vtcavuoto Sam Katzman's "Zombies of Mora Tau" is a decent film. There is enough action and suspense to keep your attention. It has a good cast(Morris Ankrum, Gregg Palmer and Allison Hayes), tight direction and a chilling musical score. An expedition heads out to recover some diamonds. Previous attempts have lead to the deaths of those who have tried over the years. They are guarded by the Zombies and anyone attempting to retrieve them meets a horrible death or in the case of Allison Hayes, turns into a Zombie as well. The ending has a nice twist to it. I'm not into Zombie movies but this was fun to watch if not a bit hokey in some parts. Still, a nice little gem of a film.

greg-544 While in no way a classic film, "The Zombies of Mora Tau" is an important one in the development of the genre of "living dead" cinema.It would take another ten years for a young director named George A. Romero to perfect the zombie film with "Night of the Living Dead", but the roots of that legendary film can easily be traced back to this production(and the Edward Cahn's other living dead flick, "Invisible Invaders").The film wastes no time getting underway and is paced pretty well throughout. There's not much in the way of make-up, but some of the zombie sequences are fairly creepy. The special effects are dismal, especially in the supposed underwater scenes, but only add to the charm of the overall film.The pedestrian acting does become grating in places. Allison Hayes, who was amusingly over the top in the 1950's classic, "Attack of the 50ft Woman", stumbles through the movie as though she wasn't aware of where she was half of the time. She does wear a very tight sweater however.The rest of the cast seems to be on auto-pilot, reading their lines but without any real sense of urgency or importance. (Again - something not unusual in these B-pictures from yesteryear).All in all, "The Zombies of Mora Tau" is a fun and nostalgic film, perfect for late night viewing with the lights off with a bowl of popcorn on your lap. Worth a look for serious horror buffs as well, especially those who are interested in the history and development of the zombie genre.5 out of 10.

Woodyanders A zombie captain and crew guard the treasure of a sunken ship. A motley assortment of scavengers risk their lives to retrieve the fortune in diamonds hidden inside the vessel. Competently directed by Edward L. Cahn, this endearingly hokey low-budget horror flick moves along at a reasonable clip and offers a fair amount of creepy atmosphere. The underwater scenes are especially tense and gripping. The excellent cast of familiar 50's B-movie faces adds greatly to the silly fun: Gregg Palmer as hunky, stalwart diver Jeff Clark, Allison Hayes as the snippy Mona Harrison, Morris Ankrum as the sage, friendly Dr. Jonathan Eggert, Autumn Russell as the sweet Jan Peters, Joel Ashley as the gruff George Harrison, Marjorie Eaton as the wise Grandmother Peters, and Gene Roth as Sam the chauffeur. Benjamin H. Kline's dark, moody cinematography and Mischa Bakaleinikoff's shuddery'n'spooky score are both solid and effective. An entertaining fright feature.

Death_to_Pan_and_Scan Some amateur reviewers will excuse anything in a movie and give 5 stars minimum simply for the crew having been able to load film-stock into a camera without exposing it to sunlight. After sitting through all 69 minutes of Mora Tau (that I will never have back) I began to really wish that this bad movie had somehow become a 'lost film' instead of films I'd actually like to see -- such as "London After Midnight" starring Lon Chaney or the original 9 hour version of von Stroheim's silent film classic "Greed".As a devoted fan of zombie films who has seen more than 70 films in the genre from the brilliant to the downright awful, even I must admit that most voodoo zombie movies aren't very good -- aside from Halperin's White Zombie and Gilling's Plague of the Zombies (for Hammer Studios) and to a lesser extent, the entertaining if somewhat offensive 1941 Mantan Moreland minstrel show that is King of the Zombies. Even by that guideline for diminished expectations, Mora Tau is probably one of the worst of the voodoo zombie genre and might make me think better of Halperin's 1936 followup disaster Revolt of the Zombies. Zombies of Mora Tau is so insultingly stupid and lame that it almost made me long for the 'good ole days' of the 1940s when Abbott and Costello were busy ruining the Universal Monsters franchise (though A&C enthusiasts still refuse to admit how unfunny those films were). If you want a good underwater horror film from that era watch any of the three 'Creature from the Black Lagoon' films instead or maybe even (horror of bad TV horrors) the Godzilla Power Hour cartoon with Godzookie. If you want underwater zombies, try Wiederhorn's 'Shockwaves' instead. This film is a reminder that not all old black and white films are 'classics' and I can think of any of a number of cheesy 50s horror films that are 10 times more entertaining. The atomic age sci-fi silliness of Invisible Invaders is another better recommendation than Zombies of Mora Tau. Maybe the 3 stars out of 10 that I gave Mora Tau was too generous. I'm now glad there wasn't a DVD of this for me to buy and that TCM showed it to me for free.PLOT: The basic plot sounds like something the "Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl" might have pilfered some basic ideas from: There is a sunken treasure of $1 million of uncut diamonds that has attracted treasure hunters for decades and lead to the demise of many a diver. It seems that the original thieves of the treasure all met an untimely demise and 10 zombies now guard said treasure (though why they live in 10 lined up coffins in a cave like Snow Whites dwarfs is anyone's guess) and will not rest until said treasure is 'destroyed' as the old lady says. The sailors dream of riches and ignore her warnings and try to get the treasure anyway...These are also among the least scary voodoo zombies I've seen in a movie. If all the reels of this film were at the bottom of the sea, I think I'd voodoo up some zombies to guard them and ensure that they were never retrieved so that movie audiences would be spared the horror of seeing this film.**SPOILERS**I have several issues with this film and its lazy writing:*The dive crew/sailors are too dumb to realize that the woman is not 'ill' but now has become one of the zombies and is exhibiting all the same traits. These characters are obviously much dumber than your average horror movie morons.*Sure the old lady claims the zombies are indestructible, but that doesn't stop the sailors from using knives and other weapons on them ineffectively. None of the sailors/divers ever thinks to try lighting a zombie aflame after they display an obvious fear of fire? You've gotta be kidding me. Maybe it wouldn't destroy them, but you'd think someone would at least try it.*Don't establish rules for the zombies and then proceed to break those rules later in the film when it seems convenient to do so.*So the diamonds must be 'destroyed' for the zombies to rest, right? So why does dumping the diamonds into a couple feet of water not 10 feet from the shore of old lady's property count as 'destroying them' and end the curse? It's as if the writers forgot that someone could just bend down and pick retrieve the diamonds 5 minutes after the 'zombies' dematerialize out of their clothes.