The Walking Dead

The Walking Dead (1936)

HE DIED a man with a hunger to love... and returned a monster with an instinct to kill.

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.

Date of release
1936-02-29
TMDB
6.3 / 10 (100)
Runtime
1h 6m
Genres
Crime, Horror, Science Fiction
Director
Michael Curtiz

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Griffith Park

The Walking Dead is a 1936 American science fiction horror film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Boris Karloff, Ricardo Cortez, Marguerite Churchill, and Barton MacLane. The film portrays a wrongly executed man who is restored to life by a scientist. The film blends elements of the horror genre with the gangster film, and also features elements of a religious morality parable.

Production

The Walking Dead's executive producer Hal Wallis wrote to the production supervisor, Lou Edelman, on August 16, 1935, that he had sent him a six-page outline for a film titled The Walking Dead. The original story for the film was written by Ewart Adamson and Joseph Fields. On November 1, director Michael Curtiz was sent the draft of the film.

In addition to Karloff's stunted dialogue, this film's resemblance to Universal's Frankenstein is most obvious when Edmund Gwenn's character revives Karloff, including the dramatic change in music, the pulsating lab equipment, off-kilter camera angles, and, finally, Gwenn saying, "He's alive".

The Walking Dead was the first film Karloff made with Warner Bros.

The Walking Dead was filmed at Griffith Park, California, as well as at the Warner Bros. Studios and Burbank First National–Warner Bros. Studios between November 23 and December 1935. Dialogue director Irving Rapper worked on the film. He called it "a bad story" but enjoyed working with Curtiz.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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