The Conjuring on the Island of the Dead

That ending of Bob Clark's rough very 70s zombie island film sure feels absolutely perfect for October. I sort of regret watching it too early this year, but I'm glad I at least got around to it this year. Down here in Southern US, the fall is FINALLY starting to peek its head out and give us some cooler temperatures, and I can't imagine watching this film any other time of the year than when the cool of the day actually feels autumnal. This film really is warped if you put thought to it. Alan in the film, as the company's deep pockets, is quite a twisted fuck. He coerces these people to an island, having them handle and talk to a corpse, gather around to participate in a ceremony to bring awake the dead, and then watches as they all die, trying to get away but unable to do so because the dead body he had mocked and got a bit too comfortable with decided it was time to add him to the ranks of the deceased. This zombie film is different in that we never determine any "rules" such as taking out the undead with a shot to the brain and no one killed by them actually turns zombie, either. Just the dead on the island that Alan used dried infant blood and conjured through his grimoire. 

Val mocks Alan with her conjuring

Anya, Paul, Jeff, Terry, and Val of the Company

Oliver, the thing of nightmares

"It's customary to carry the corpse over the threshold."

 I did include my user comments from 13 years ago as a nice sort of synopsis to this additional piece for Bob "Benjamin" Clark's Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1972), written by the star of the film, Alan Ormsby (his wife at the time, Anya, in a supporting role as a bug-eyed kook with a great interest in the occult), who is quite memorable as a demanding boss of a theater company, with the remaining cast his starving actors so desperate to keep their jobs they agree to follow him by boat to an island with buried dead (many who are in unmarked graves due to being criminal lowlives with no one wanting to buried anywhere else). This film is known for its drawn out chatty script where Ormsby engages in snarky, sarcastic insults with his theater members, quite making him aware that while they are willing to tolerate his nonsense they are nonetheless not too happy to be dragged out of the city on an island. Anya, to me, is probably the most memorable of the cast just for her overtly bizarre behavior with Alan clearly having a field day as the snobby, snide, deviant sonofabitch lording over the cast with his power, knowing they are in dire need of work and economic security.

There are nice callbacks to Romero's classic (this film was only four years after "Night of the Living Dead"), and this actually predates "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" but there's a hilarious moment where Anya holds up a mask made by one of the company's gay makeup artists (one was dressed as a rot-faced vampire, while another looks more like a zombie), pressing it to her face, with her eyes and lips protruding out, reminding me of Leatherface! Later she is laying in Orville's coffin "gazing into the skull of immortality"! Orville, afro intact, is the infamous corpse Alan's theater boss loves to pal around with until his conjuring unleashes the zombie upon him later. I was recently watching "Fright Night" (1985) and this film was actually on Charley's television during the Fright Night telecast, as Orville is drawing towards Ormsby inside the rundown cabin on the island.

Many who have seen this will tell you to wait until about 62 minutes into the film because that is when the combination of Ormsby's cakey, crusty white makeup, Clark's camerawork, spooky compositions, and choice of framing, and Zittrer's unnerving concoction of patchwork robust sounds for the music arrangement around the rising of the dead really kick the film into impressive gear, where the zombies are genuinely creepy and chilling. Yes, this follows the "corner the mortals into a building with them hoping desperately to fend of the rushing dead as they come for them" zombie formula but since "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things" was still very early into this era of the genre, it wasn't quite so tired and overused.

***This above was from late last night, and the very top piece this Sunday afternoon***