The Dead One (also known as Blood of the Zombie) is a 1961 American independent horror film written, produced and directed by Barry Mahon.

The narrative follows two cousins—one a businessman (McKay), the other a woman who practices voodoo (Davis)—who each seek control of their family's Louisiana plantation.

The next morning, they learn that Bella's car can't be fixed for another day, so she must spend a second night at Kenilworth.

At the rite, Monica again summons zombie Jonas and commands him to "kill the girl" to prevent John from inheriting the plantation and thereby ending her voodoo practice.

A hearse arrives, the police leave, and John plants a "For Sale" sign outside Kenilworth as he and Linda drive away.

Before the era of simultaneous wide releases, a few prints would make their way across the country to unimpressed audiences, and which full color zombie you saw first would simply have depended on where you lived.

In America, it is believed to have been exhibited only in the southern part of the country and most likely only at drive-in theaters,[7] where it "served as a time filler" as the second feature on a double bill, when "the young people [in the audience] had more to do than watch some miserable collection of color and movement on the screen.

[11] For individual home viewing, widescreen DVDs of the film were distributed in the US by Something Weird Video in 2002 and by Shriek Show in 2003.

"[14] The magazine gave The Dead One a rating of "fair" on its poor-to-excellent spectrum in its "Review Digest" weekly feature.

[15] The pressbook for the movie encouraged theater owners to lure patrons by advertising that they were giving away "Free voodoo dolls with real hair with every adult ticket.

Davis appeared in 1,000 Shapes of a Female (1963), The Swap and How They Make It (1965) and The Pill (1967), while McKay was in Cuban Rebel Girls (1959).

He writes that "The beginning will certainly horrify, as newlyweds John and Linda ... take an unnecessarily long trip to Bourbon Street in New Orleans and watch a seemingly endless string of performers ... all to pad the running time by a full twenty minutes."

Otherwise, 'there's noting remotely scary" about the film, including the "green zombie makeup over [Jonas's] face and hands," which "shows some decay.

"The plot of this film is basically lifted from the old black-cast exploitation quickie The Devil's Daughter (1939), but with zombies," he writes.

Hardy, who refers to Mahon as a "nudie-specialist" and "one of the first sex-movie tycoons," simply calls The Dead One "abominably acted, scripted and directed.