Overlooked Films: The Zombies of Mora Tau

For some reason, maybe the current zombie craze, I was thinking about this movie the other day.  I knew how bad it was when I saw it in the theater back in the late '50s, but then nearly all the movies like this were bad back in those days.  If you have one little theater in town, though, and if you're a teenager, you go to the movie on the weekend, no matter what.  So I wound up seeing many, many bad movies of this sort. 

The plot is simple.  There's a sunken ship with treasure aboard.  A group tries to salvage it, and they discover that the ship is cursed and that a zombie crew guards the treasure.  Undersea zombies?  Wasn't that in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie?  Maybe it was a tip of the hat to this one.  

You should watch the trailer if you haven't already seen it.  That way you'll get an idea of the quality of the whole thing.  Some of the actors did a lot of B-movies and TV, but their names are pretty much unknown now.  Ray "Crash" Corrigan is in it, way down on the cast list.  If this one wasn't on MSTK, it should've been, but I still have a soft spot for it.  

Aside: Nostalgia is a terrible thing. Let me tell you one of the things I remember most clearly about going to these movies.  It's the sound of plastic earpieces clicking as every girl in the theater who wore glasses took them off and put them away at the end of the movie before the house lights went up.