Poverty Row Classics Vol.1: King of the Zombies and Miss V from Moscow — Poverty Row Classics Vol.1( Blu Ray/ DVD)

Poverty Row Studios was a group of movie studios from Hollywood that operated between the 1920s and 1950s and produced hundreds of movies for a fraction of the cost of the big-budget movies that were being pumped out by the big studios. This Blu-ray from VCI Entertainment is the first in a new series of double bills and features two of those movies, King of the Zombies and Miss V from Moscow.

King of the Zombies is up first, it’s a 1941 zombie comedy film directed by Jean Yarbrough (House of Horrors, Here Come the Co-Eds and In Society) which stars Dick Purcell (Captain America 1944, Mystery House and The Daredevil Drivers), Joan Woodbury (The Living Ghost, The Ten Commandments and Brenda Starr, Reporter), Mantan Moreland (Charlie Chan and the Chinese Cat, Dark Alibi and The Scarlet Clue) and Henry Victor (Freaks, The Picture of Dorian Gray and H. Rider Haggard’s She). Set during the Second World War, pilot James “Mac” McCarthy (Purcell) finds himself blown off course during a storm. He is forced to crash-land his plane on a remote island when he begins to run out of fuel. Along with his passengers, Bill Summers (John Archer) and his valet, Jefferson Jackson (Moreland), he takes refuge with a man named Dr Miklos Sangre (Victor) and his wife, Alyce (Patricia Stacey). Slowly but surely, the three men start to find that something strange is going on, on the island. Talk of voodoo and zombies starts to take hold while our intrepid trio try to find a way off the island.

Miss V from Moscow is our second film, directed in 1942 by Albert Herman (The Missing Corpse, The Phantom of 42nd Street and The Black Coin). It stars Lola Lane (The Big Fight, Torchy Blane in Panama and Burn ‘Em Up Barnes), Noel Madison (Manhattan Melodrama, Nation Aflame and I Like It That Way), Howard Banks (Murder in the Blue Room, Tiger Fangs and Bonzo Goes to College) and Paul Weigel (The Great Dictator, The Vanishing Legion and The Black Cat). Set during World War II, beautiful Russian spy Vera Marova (Lane) is enlisted to take the place of her lookalike, a dead German spy named Greta Hiller. Alongside her colleague, Steve Worth (Banks) the pair collude with the French resistance in Paris to send secret radio messages to Moscow in order to inform American convoys of the threat of attacks from German U-boats.

Both films are competently made, with solid performances from their casts and with decent stories and scripts. King of the Zombies, however, is the pick of the pair for me. It’s a fun voodoo-laden romp through Abbott and Costello territory (director, Jean Yarbrough directed several of the pair’s movies), that keeps the viewer hooked with some decent comedy. It’s slightly contentious with some fairly stereotypical portrayals of African Americans from the time. It’s not jarring or out-and-out xenophobic, just a little of its time. Miss V from Moscow was enjoyable enough, but it lacked something to set it apart from a host of other titles of the same vintage. It isn’t a film I see myself returning to in the future. Both films look good with nice clean prints. This new Blu-ray release from MVD and VCI also features a video essay on the Poverty Row Studios and an audio commentary for King of the Zombies, while both feature presentations are included on a separate DVD disc.

Overall, this is an interesting and worthwhile package for two movies that have been forgotten by history, but are a fascinating reminder that Hollywood wasn’t always just about the big-budget blockbusters from the big studios. King of the Zombies is the one that stood out for me, but both movies were good enough to hold my interest.