Del Tenney Double Feature: Horror at Party Beach/Curse of the Living Corpse Review

Horror of Party Beach was billed as the “first horror monster musical”, and milked its campy hybrid plot about amphibian mutant zombies attacking a beachside community for a great deal of fun.

A surprise given the title, Curse of the Living Corpse features no zombies at all, though it does indeed feature a curse. Drawn and expanded from Poe’s “Premature Burial”, it’s actually the class act of the pair, a gothic chiller more in keeping with the kinds of horror films coming out of Italy at the time. In a way, it marks a crossing point between the old dark house whodunit thrillers of the 1930s and the slasher films to come.

Corpse shows a latent talent that had yet to be tapped. True to his stage background, director Del Tenney does a good job in assembling a cast that can handle his flowery dialogue, including Roy Scheider (looking a bit like a young Basil Rathbone in his film debut),and Candace Hilligoss (Carnival of Souls). But he also is able to vary his camera angles enough to stave off the inherent staginess of the show, and he provides some surprisingly bloody shocks. The film's main weak point is that we see its killer too plainly, draining a bit of unease.

One can only wonder what would have happened with Tenney’s career had he continued in this vein for another film or two.