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In 1941, the unexpected success of Buck Privates (a whopping $10 million dollar blockbuster, an impressive sum for its era) officially launched the comedy team of Abbott and Costello who became Universal Studios' most profitable film franchise for more than a decade. Naturally, it inspired other studios to follow suit but it wasn't as easy as it looked. Case in point - Wally Brown and Alan Carney, two former nightclub comedians recruited by RKO for a series of low-budget farces, beginning with The Adventures of a Rookie (1943), a blatant attempt to ape the formula of Buck Privates. For critics who thought the humor of Abbott and Costello was déclassé, this was a further step down but perfect for eight year old boys who enjoyed the simple concept of two losers with one (Brown) assuming superiority over his dim bulb pal (Carney).
Certainly Brown and Carney posed no threat to Abbott and Costello and are mostly forgotten today, but their most representative film, Zombies on Broadway (1945), might have actually inspired Universal to match up Bud and Lou with monsters with their popular genre parody, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). Filmed on leftover RKO sets from Tarzan and the Amazons (1945) and Val Lewton's I Walked With a Zombie (1943), Zombies on Broadway even featured two actors from the latter film - calypso singer Sir Lancelot and Darby Jones, repeating his role as a zombie with ping pong ball-like eyes.
The plot revolves around two inept Broadway press agents (Brown & Carney) ordered by their gangster boss (Sheldon Leonard) to produce a real zombie for the grand opening of his new night spot, "The Zombie Hut." Their search leads them to the tropical isle of San Sebastian where they encounter the suspicious Dr. Paul Renault (Bela Lugosi). Although Renault's henchman tells the duo that the good doctor is there "to study a blight that affects banana trees," we know he is busy trying - and failing - to create the perfect zombie. And Brown and Carney, along with a local cabaret performer (Anne Jeffreys), are ideal guinea pigs for the mad scientist's on-going experiments. In the slapstick hijinks that ensue - and yes, there's a monkey involved - Carney gets transformed into a zombie and is brought back to New York as the night club's star attraction. Right before the curtain rises with the audience chanting "We want a zombie!, We want a zombie!", there is a last minute change of plans, the result of a stray hypodermic needle containing the zombie potion.
Bela Lugosi had just completed a minor supporting role, teamed opposite Boris Karloff, in The Body Snatcher (1945) for producer Val Lewton when he signed on for Zombies on Broadway, directed by Gordon Douglas (Them!, 1954). It wasn't the first time he had parodied his horror film image - he'd been tormented by the Bowery Boys earlier in Spooks Run Wild (1941) and Ghosts on the Loose (1943). But here Lugosi plays it relatively straight and the contrast between his dark, glowering demeanor and Brown and Carney's goofiness worked well. So well, in fact, that RKO teamed them up for a sequel, Genius at Work (1946), with Anne Jeffreys again providing the sex appeal.
While Zombies on Broadway proved to be an agreeable programmer for undiscriminating audiences of the forties, it was mostly dismissed by critics such as the New York Herald Tribune which called it "an appalling little film." Even future director Joe Dante, a teenage correspondent for Famous Monsters of Filmland, dismissed it in his article on the most feeble horror films of all time: "Pretty funny except when it was supposed to be!....The comedy scenes were pretty grim, playing in a style that reminded one of Abbott and Costello with the Black Plague." True, a lot of the comic patter falls flat and there are moments of blatant racist humor that are typical of its era - the nervous black janitor, superstitious natives, etc. But we're here to tell you that it's not THAT bad and even Michael Weldon's The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film proclaimed it "a very strange film" which is some kind of recommendation.
The funniest scenes involve Carney - one where he gets his foot stuck on an ox skull, another where he emits a "silent scream" as he's abducted from his bed, and all of his scenes as a pop-eyed zombie. His makeup is hilarious and maybe the reason these sequences work so well is because Carney is mute - there's no thudding dialogue to deliver and the humor is purely visual. Also, Anne Jeffreys is appropriately sassy as the knife-throwing nightclub chanteuse and it's hard to forget Darby Jones as the main zombie; his uniquely angular body is just as distinctive as Michael Rennie's alien in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Best of all is that title which is bound to produce smiles of disbelief whenever you mention it to fellow film travelers.
Producer: Sid Rogell, Benjamin Stoloff
Director: Gordon Douglas
Screenplay: Robert Faber, Robert E. Kent, Lawrence Kimble, Charles Newman
Cinematography: Jack MacKenzie
Film Editing: Philip Martin
Art Direction: Albert S. D¿Agostino, Walter E. Keller
Music: Roy Webb
Cast: Wally Brown (Jerry Miles), Alan Carney (Mike Streger), Bela Lugosi (Dr. Paul Renault), Anne Jeffreys (Jean LaDance), Sheldon Leonard (Ace Miller), Frank Jenks (Gus).
BW-69m.
by Jeff Stafford
 
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31 Days of Oscar Highlights for Feb. 24
Among our Academy Award® honorees for this day are Alfie (1966) starring Michael Caine & Shelley Winters, The Third Man (1949), and the TCM premieres of A Room With a View (1985) and Mrs. Brown (1997).
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