The rational mind can accept just so much.
Ever eager to cash in on whatever craze came along, producer/director Roger Corman hopped on board the past-life regression train with his confusingly titled 1957 film The Undead, which isn't about zombies or vampires at all. Rather, it follows a fair maiden in medieval times named Helene who's falsely accused of being a witch and is due to be executed by a black-hooded headsman at sunrise. This plot doesn't kick in until ten minutes in, though, since it's nested within one about a modern-day psychical researcher just back from Tibet after seven years who wishes to show up his old professor at the American Institute of Psychical Research (check out those initials) by sending a streetwalker into a deep trance so he can "invade the depths of the mind" and make contact with all her past lives, one of which happens to be accused witch Helene. Conveniently, both Helene and working girl Diana Love are played by top-billed Pamela Duncan, but everyone else in the cast has to make do with only one role apiece, which is enough for most of them.
Adrift in Helene's time, Diana's disembodied spirit unwittingly changes history by helping her former self escape from the Tower of Death on the eve of her beheading, touching off a tug of war between the innocent Helene and actual witch Livia (Allison Hayes) for her beau, the noble Pendragon (Richard Garland), who seeks to free her at any cost, even if it is as high as his immortal soul. Among the colorful characters populating the tale penned by Charles B. Griffith and Mark Hanna are Mel Welles as bewitched and bewildered gravedigger Smolkin, whose dialogue sounds as if he traded places with Hamlet during his pretending-to-be-mad phase, Bruno Ve Sota as superstitious innkeeper Scroop, whose defenses against witches are entirely ineffective, Billy Barty as Livia's imp, who gets no dialogue whatsoever but mugs up a storm to make up for it, and Dick Miller as a leper miraculously cured by an über-fey Satan (Richard Devon). And joining Diana/Helene in the past via the most nonsensical means possible is Quintus (Val Dufour), the smug hypnotist who started the whole mess in the first place. Incidentally, just as in the Terminator series, clothing doesn't travel through time, so upon his arrival Quintus has to waylay an unwary knight and steal his suit of armor. Forget Diana for a minute. Where's the scene of that guy coming to and having to explain what happened to him? That's what I want to know.
