Garden of the Dead

Looking round for Horror titles at my local DVD store,I stumbled on what appeared to be a obscure flick. Taking a gamble and putting the rare film on eBay,I was surprised to find it selling right away, which led to me deciding that before I send it off,I should take a look at the garden.

View on the film:

Planted for a hour (wise move) and filmed in 10 days, director John Hayes & cinematographer Paul Hipp pull up a deep-fried Drive-In atmosphere of shoddy zombie make up and poorly lit "daylight" scenes. Breathing in the zombies by making a chain gang a bit too keen to have a sniff of toxic formaldehyde fumes, the screenplay by Jack Matcha and Daniel Cady bring out a slight charm that slots into the cheap Drive-In mood,via the cops stumbling over themselves to plant the zombies back into the garden of the dead.

Convicts on a chain gang sniff experimental formaldehyde fumes to get high. They attempt a prison break and are shot down by the guards. Buried in the prison garden, they rise from the dead, killing all in their path with shovels and hoes who get in their way for their quest to get high once more off the formaldehyde.

Kinda funny premise, no? Starts off pretty good actually. Hayes, made a bunch of offbeat exploitation films but was also nominated for an academy award one time!

They used dry ice for the formaldehyde and of course nobody notices the prisoners sniffing it, and I guess we're not supposed to see the prisoner who laffs when the smoke goes in his face. Must be a minimum security prison cuz the place is surrounded by a wooden-wire fence that would easily be compromised. But escape they do anyway.

My big criticism is this -- it takes half the movie for the zombies to emerge. And let's not forget this movie is less than an hour long! When we see them they have joker like makeup and you can see their chest flesh where the make up ends!

But there IS something about this movie that is different and enjoyable. In a super low budget kind of way. Interesting statement on addiction, anyway.

This film begins with a group of convicts performing manual labor at a prison facility known as Camp Hoover. Yet even though they are generally well-guarded some of these men still manage to sneak away to an area where formaldehyde is stored and while nobody is looking breathe in the fumes in order to get high. Later that night these same men decide to make a prison break but in doing so are shot and killed by the guards for their efforts. But the story doesn't end there as upon being buried they rise from their graves and become obsessed with not only killing everyone alive but also acquiring more formaldehyde in the process. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that the zombies in this film were quite different than those presented in other movies of this type in that they could talk and used tools to kill their victims. In addition to these peculiarities they also possessed a rather strange weakness as well. In any case, although this was a rather short movie (approximate 59 minutes) with definite budgetary restraints, it wasn't terribly bad and for that reason I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

1972's "Garden of the Dead" served as second feature to topliner "Grave of the Vampire," both titles directed by John Hayes (Christopher Lee's "End of the World"), and shows how the zombie subgenre was still evolving after George Romero's flesh eating ghouls arrived on the scene in 1968. Little more than a threadbare outline as a failed breakout attempt leaves all the convicts dead, only to be revived by their addiction to formaldehyde, gathering up weapons to punish the living. Joe Blasco was a dependable makeup man for such low budget outings, a pasty faced crew with dark rings around the eyes, moving swiftly to kill without warning, and occasionally growling their lines. Among the mostly no name cast is pretty Suzanne Charny, soon to be immortalized by her silent depiction of a snarling vampire in a memorable episode of KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER ("The Vampire"). Roughly ten years later, both films would see rerelease and be promptly reviewed as 'Dog of the Week' by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert on SNEAK PREVIEWS.

This is a fun "movie" - I usually don't consider anything below an hour in length as a movie, but for this I'll make an exception. Several things make "Garden" worthy as a quick late-nite rental. First, the movie gets into the zombie action as soon as possible, establishing the situation quickly as though it can't wait for the dead to rise and attack. "Garden of the Dead" is also creepy. Most of the movie takes place at night, and the zombies stepping through the eerie fog, as well as the surrounded-by-zombies, cut-off-from-help situation of the people in the prison all add up to a healthy feeling of fright. My favorite scene was the woman trapped in the motorhome while the horde of zombies stands motionless around the front windows, just staring at her.

"Garden" is incredibly low budget. The prison appears to have all the soundness of construction of a house of cards. Most of the effects consist of fog and the zombies' green, though grotesque-looking, makeup. The zombies also try to demonstrate some sort of superhuman abilities by jumping out of the darkness at top speeds and attacking people before disappearing back into the night. An entertaining flic for B-horror fans. 7/10