The Walking Dead (1936)

The Walking Dead is a 1936 American horror film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Boris Karloff, who plays a wrongly executed man who is restored to life by a scientist (Edmund Gwenn). The supporting cast features Ricardo Cortez, Marguerite Churchill and Barton MacLane. The film was distributed by Warner Bros.

Plot

John Ellman (Boris Karloff) has been framed for murder by a gang of racketeers. He is unfairly tried, and despite the fact that his innocence has been proven, he is sent to the electric chair and executed. Dr. Evan Beaumont (Edmund Gwenn) retrieves his dead body and revives it as part of his experiments to reanimate a dead body and discover what happens to the soul after death.

Dr. Beaumont's use of a mechanical heart to revive the patient foreshadows modern medicine's mechanical heart to keep patients alive during surgery. Although John Ellman has no direct knowledge of anyone wishing to frame him for the murder before he is executed, he gains an innate sense of knowing those who are responsible after he is revived. Ellman takes no direct action against his framers; however, he seeks them out, wishing to know why they had him killed. Each dies a horrible death, and in the end it is their own guilt that causes their deaths.

While confronting the last two villains, Ellman is mortally shot. Dr. Beaumont hurries to his death bed, and although pressed to reveal insights about death, Ellman admonishes, "Leave the dead to their maker. The Lord our God is a jealous God" (from Deuteronomy 6:15). As Ellman dies, the two remaining racketeers are killed when their car runs off the road, crashes into an electric pole, and explodes. The film ends with Dr. Beaumont repeating Ellman's warning about a jealous God.