Sumpf der lebenden Toten

To my knowledge there are technically three underwater Nazi zombie movies. The father of the other two is Shockwaves and really the only one worth viewing. An odd spin off from this film is Oasis of the Zombies and Zombie Lake. Le Lac des morts vivants (Zombie Lake) was a project with Jesus (Jess) Franco's involvement and directed by Jean Rollin. Although I personally am not too fond of Jean Rollin's work and definitely despise the hack work of Jess Franco, a man who has never made a movie that could keep me interested, I honestly couldn't believe Rollin had anything to do with this project. On the outset the movie is horrible, but not nearly horrible enough to keep Jess Franco from remaking the insipid piece of cinematic waste again as La Tumba de los muertos vivientes (Oasis of the Zombies), which had the more interesting moniker of The Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies at one time or another.

Jean Rollin apparently understands one standard of z-grade horror, if the movie you find yourself directing has not one single redeeming feature at all, just pad the movie with ample gratuitous nudity and most viewers will be so distracted they may not notice how horrible the film actually is. Modern directors should take note of this since 99 percent of horror films made after 1986 are boring and virtually unwatchable and won't go lowbrow because the director thinks he has integrity. Hint, if you're directing a lame, boring film that is going directly to video anyway and can't fix it or at least make it interesting you have no cinematic integrity.

Rant aside, Zombie Lake is loaded to the gills with naked woman that just throw caution (and their clothes) to the wind at the sight of this undead infested pond. Naturally the zombies swim around and eliminate all comers in a decidedly stiff and mostly bloodless fashion. The lake scenes are just awful and could well be used by film schools as a glaring example of how to completely destroy anything resembling film continuity. We have naked ladies splashing in knee-deep water. Cut to the zombies completely submerged walking under the girls' thrashing legs. Cut back to knee-deep water then back to them swimming and freely floating in ten feet of water above the zombies. Back and forth we cut between the lake shots and the underwater shots probably filmed in the deep end of Jess Franco's swimming pool. Add to this mixture horrible zombie makeup, dull acting, a plot scripted by a highly evolved plankton, Jess Franco, and you have all the trappings of a complete disaster of a film the has Jean Rollin's name on it. This film runs neck and neck with Oasis of the Zombies for being the worst zombie film ever. Oasis of the Zombies lacks even gratuitous nudity but has other redeeming qualities. Both movies are truly awful and even the cheese factor isn't high enough to warrant humorous jibes at it. Princesse de l'érotisme Christina (Virgin Among the Living Dead) is still worse than Zombie Lake by light years however and it is, you guessed it, another Jess Franco project. Fortunately the underwater Nazi zombie movie genre played itself out after just a few movies and actually should have ended with Shock Waves. Given with the state of Hollywood these days it should only be another year or so before Zombie Lake is remade by some flash in pan director that is completely devoid of any of his own ideas. It will probably be remade with a multi-million dollar budget and will still be awful or even worse than the original. Is that possible? Oh yes, very possible.

The most seen (although not exactly appreciated) film of French producers Eurocine- responsible for numerous sex, horror, spy and adventure films. In their Seventies heyday Eurocine seemed like the illegitimate child of sensational pulp paperbacks of the Fifties and Sixties. Always put together cheaply and rough looking but always with great packaging, embracing the sort of lurid subjects that always grabbed the public's attention, if not their intelligence. With Zombie's Lake, subjects didn't come more sensational than `mad murdering Zombies' ogling and picking off semi-nude women. During the end of the Second World War, the French resistance manages to dispose of the local Nazis and throw their bodies into the lake of the title. The lake was previously used for witchcraft, so many years later the (green!) undead Nazi Zombies are rising from the lake, and chewing down on the most of Eurocine's repertory players including the director (putting in a cameo as a detective). Oh and you just have to mention their attack on the local female netball team, all of whom just love to go swimming naked in the lake, even though its possibly the most dirtiest lake ever committed to celluloid. On the side of the living are local villagers lead by the Mayor (the late, great Howard Vernon) who gets the immortal line `we better face the facts that the Zombies have declared war'. Along the way we're treated to some truly appalling makeup and lots of fun in watching drunken looking Frenchmen with green muck on their faces pretend to terrorise people. The films most notorious moment rests with the nude swimming scenes viewed from the Zombie's point of view at the bottom of the lake, and accompanied to Europop at its most wincing (`la, lala, lala la la'). Just to make your life that little more miserable, many versions of the film are missing all the nude scenes, being replaced by softer out-takes of the girls in ghastly ill- fitting underwear. Otherwise the bane of this prosperous films existence is the subplot a `touching' relationship between a little girl and her Nazi /Zombie dad. Largely unnecessary to the film although when you realise that the little girl (Anouchka Lesoeur) is the daughter of the producer it becomes obvious why its there. On a technical level the film is a nightmare, Eurocine in the best `recycled vinyl blues' tradition couldn't make a new hit film without recycling several others. Hence the main theme music is taken from Eurocine's Female Vampire, and the WW2 footage from a war film (Convoy of Girls aka The Depraved Third Reich to be precise). Backstage tales of how quick and cheap the movie was put together are legion - the original director Jesus Franco disappeared before the film started, leaving his replacement Rollin with a two week shooting schedule and a script he hadn't even read. Given these conditions that any aspect of the film is memorable is remarkable. Perhaps its better to view the film's merits- compared with its forgetable `cousin' The Oasis of the Zombies- the film Jesus Franco did make when the Eurocine producers caught up with him, which resurrects the Nazi Zombie theme as well as lots of recycled WW2 footage. Both remain the two directors worst commercial work, but Oasis is a stone dead boring 90 minutes, while Zombie's Lake is full of many absurd moments that keep the film from ever being dull and the green zombies are a hoot. Although only recommended to the truly die-hard the end results are a perversely entertaining last blast from the golden era of the European horror movie.

