Nellie arrive avec son mari malade à Alvarado, village côtier mexicain de la région de Veracruz.. Alors qu'elle cherche un médecin, elle croise Georges, médecin déchu, devenu alcoolique.
After brawling over a card game in the wharf area of New Orleans, a man named Kochak (Lewis Charles), suffering visibly from a flu-like illness, is killed by gangster Blackie (Jack Palance) and his two flunkies, Kochak's cousin Poldi (Guy Thomajan) and a man named Fitch (Zero Mostel). They leave the body on the docks, and later when the dead man, who carries no identification, is brought to the morgue, the coroner grows suspicious about the bacteria present in his blood and calls his superior, Dr. Clinton Reed (Richard Widmark), a Lt. Cmdr. doctor working for the U.S. Public Health Service. Reed is enjoying a rare day off with his wife Nancy (Barbara Bel Geddes) and their son Tommy (Tommy Rettig), but decides to inspect the body.
An onscreen text warns of the superstitious belief in a vorvolaka, a malevolent force in human form. The film proper begins during the Balkan Wars of 1912. While his troops are burying their dead, General Pherides (Karloff) and American reporter Oliver Davis (Marc Cramer) visit the Isle of the Dead to pay their respects to the General's long-dead wife. They discover the crypt despoiled; hearing a woman singing on the supposedly uninhabited island, they set out to find her. They also find retired Swiss archeologist Dr. Aubrecht (Jason Robards, Sr.), his Greek housekeeper Madame Kyra (Helen Thimig), British diplomat Mr. St. Aubyn (Alan Napier) and his pale and sickly wife (Katherine Emery), her youthful Greek companion Thea (Ellen Drew), and an English tinsmith.
The duo of Jerry Miles and Mike Strager are employed as Broadway press agents. Miles and Strager's latest idea is to hire a genuine zombie for the opening of a new nightclub. The boys head to the Caribbean island of San Sebastian where they meet the beautiful cabaret singer Jean la Dance. In exchange for her help, Jean wants passage off the island. Miles and Strager eventually meet up with the zombie expert Professor Renault. Unknown to them, the professor's zombie has captured Jean and brought her to the Professor's secret laboratory, While Miles and Strager investigate the house, Jean awakes to find herself gagged and strapped to a table as the Professor's next test subject. Before he can proceed to give Jean the serum his guard dogs detect intruders. Jean is quickly spirited to a secret dungeon where she is tied up but manages to escape. Strager becomes "zombified" by being under the spell of Renault's secret formula and Miles, la Dance, and Strager return home. When Strager comes out of his trance, the boys must face the wrath of Ace Miller, a nightclub owner, who is more frightening then anything they've seen yet.
After the death of Max's (John Carradine) wife Lila (Veda Ann Borg), he holds a funeral for her. However, he has also turned her into a zombie. He is amazed when Lila show signs of free will and challenges him for control. In the excitement Dr. Keating (Barry Macollum) goes missing after entering a tomb which should not have been entered.
During World War II, a Capelis XC-12 plane somewhere over the Caribbean runs low on fuel and is blown off course by a storm. Guided by a faint radio signal, they crash-land on an island. The passenger, his manservant and the pilot take refuge in a mansion owned by a doctor. The quick-witted yet easily frightened manservant (Mantan Moreland) soon becomes convinced the mansion is haunted by zombies, and confirms this with some of the doctor's hired help. Exploring, the three stumble upon a voodoo ritual being conducted in the cellar, where the doctor, who is in reality a foreign spy, is trying to acquire war intelligence from a captured US Admiral whose plane had crashed in a similar fashion on the island. But the interruption causes the zombies to turn on their master.
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In a Manhattan radio studio, a broadcast is being made by crime reporter Lawrence Lawrence (Bob Hope)—"Larry" to his friends, as well as his enemies, who are many in number among the local underworld.
Un jeune médecin de campagne, le Dr Robert Koch, est désespéré de voir une épidémie de tuberculose emporter la vie de nombreux enfants dans son secteur. Déjà un enfant sur quatre est atteint par cette maladie insidieuse, et les parents doivent veiller sur ces enfants agonisants. Depuis des années, Koch recherche fébrilement l'agent infectieux de la tuberculose.
The story centers on the redemption of its lead female character. George Brent is Tom Ransome, an artist who leads a rather dissolute if socially active life in the town of Ranchipur. His routine is shattered with the arrival of his former lover, Lady Edwina Esketh (Myrna Loy) who has since married the elderly Lord Esketh (Nigel Bruce). Lady Edwina first sets out to seduce, then gradually falls in love with, Major Rama Safti (Tyrone Power) who represents the "new India."
Le maréchal Krieger, un terrible dictateur, attrape la peste blanche, une maladie contre laquelle seul le docteur Galén possède le remède pouvant amener à la guérison. Cependant, comme le docteur ne veut livrer son secret qu'en échange de la paix, le dictateur accède à sa demande et le fait venir chez lui. Galén est tué par la foule avide de guerre, mais, alors qu'il se sait perdu, le redoutable dictateur signe quand même l'armistice. Le docteur ayant heureusement partagé son savoir avec un médecin étranger, l'humanité sera sauvée.
A few short hours after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln (Frank McGlynn Sr.), Dr. Samuel Mudd (Baxter) gives treatment to a man with a broken leg who shows up at his door. Mudd does not know that the president has been assassinated and the man who he is treating is John Wilkes Booth (Francis McDonald). Mudd is arrested for being an accessory in the assassination and is sent to prison on the Dry Tortugas, described as in the West Indies and referred to in the film as "America's own Devil's Island".
On the Franco-Austrian Frontier during World War I, an Oriental priest, chaplain of a French colonial regiment, is condemned to life imprisonment because he possesses the power to turn men into zombies. In his prison cell, the priest prepares to burn a parchment containing the location of the secret formula. Gen. Mazovia (Roy D'Arcy) kills the priest and takes the partially burned parchment. After the war, an expedition of representatives from the Allied countries with colonial interests are sent to Cambodia to find and destroy forever the so-called "Secret of the Zombies". The group includes Colonel Mazovia; a student of dead languages, Armand Louque (Dean Jagger); Englishman Clifford Grayson (Robert Noland); General Duval (George Cleveland); and his daughter Claire (Dorothy Stone).
After her sister Olga marries and leaves home, Katrin Koerber, the daughter of an Austrian medical professor, fights loneliness and dreams of a more exciting life outside Austria. Consequently, when Dr. Walter Fane, a British bacteriologist, asks her to marry him and move to Hong Kong, she agrees, even though she is not in love with him.