Garden of the Dead

I saw this film back when local authorities decided it was too sick for a "GP" rating, and clung to the old "M" (Mature Audience) rating, along with its double-feature at that time, "Grave of the Vampire." It hit my hometown of Little Rock with a major splash, complete with ghouls wandering the theatre lobby and plenty of local promo. Had to sneak in to see it. The movie is about prisoners held in some godforsaken backwoods labor camp who huff the fumes of formaldehyde all night to 'get off.' Suffice it to say, they don't stay dead after that (they seem to meet with unfortunate accidents alot). Lots of wandering dead guys in fog, dark shots with creepy underlit green faces. Low budget but great B-movie horror thrills.

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.

Garden of the Dead (1972)

** (out of 4)

A group of convicts on a chain gang are doing a job when they come across some formaldehyde, which they begin to sniff so that they can get high. Later than night the group plan on breaking out of prison so that they can steal some of the drug but they're killed in the process and buried. It doesn't take long for them to return from the dead seeking revenge against the prison guards as well as looking for the drug.

John Hayes' GARDEN OF THE DEAD isn't a masterpiece and it's not really a good movie but at the same time it's an interesting piece of low-budget cinema and there are enough interesting moments to make it worth watching. This is obvious a take-off on NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and I thought the director did a good job at creating a weird atmosphere that will remind many of the one in CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS.

As far as the film goes, it certainly shows its low-budget with some of the performances and the lack of any real effects but as I said there's a pretty good atmosphere here and the director feels the screen with fog, ghouls and some weird death scenes. The film also benefits from running a short 58-minutes so there's really no wasted time on dumb subplots.

Again, if you're looking for a masterpiece then this certainly isn't it. If you're a fan of low-budget movies then this one here offers up some interesting ideas and it's certainly much better than you'd expect.

An escaped chain gang get hooked on a strange brand of formaldehyde-only to be shot dead. This formaldehyde has a strange effect though, as they come back as ticked off zombies.

"Garden of the Dead" is a movie obviously influenced by the far superior "Night of the Living Dead", though it's still a watchable slice of 70's horror/exploitation cheese. Sure, the music doesn't fit, the movie's premise, while not as dumb as say, "The Corpse Grinders", is still incredibly stupid, people do dumb things, and it's poorly acted.

That out of the way, nobody is watching a movie like "Garden of the Dead" for high artistic aspirations. They are watching it because it's laughably bad, but not unwatchable, and oddly enduring in it's own stupid way. Besides, they don't make movies like this anymore, and it kind of makes one wish they did.

That's all in all why I can't rate this movie. On one hand, it's incompetent and dumb on all levels. On the other hand, you can't help but love the stupidity on display. That's why it defies a proper rating in my opinion.

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