19. ACCOMPANIED MINERS: Danger! Stay out of mineshafts, ore else!

A plague is killing a village’s citizens, so Dr. Peter Tompson (Brook Williams) asks for help from his mentor Sir James Forbes (André Morell), who brings his daughter Sylvia (Diane Clare), who happens to be a childhood friend of Peter’s wife Alice (Jacqueline Pearce).

Sylvia gets in a ton of trouble while her husband is trying to solve this illness, mostly from some fox hunters. They nearly assault her before she’s saved by Squire Clive Hamilton (John Carson) just in time for her to see a zombie murder Alice.

Alice’s corpse has animal blood on her face and has no sign or rigor mortis. Whoever did this also wants to do the same thing to Sylvia. Yes, voodoo is being used to reanimate the dead to work in a tin mine, which is a pretty wild plot even for Hammer. That said, seeing how this is a Hammer production, everything has to end with a gigantic fire. Those dudes loved them some infernos.

According to Ruth Heholt, Cornwall represents “the non-English within England; the foreign at home.” Hammer also made The Reptile, another film where a disease threatens the region. That movie was also made by this film’s director, John Gilling. In fact, both of those movies as well as Dracula: Prince of Darkness and Rasputin the Mad Monk were all shot on the same stages around the same time.