Zombie Lake Review
This was a complete piece of shit. The only reason I kept watching was so I could review it in it’s entirety. Luckily, it’s only 83 mins. long and I figured out that I could fast forward through a lot of it and still catch exactly what it was trying to get across to me as there was little dialog. There’s the slimmest chance that someone would like it based on the fact that there are at least 10 to 15 naked women in the movie. In fact, when I saw this movie had 2 and a half stars on NetFlix I couldn’t believe it. Alas, the only positive thing that people said about this movie was that there were tons of naked women in it. These people obviously have not heard of the the movie genre called “Porn”, where the entire movie is about naked ladies, rather than 20% naked ladies, 80% crap zombie movie with no plot. If you need to get your female flesh fix, I suggest you pick up a porno, or better yet, start socializing with (and respecting) women and something magical might happen.
It starts out with a lady going skinny dipping in a dirty pond. After you are hammered to death with the idea that this lady is naked in the water and enjoying herself, a zombie in a Nazi uniform appears in the water. After you are hammered to death with the idea that there is a Nazi zombie in the water with this lady, he attacks her. In fact, you can’t help but grasp every detail in every scene of the movie because the camera lingers and lingers on EVERYTHING! Even when the zombie attacks his second victim, a lady in the village, the camera lingers on every possible angle of this zombie biting her neck. It lingers so long that you have way more than enough time to consider that the effect they used to simulate the zombie biting her neck was just him letting blood out of his mouth while biting her. You also have enough time to consider that had they kept it short and sweet you would not have seen that the blood was fairly thin and just dripped off her neck revealing, for a very long time, that there was indeed no wound on her neck. Still, it lingers. Basically, the zombie Nazis go in and out of the lake, for no reason, while periodically stopping to kill a lady until they are all rounded up in a mill and burnt, which is what should be done with the remaining copies of this film.
Interspersed throughout the movie is this “subplot” that one of the zombie Nazis bedded a local girl before dying and impregnated her. In one mind-boggling scene, the zombie Nazis are marching by a house when one of them seems to recognize it. As he approaches the house alone, I shit you not, sad, sad violin music is cued up with the timing of a Mel Brooks film. He sees a little girl inside, who you are lead to believe is his daughter, given that she has pictures of his long lost love on the mantle. The zombie Nazi enters the home and gives the little girl the necklace that her mother gave him. This, again, takes forever and the whole time the zombie has this longing and wistful gaze that doesn’t let up through the whole scene. This is one of those scenes, along with the scenes of his burgeoning relationship with her mother, that I felt confident in fast-forwarding through due to obvious lack of dialog and the slow, slow pacing of it all.
While historically the Nazis hated Jewish people and anybody else that wasn’t white, seemingly, zombie Nazis hate women and want to rub blood on their necks until they die. Besides two cops, the zombie Nazis only kill women in the film. It even seems that they pass up the chance to grab a dude several times to kill a lady.
The zombies in this film look like shit. They have green make-up (that’s a nice bright green by that way, not anything subdued or dirty looking) and a hint of latex peeling off. They didn’t bother to put the make-up on their necks or hands or anything. Just green make-up, red eye-liner and wide-eyed stares. Completely crappy looking.
If this film had been edited with a little faster pace, I could see it being enjoyable to watch with your buddies while you drank and made fun of it. But it’s just so damn drawn out that it’s nearly impossible to watch. Of course if they did that, they’d lose about 40 minutes of the movie and as it is they only have 83 minutes. I guess they could have shown more naked girls gallivanting around for no reason. Or maybe the zombies could have taken a few more useless trips into the lake.
Fuck this movie.
Comments(6)
This is the best review I have ever read for any movie, hands down! Keep up the good work keeping us informed. You guys always do an awesome job.
I for one found this review one-sidedly negative. It might not be the greatest of movies, not even good as zombie movies go, but that shouldn’t prevent one from being balanced in one’s judgements. I know it’s fun to trash movies, but believe me, it gets tiresome after a while. Both to write and to read.
The only movie I think I’ve ever totally trashed (as above) is the abysmal Zombiegore (2003), and that includes a couple of hundred movie reviews (100+ zombie movies). That one is not even a real movie, just a stupid guy pointing a video camera at stuff (mostly his asshole friends and terrible wigs, often at the same time).
This is in response to The Pork-Eater:
If you think that I’m just trying to trash this movie to get my jollies, then I suggest you watch it.
As far as movies go, I’m really easy to please. By and large, I can sit through a lot and find something enjoyable in the experience. I draw the line at Zombie Lake. My goal in reviewing these zombie movies is to weed out the crap that people just slapped together, crap people just renamed, crap people just named something a sequel when it has nothing to do with it’s prequel – just to make a few bucks at your expense.
If you peruse the internet in search of reviews of this movie, I guarantee the only positive things people can say about this movie is that there are naked women in it and tons of ‘em. To me, that is the lowest common denominator and an insult to my intelligence.
I implore you to watch this movie. If you still feel that I’m just trying to trash this movie to get laughs and giving an unbalanced review despite the existence of real merit on the side of the film makers, then I will post your counterpoint review on this site and link it to the review that I did as well.
I know that the last two reviews that I’ve done were really bad reviews. I made sure that I got these two out right away because I realized that had referenced them in other reviews as being the worst that I had seen, because I truly feel this to be so.
Maybe the statements “This was a complete piece of shit” and “Fuck this movie” are a bit heavy handed. I suppose I just had higher hopes for this movie being that the cover and the very idea are so fucking sweet. The reality of the movie was just a huge letdown. The two afore mentioned statements embody my frustration with this film.
When considering what you will for your review, consider these questions:
-Did the film maker make a real effort to produce a quality film by using quality actors, quality special effects/make-up and a quality story?
-Was the footage included in this film concise, necessary and useful to the story or was it included to fill out the time needed to be a feature length movie?
Yeah, I’ve seen this turkey alright, and I’ve actually reviewed it twice. Here’s my review from ZMDB.org, entitled “Aquatic French blood suckers in brood daylight”:
This might well be the worst picture ever from the creative geniuses of Jesus Franco (the writer and the intended director) and Jean Rollin (the guy the producers hired in the very last minute to direct the formers script), but it’s not by a long shot the worst zombie movie ever made. There is actually a story here, buried beneath all the naked ladies and poor special effects. (The zombie makeup is also laughable as it either washes off or falls off the actors.) The story is one of love beyond death and concerns a little girl and her undead father, who recognizes their kinship and ends up defending her from his fellow blood suckers (these are French zombies). People find this part amusing, but I actually think their relationship is quite moving. Too bad the lead zombie is a terrible actor, even by zombie movie standards.
The movie is hard to categorize since it’s really not a proper zombie movie, nor any kind of action movie (the non-intense WWII footage is actually lifted from an other Franco picture on the theme of naked ladies), or a horror movie (even if there’s a few effective scenes) – or even a porno (even if there’s a porno soundtrack in the full frontal nudity scenes). Perhaps it works best as a comedy, an unintended one. In all it’s cheapness the movie is actually not that badly made, considering the director didn’t have the benefit of any preparation. The underwater scenes for one are actually well made, even if there’s no attention to continuity what so ever.
but it’s a classic piece of shit zombie movie.
that’s my arguement, that’s all i got
*walks away from computer*
badhammer: You are, of course, right. But that statement doesn’t make a review. It’s not even an argument.
I prefer, by the way, my bad zombie movies to be shot on celluloid by grownups, not on digital video by high school kids. That’s the reason I usually rate old (or “classic” as you put it) bad movies higher than recent ones. But, that’s just me…