Episode
62: The Plague of the Zombies (1966) – Hammer Horror – Dir. John Gilling – André Morell, Diane Clare & John Carson
- Published
- Sep 26, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 6041
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- https://shows.acast.com/general-witchfinders/episodes/62-plague-of-the-zombies-hammer-horror
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Summary
Hammer horror reaches peak gothic chills with The Plague of the Zombies (1966), a Hammer Film Productions classic that defines British horror cinema. Shot at Bray Studios from 28 July 1965 and filmed back-to-back with Hammer’s The Reptile (see episode 19), it used the same eerie Cornish village set designed by Hammer’s celebrated production designer Bernard Robinson. Director John Gilling – the so-called “gentleman pig farmer” behind The Shadow of the Cat and The Mummy’s Shroud – stages a story of graveyards, curses and the undead that became a template for Hammer zombie horror. Writer Peter Bryan, who joined Hammer Film Productions in 1948 as a camera operator before turning to screenwriting, provided the script and left the studio shortly after completing A Challenge for Robin Hood in 1967. When The Plague of the Zombies was submitted to the BBFC it was heavily trimmed: André Morell’s Sir James Forbes originally decapitated a zombie with four shovel blows in the graveyard sequence, reduced to one for the censors. Heatherden Hall at Pinewood Studios doubles as the Forbes mansion, better known to James Bond fans as SPECTRE Island from From Russia With Love . Diane Clare, cast as Sylvia, had been one of the best-paid child “film babies” of the 1940s, appearing in The Ghosts of Berkeley Square and The Silver Fleet before leading roles in Hammer horror such as The Haunting , Witchcraft and The Hand of the Night . Her entire performance in The Plague of the Zombies was dubbed by South African actress Olive Gregg without her knowledge, a practice Hammer repeated when re-voicing Ingrid Pitt in Countess Dracula . André Morell himself had turned down both The Quatermass Experiment and Quatermass II on television before finally playing Professor Bernard Quatermass in the BBC’s…