The Walking Dead is a 1936 American science fiction horror film directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Boris Karloff, Ricardo Cortez, Marguerite Churchill, and Barton MacLane. The film portrays a wrongly executed man who is restored to life by a scientist. The film blends elements of the horror genre with the gangster film, and also features elements of a religious morality parable.[6] Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, The Walking Dead premiered in the New York City on February 29, 1936. It was a commercial success for Warner Bros. domestically, though it was subject to censorship in several countries, receiving numerous cuts by film censors in the United Kingdom, as well as being banned in Finland, Switzerland, and Singapore. The film's portrayal of a physician using a mechanical heart to revive the patient is notable in that it foreshadowed modern medicine's mechanical heart used to keep patients alive during cardiac surgery.