Customer Reviews

The Undead [VHS]

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I, too, first saw this movie in the late 1960s and then once more as an adult. While done on a low budget, the story is original and ends with a rather unsettling plot twist. In brief, two scientists (psychic researchers) invent a machine able to send a person's "soul" back to a prior life. A woman is recruited by the two scientists for an "experiment" whose purpose she is not aware. Her "soul" is then sent back in time to a prior incarnation of herself. In this incarnation, she is young woman living in medieval Europe and condemned to die via a beheading. However, her medieval incarnation is helped to escape her fate by her 20-th century incarnation sent back in time by the scientists. Thus, she apparently will be able to elude the chopping block. However, a (well intentioned) witch explains to her that her fate is in fact to die by beheading in this life. Should she escape the chopping block, all her future incarnations will cease to be; in the alternative, if she willingly submits her neck to the axeman's blow, her soul will be reborn in her future lives. She has one tough decision to make: "her death is her life and her life is her death." As she deliberates, her future incarnations call to her in her head, imploring her to give them life by accepting her death in this life. Meanwhile, one of the scientists has sent himself back to the same time and place to watch and observe what choice the woman's medieval incarnation will make. The Devil is also observing the fate of the woman's soul, side-by-side with the scientist. She chooses...to die by execution thereby "saving" her future incarnations. Upon her death, the scientist pronounces his curiousity satisfied, bids adieu to Satan, and announces that he will be travelling back now to the 20-th century. Satan laughs and inquires of the scientist, "Did you not use the unbroken change of the woman's incarnations to reach back in time to this medieval period? So, now that the woman has died, how will you find your way back?" (Evidently, the scientist has lost his psychic starting point for his return journey). Satan then explains that the scientist's soul will be his (Satan's) once the scientist has lived out his now dead end existence here in medieval Europe.

I saw this film once when I was 12 years old in the sixties. Nevertheless, I remember it like it was yesterday. The concept, the special effects (simple but very effective) and the conclusion are first rate. It is really the one Corman film that should be widely available on DVD format. Hopefully someone will realize this and get it released.

I remember when my family had a Super 8mm movie projector and bought a 10 minute version of this and I liked it! I wanted to see it on tv but they never aired. Then I got a copy on VHS and saw the whole thing and I thought Roger Corman had done his better with this low budget production! I thought it was well written and the actors were at their best performing! One had to feel sorry for the poor girl at the end when she found out what she really was and what could happen to her whether or not she was beheaded! She had to take a lesser of the two evils but could not bring herself to figure out which was the lesser of the two. I am careful as not too spoil this for anyone who wishes to see it.

Roger Corman is known for producing a seemingly endless library of low-budget films, many of which have become true classics. Director Ron Howard once explained that Corman frequently provided the cameras and film to young unknowns who produced their own scripts and movies under Corman's name. Thus, many well-known filmmakers (like Ron Howard) got their start under Roger Corman's wing.

THE UNDEAD is one of the best of Corman's films. The story of two scientsts who are studying past-life regressions, they convince a young 20th-Century streetwalker to be their test subject. She goes back in time (accompanied by one of the scientists as an observer) to a medieval world in which witchcraft is actively practiced and the devil is busily buying souls.

Unwittingly, she is charged with practicing witchcraft, and is sentenced to be beheaded, though innocent. She is given a chance to escape, but is warned by the real witch that "Life in this life is death and death in this life is life." A Hobson's Choice is offered her: To be beheaded now and reincarnate many times later or to live now and die forever.

A truly inventive, mildly erotic, well done and even thoughtful film, THE UNDEAD is well worth a viewing if you can find it.