Garden Of The Dead DVD Review
Garden Of The Dead takes place inside a small prison work camp that produces formaldehyde. Some of the prisoners spend their lunch huffing the fumes of formaldehyde and digging a tunnel to escape the prison camp. There is one virtuous prisoner, Johnson, who’s wife makes daily visits to camp gate to see her hubby. At night, the formaldehyde huffing prisoners invite Johnson to escape with them, but when he hears that their plan includes murdering a guard that helped Johnson out, Johnson is stabbed so he can’t stop them from leaving. But, the prison break is foiled by there own stupidity so the warden and guard give chase. The prisoners are shot down in a nearby cemetery. The warden decides to make an example of them by burying them in shallow graves. But, since the prisoners had been huffing formaldehyde, they come back to life to seek their revenge on the warden, the guards and anything living thing that crosses their path.
The zombie make-up was pretty cool looking for the time. They had a simple, sullen and decayed look that worked well with the way it was shot. There’s not a whole lot of special effects beyond their face make-up and the huffing of the formaldehyde.
The acting was decent and the dialog worked to get the point across. The camera work and sound were good despite the disclaimer at the beginning of the presentation.
Garden Of The Dead comes from a time when even bad cinema was good enough to sit through. The video was hosted by the Son of Ghoul, which set the tone of the movie nicely. I could just imagine watching this hosted by the local horror MC late on a Friday night way back when. The story is pretty simple and at a running time of 59 minutes, this movie would be great warm up for any zombie view and brew with friends.