I definitely have something of a penchant for zombie films of late, so with the good, comes through bad, and they don't come more bad than this one.

The story, residents of a small French town are terrorised by a group of Nazi soldiers, zombie Naxi soldiers.

It's the 1980's, so expect lots of female nudity, some cheesy dialogue and some dubious production values.

The acting, I won't even comment on it, but some of the dubbing and added on voices will have you chuckling away, often during moments of supposed 'horror.'

Not one to be taken too seriously, but I would only advise watching this after a few glasses of rioja, it will at least help with some of of the pain that you will ultimately endure.

3/10.

Let's clear one thing up first, if you want a good zombie horror movie then go rent something else. If you are looking for nonstop naked Euro babes and unintentional laughs in the form of terrible dubbing and FX, then look no further. Considering director Jean Rollin isn't exactly a hack and has made quite a few interesting and stylish horror films, why does THIS have to his best-circulated film in America?

Here's a taste of what you're in for gang...

Nazi soldiers shot and killed during WWII rise from a lake and terrorize the citizens of a picturesque, small French town. The green-faced flesheater make-up could easily be the worst ever. It opens with a very long segment featuring a naked woman walking around, sunbathing, then swimming. Zombie POV shots show her doggy paddling around for what seems to be an hour before she is pulled under. In another scene, a zombie stalking a woman has normal hands, but when he attacks and kills her his hands are suddenly green. My favorite part is when an all-girl basketball team arrive in a van ("Come on out girls! HAHA!"), strip naked and splash around in the lake. Underwater shots capture them from all angles before they get killed. Howard Vernon, Europe's answer to John Carradine, stars as a mayor who tells a reporter in flashback the fate of the zombie soldiers. OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES (1981) has a similar theme and was made by the same crew, but different director (Jesus Franco). Both are insufferably terrible!

Score: 1 out of 10

Jean Rollin replaced Jess Franco as director of Zombie Lake at the 11th hour, but to be honest, you would be hard pushed to tell: Rollin's direction is every bit as clumsy as Franco at his worst, and like so many of the Spaniard's films, the film is only worth watching for the full-on nudity from some quality Euro-crumpet and a few unintentional laughs derived from its overall sloppiness.

Zombie Lake opens with a hot brunette sauntering over to the film's titular lake for a spot of skinny dipping, during which she is attacked by a zombie Nazi sporting green face paint that only extends as far as his jawline. The scene is gore-less, scare-less and technically inept (the underwater scenes having been filmed in what looks like a cunningly disguised swimming pool), but it does allow Rollin's audience to become very well acquainted with the girl's genitalia.

The sneaky vag shots and lame zombie attacks continue throughout the film, the lake continually drawing fit French fillies to its waters to frolic in the buff—and when the naked chicks are on screen, all's right with the world; but whenever Rollin tries conjure up a creepy atmosphere, scare his viewers, or inject some drama into proceedings, it all goes horribly wrong, becoming a painfully embarrassing and dreary exercise in how not to make a zombie film.

3 out of 10, all points awarded purely for the T&A, best scene being the arrival at the lake of an all-female basketball team, who strip off for a refreshing dip with inevitably disastrous results.