Valley of the Zombies (1946)
IMDb meta-data is 56 minutes runtime, rated 5.2 by 191 cinematizens.
Genre: Horror.
Verdict: Neither valley, nor zombie.
The blood bank is losing stock and no one knows why. Young doctor and comely nurse decide to find out why. Then the bodies start turning up in the wake of a shadowy caped figure. The cape is the clue. Bad. If ever I see a dean wearing a cape, I skedaddle.
Plod arrives and leaps to the screenwriter’s conclusion that Doctor and Nurse have been playing corpses. Everywhere they go from a creepy dark house to a graveyard mausoleum the caped shadow is there first and more corpses appear. Plod is thus convinced of their guilt, even when his superior officer castigates him for jumping to conclusions and orders their release, because he has read the script to the end and knows they are innocent.
Spoiler.
Turns out Capeman was never quite dead but faked his death. He had been sentenced to death for splitting infinitives about which we know nothing. His loyal brother has since been snitching blood to sustain him, but the Caped One wants a better blend and goes shopping on his own. Since he was never dead, though undead, he is NO zombie. This convolution dazed the fraternity brothers.
The print I watched on You Tube was so murky no valley was visible nor did it figure in the plot.
Of passing interest is that Capeman was played by the cadaverous Ian Keith who vied with Bela Lugosi for Dracula roles but invariably lost out to the Magyar for the simple reason that the destitute and desperate Lugosi worked for peanuts. And he had those eyes. Those who think this movie is a stinker should try Catman of Paris (1946). I know I am going to.