry & Mike are told that if they don't come back with a Zombie they can forget to come back at all. The two stumble bums end up not only getting involved with Dr. Renault Zombie experiments but end up becoming part of them.

Getting in touch with San Sabastian nightclub singer and dancer gorgeous Jean LaDance (Ann Jeffareys), who's dying to get off the island, the trio end up in the middle of a full-moon Zombie ceremony by the local natives. Escaping from the mob of angry native warriors Mike Jerry & Jean end up getting captured by Dr. Renault and his seven foot tall Zombie assistant Kolaga,Darby Jones, with Mike getting Zombified as a victim of Dr. Renault's Zombie experiments.

Finally getting away from both Dr. Renault and the angry Zombie-worshiping natives the three Mike Jerry & Jean together with a cute little monkey, who took a shine to Mike back at San Sabastian, get on a ship as they sail back to New York City. Getting to the Big Apple just in time for the "Zombie Hut's" opening night's feature Zombie performance With Mike, his eyes bugged out and in a state of suspended animation. As the long sought Zombie is about to make his grand entrance the serum that Dr.Renault injected him with starts to wear off. Unlike the people in the movie it's the monkey who ends up not only saving the show but the necks of Mike and Jerry from getting broken by Ace's thugs.

So-so comedy/horror flick with Bela Lugosi in a very small, despite his top billing in the movie,role as Dr. Renault with the monkey getting all the laughs as well as best lines in the movie.

With a cast including ALAN CARNEY, WALLY BROWN, ANNE JEFFREYS, SHELDON LEONARD and BELA LUGOSI, RKO made an amusing programmer (lower half of double bills) using the zombie theme for laughs.

Sheldon Leonard is an ex-gangster putting up money for a nightclub called The Zombie Hut and promising to present an authentic zombie on opening night. Brown and Carney promise Leonard that they'll come up with a real zombie in time for the Broadway opening of the club.

The story moves from the nightclub to the island of San Sebastian where a weird scientist called Dr. Renault has mysteriously disappeared. On the island, the tone of the film veers between comedy and fright with amusing results--and the team of Carney and Brown seems to be using the kind of material Abbott and Costello found at Universal. The gags are sometimes a misfire but the slapstick situations are fun. Attractive ANNE JEFFREYS is a night-club singer who also gets involved with the zombies when she and the boys go looking for them.

All of the sight gags are reminiscent of A&C at their zaniest. Lugosi plays it straight as the doctor who believes in putting people under "suspended animation" for scientific purposes.

The zombie they return with is a surprise twist. It's all played strictly for laughs and, silly as it is, it works.

Paramont had Bing Crosby and Bob Hope; Universal had Abbott and Costello. RKO responded with Alan Carney and Wally Brown--and although they never challenged Crosby and Hope or Abbott and Costello, they were popular enough to justify a dozen or so "B" pictures during the mid-1940s. The best of these is ZOMBIES ON Broadway, a weird little parody similar to Crosby and Hope's ghost-busting flicks and Abbott and Costello's meetings with every classic monster from Dracula to the Werewolf.

What makes ZOMBIES ON Broadway fun is the absolute absurdity of its plot. Carney and Brown are publicity agents hired by gangster Sheldon Leonard to promote a nightclub called "The Zombie Hut"--and much against their will find themselves sent to the island of San Sebastiane with instructions to bring back a real Zombie for the club's opening. Once on the island, they encounter none other than Bela Lugosi, who can still do that voodoo that he did so well in such 1930s classics as WHITE ZOMBIE. This isn't a classic by any stretch of the imagination, and it certainly won't make any critic's short list--but it is just strange and weird enough to hold your attention through its fairly short running time. The entire cast plays very broadly, and the script is about as subtle as a wrecking ball, but its all in good fun. Recommended as ultra-light entertainment.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Somewhat tepid but occasionally funny as Brown and Carney do their best to be RKO's Abbott & Costello. They play press agents for a nightclub who promise a "real live zombie", which their mobster boss insists they produce. This leads them to San Sebastian, Bela Lugosi, and the guy who was the zombie in "I Walked with a Zombie" and other films. Many scenes are played very straight -- of course, with bad jokes and puns thrown in. Lugosi, in particularly, is asked to play everything straight as a scientist after the secret of zombie making.

Uninspired, but Anne Jeffries does look great.