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Sir Oliver is laid to rest - but during his burial, mad laughter can be heard from his coffin. His brother Sir Cecil (Wolfgang Kieling) freaks out, but it really is only when Sir Cecil's lawyer (Otto Stern) turns up dead that Scotland Yard inspector Higgins (Joachim Fuchsberger) starts to investigate - with nosey girl reporter Peggy Ward (Siw Mattson) always on his coattails if not a step or two ahead of him. Now Sir Cecil insists that his brother has come back from the dead as a zombie, but of course Higgins dismisses this, even once more people dismiss seeing a creature with a skull for a hand. And of course, more people fall like flies, including a nightclub singer who has blackmailed Sir Cecil (Lillemor 'Lill' Lindfors), Ramiro (Peter Mosbacher), the stone chiseler from the West Indies, Sir Cecil's loyal driver Casper (Jimmy Powell) and the like, and it's all attributed to "the zombie" (who kills with a poison-filled scorpion-shaped ring by the way) - while inspector Higgins is hopelessly ineffective, always chasing the wrong clues. Soon enough, several parties turn up as suspects, all named in Sir Oliver's will: Sister Adela (Claude Farell), who runs the local clinic, the village doctor (Siegfried Rauch), the priest (Hans Krull), and the mortician (Wolfgang Spier) - but then they start to drop as well, and Higgins for some reason never offers police protection. Eventually Higgins finds out that Sir Cecil actually hasn't died but has learned from Sister Adela, his lover, of a plot by the other suspects to murder him, thus faked his own death. And the mastermind behind it all is - Sir Cecil of course, who in the finale is killed by the zombie just before Higgins can capture and unmask the zombie as Ramiro, who has faked his own death and is really Sir OIiver, who has been so disfigured (and turned green, no joke) by disease that not even his own brother has recognized him. But then Ramiro dies from his disease just before Sister Adela can inject him his medication ...

Hubert von Meyerinck makes his first appearance as chief of Scotland Yard Sir Arthur, successor of Siegfried Schürenberg's Sir John, in this one.

This is certainly not a highlight of Rialto's Edgar Wallace cycle, as basically its plot is a mess, made up of too many red herrings that lead nowhere, leaps of reason, lack of narrative logic and an overconvolution of plot elements and characters to make even an ounce of sense. And on top of that, the zombie's skull mask might look effective in photos, but is less so in moving pictures as it's too easily identified as just what it is, a rubber mask, and the skeleton finger gloves the zombie's wearing spell cheap Halloween dress-up all too clearly to convinve anyone. Also, the humour that seems omnipresent in many of Alfred Vohrer's later Wallace-movies is largely missing here, as are any interesting setpieces. That all said, if you're a fan of the series as such (for whatever reason, and be it solely for its campiness), you'll find something to like about it (again, for whatever reason, and if all the wrong ones), but it's definitely not among the better entries.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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