It is easy, too simple in fact, to dismiss this movie and the characterizations of men like Mantan Moreland and Stepin Fetchit as "racist". The later generation usually thinks of itself as more enlightened than the former. All the while Hip Hop videos and movies like "Fridays", "BAPS" and whatever Spike Lee is currently is at work on are hailed as masterpieces, all the while, doing the same sort of parody of current black culture that Moreland and Fetchit were doing with their generation. Do not forget that Mantan Moreland and Stepin Fetchit did a LOT of work doing these same routines and characters for black directors and black audiences and were hailed as comic geniuses within their own communities. Along with the current Politically Correct culture seems to be a lot of revisionist history and myopia.
That said, we see this movie for what it is, a brilliant comedy horror movie on a par with any of the "Abbott & Costello meet..." films. Mantan Moreland is excellent and steals every scene he is in, the other actors don't even have a ghost of a chance, as it were. The only person who comes close to matching him is the pretty Marguerite Whiddon as Samantha, the pretty, wisecracking kitchen helper.
Dr Sangre (Sangre..Spanish for Blood, get it?) is up to no good on his island in the middle of the Caribbean and it is up to the men of a crashed plane to figure it all out, IF they can survive what seems to be an island over-run with zombies! If you are looking for a 1960s or 1970s style juvenile gore-fest, look elsewhere, but if you are looking for some classic wartime horror-comedy, get some popcorn, turn off your PC brainwashing and enjoy!
