Along with flying scenes, the use of zany characters and slapstick efforts were juxtaposed with a spy and zombie story.

In 1941, a Capelis XC-12 transport aircraft flying between Cuba and Puerto Rico runs low on fuel and is blown off course by a storm.

The pilot, James "Mac" McCarthy, cannot pick up any radio transmissions over the Caribbean except for a faint signal.

After crash-landing on a remote island, passenger Bill Summers and his valet Jefferson Jackson, take refuge in a mansion owned by Dr. Miklos Sangre and his wife Alyce .

The group stumbles upon a voodoo ritual in the cellar conducted by the doctor who is in reality a foreign spy trying to acquire war intelligence from a captured US Admiral whose aircraft had also crashed on the island.

[5] Principal photography by Sterling Productions, Inc. began on March 28, 1941, and wrapped in early April, being primarily filmed on a studio back lot.

[Note 1] In the press kit for King of the Zombies, Monogram advised exhibitors to sell "it along the same lines as Paramount's The Ghost Breakers (1940)."