The Walking Dead

1936 "HE DIED a man with a hunger to love... and returned a monster with an instinct to kill."
6.6| 1h6m| NR| en
Details

Down-on-his-luck John Ellman is framed for a judge's murder. After he's convicted and sentenced to death, witnesses come forth and prove his innocence. But it was too late for a stay to be granted and Ellman is executed. A doctor uses an experimental procedure to restore him to life, though the full outcome is other than expected.

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Reviews

Scanialara You won't be disappointed!
Diagonaldi Very well executed
Ameriatch One of the best films i have seen
Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
sddavis63 No, this is not the comic book or TV series, and there are no zombies to be seen. In this case, "The Walking Dead" is the story of John Ellman - an ex-con who just two weeks after his release from prison is wrongfully convicted of the murder of the judge who originally sentenced him for his earlier crime. Ellman is the victim of a conspiracy among a group of rackateers who wanted the judge dead - a conspiracy that included his own lawyer. But Ellman's "good fortune" (maybe) is that Dr. Beaumont has been doing experiments involving bringing the dead back to life. Convinced by two of his associates (who know Ellman is innocent) to try his procedure on Ellman, Beaumont succeeds in raising him from the dead - and becomes fixated on what Ellman experienced while dead (although that really isn't a particularly well developed sidebar to the story.) Ultimately, Ellman takes revenge on those who framed him - although his revenge seems to be somewhat supernatural, and he never actually touches anyone.There's a "Frankenstein-ish" quality to this very short movie - which includes Boris Karloff (famous, of course, as Frankenstein's monster in the 1931 movie and the later "Bride of Frankenstein" in 1935.) In fact, Karloff apparently expressed some concerns that in the original script, Ellman was too much like the monster - especially because of his inability to speak - and the script was rewritten to accommodate Karloff's concerns. Even Beaumont's process of reviving Ellman resembled Dr. Frankenstein's experiment just a little bit - with bolts of lightning involved. To me, Karloff seemed to put on a ho hum performance. It wasn't especially riveting, although director Michael Curtiz made good use of close ups of Karloff's eyes. But this movie really wasn't at all frightening, and Ellman was no monster, although, again, there's a similarity to "Frankenstein" in the fact that both Ellman and the monster Karloff portrayed in the earlier movies were both objects of sympathy, not really responsible for anything that happened. Aside from the lack of any real fear factor, the movie may have tried to pack a little bit too much into 66 minutes. There are a lot of characters and a somewhat convoluted plot.Aside from Karloff, I immediately recognized Edmund Gwenn. Still more than a decade away from his famous turn as Kris Kringle in "Miracle on 34th Street, Gwenn here was Dr. Beaumont. He was all right in the role, but I honestly didn't feel that any of the cast were particular standouts, and the story is, for my taste, too much of a rehash of some of the basic plot of "Frankenstein." (3/10)
MikeMagi Because he spent so much of his career making horror films, there's a tendency to forget what a splendid actor Boris Karloff was. "The Walking Dead" is a perfect example. An innocent man condemned as a murderer, he's brought back to life by inventor Edmund Gwenn. Oddly enough, he harbors no animosity against the men who framed him. But somehow, one by one, they suffer bizarre accidents. It's wonderfully typical Karloff stuff -- made more enjoyable by his sense of wonder at how these fatal incidents keep happening. Credit director Michael Curtiz with ingenuity in setting up the deaths and Karloff's mixture of confusion and grim satisfaction at his inadvertent revenge.
Uriah43 In order to dispose of an honest judge a small group of racketeers hire a local gunman to kill him and then set up a recently released convict named "John Ellman" (Boris Karloff) to take the fall. Sure enough, John Ellman is convicted and then sent to the electric chair due in large part because of two witnesses named "Jimmy" (Warren Hull) and his girlfriend "Nancy" (Marguerite Churchill) who wait too long to come forward. Fortunately, a physician named "Dr. Beaumont" (Edmund Gwenn) comes up with a novel idea to bring John Ellman back to life even though he has been dead for several hours. Although his plan succeeds there is something much different about John which nobody can quite seem to figure out. Now rather than reveal any more of the plot and risk spoiling this movie for those who haven't seen it I will just say that for a short, relatively low-budget motion picture produced in 1936 this film turned out to be quite good all things considered. I especially liked the performances of Boris Karloff and to a lesser degree that of Marguerite Churchill along with the nifty (albeit now antique) cars used in this movie. Be that as it may, I enjoyed this film and rate it as above average.
Zoooma Excellent little horror film directed by the amazingly talented Michael Curtiz, the same man who would later give up Casablanca amongst many other classic films.The story is a genre mashup of gangster and horror and at only about 1 hour 5 minutes, there isn't much time to lag. With such a skilled eye behind the camera, we are treated to a film that does not bore.Boris Karloff is the star and he does such a great job of bringing fright to the picture. For someone interested in the acting of Karloff or the films of Curtiz, this is a must see!7.0 / 10--A Kat Pirate Screener