Zombie Lake - Review

Over the years Nazis and zombies have become inexorably linked together. Why this happened I'm not exactly sure. Maybe it's because Nazis are the greatest example of how evil humankind can be. Their never-ending thirst for conquest and destruction pairs well with a zombie’s never-ending hunger for human flesh. Zombies are the embodiment of pure evil. Like the leaders of fascist Germany, they are stripped of emotion and moral reasoning. Of course it could just be that Nazi zombies are badass. Whatever the reason, the Nazi zombie sub-genre is here to stay and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. There have been some fantastic Nazi zombie movies over the years like Shockwaves and more recently Dead Snow. Of course, as with anything, it has also produced absolute shit like War of the Dead. Unfortunately the film I watched falls into the latter category. That movie is 1981’s Zombie Lake from French directory Jean Rollin.

The movie begins with its only worthwhile quality, gratuitous nudity. The film begins with the opening credits rolling over naked women sunbathing and enjoying a pleasant dip in what the locals refer to as the “Lake of the Damned’. No body part is spared a close-up as we are treated to an underwater view. We also see our first Nazis zombie floating under the water just below her feet. This is one of only a few scenes throughout the whole movie that I really enjoyed. Watching the zombie stalk her and slowly rise up from the scummy water is fun but unfortunately doesn’t set a precedent for the rest of the movie.

Next we're introduced to a host of other characters from the surrounding village, all of which are quite forgettable and could likely be out-acted by a rock. The villagers quickly suspect something is wrong when the girl from the opening never returns and others go missing. They send for help but only receive two unmotivated detectives who are quickly consumed. The kills in this movie are awful and uncreative. They consist of a zombie latching onto someone’s neck and seemingly just sucking on it. Apparently they didn’t have the special effects know how to make a zombie look like it was biting off flesh. Essentially you watch the zombies give hickeys to their victims while occasionally showing a dead body with some gore on its neck. There's no fun over the top gore or scenes where someone gets pulled apart. It’s just a boring one-way zombie make out session with a corpse.

Then the film gives us a long backstory about how the Nazi zombies ended up in the lake. Apparently they were stationed there during World War 2 where they were ambushed by the townspeople and thrown into the lake which, for whatever reason, hold strange demonic powers. We also see a love story between a soldier and a woman in the village who has his child right before he's killed. There are also some battle scenes which really aren’t terrible considering the films budget.

Flashing back to the present we are treated to a woman’s basketball team, the entire team, fully exposed as they decide to stop by the lake for a swim. Something about seeing this green, algae and lily pad infested lake makes women’s clothes fly off. The girls are devoured in a similar fashion to the first leaving one lucky survivor to run topless into the local pub, much to the delight of its patrons, to warn about the zombies. The zombies now begin their march on the village and the zombie from the flashback finally meets his daughter who discovers he's a nice zombie. The scenes of the zombies invading the village are ok, but I never got the chaotic, overwhelming, gory scene of the zombies devouring villagers and taking over which I usually love in zombie movies. They just kind of wander around, eat someone every once in a while and then return to the lake. Most of the last third of movie, including the scenes where the villagers try and fight the zombies off, are too dark to even tell what’s going on. The movie ends with the zombies getting torched with a flame thrower that the villagers just now decided might be useful.

Zombie Lake might have worked as a super cheesy so bad it’s good type of movie but it's played too seriously and never achieves that feeling. It isn’t a good horror or zombie movie with hardly any gore, terrible acting and a sense that you just wasted an hour and a half of your life that you'll never get back.

The bottom line is I wouldn’t recommend this movie unless you plan on jerking off to it.

Score .5/5