Day 8: The Walking Dead (1936)

Needed something more sedate after Ghostwatch, so I plugged in Michael Curtiz's The Walking Dead, which is about as horror-lite as you can get while still qualifying as a horror film. Boris Karloff plays an ex-con who is framed for the murder of a judge. He's executed just before the evidence that would have exonerated him comes to light. A kindly scientist resurrects him with New Science, but he comes back an amnesiac. However, he seems to recognize the people who framed him -- even the ones he never met before. One by one he confronts them and one by one they die.

Oddly enough for a horror film, his confronting them and their dying are not connected by murder. In each case, they suffer an accident brought on by a combination of tension and guilt. Karloff's character never kills anyone and there are suggestions throughout the film that he is acting as an agent of God.

It's a very strange little film, but recommended for a bravura Karloff performance and Curtiz's excellent direction.