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.

The convicts at a prison work camp conspire to escape, and escape they do. But they don't make it very far, and the camp officials pump them full of lead. But soon the convicts rise from the dead to terrorize their nemeses.

This very low budget horror opus may be worth a look for the most devoted aficionados of the genre. It may not exactly be high quality stuff, but it's fairly good entertainment. Director John Hayes ("Dream No Evil", "Grave of the Vampire") gives it some solid atmosphere. This is one of those instances where the minimal funding actually works in the movies' favour. It therefore has that irresistible "late show" feeling that always appeals to this particular viewer.

The zombies here do manage to be somewhat unique. They plan, they talk (one thing that they like to say is "We will destroy the living!"), they wield weapons, and they plod around. They're also not that hard to take down. Joe Blasco, who graced a couple of horror and exploitation titles (among them Cronenbergs' "Shivers", "Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS", and "Johnny Firecloud") with his work, supplies the pretty good zombie makeup. While there is some violence throughout this thing, however, there really isn't any gore to speak of.

Dedicated cult cinema lovers are going to recognize a couple of the faces here. Corpulent John Dennis ("Conquest of the Planet of the Apes") is a prison guard, Marland Proctor ("Chrome and Hot Leather") is studly convict Paul Johnson, Jerome Guardino ("Crash!") is a gravedigger, legendary exploitation director Lee Frost ("The Defilers") is McGee, Eric Stern ("The Love Butcher"), is Coler, Virgil Frye ("Revenge of the Ninja") plays zombie leader Bradock, Phil Hoover ("Race with the Devil") is Donovan, and Carmen Filpi ("Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers") is cast as Nolan. Sexy Susan Charney supplies the eye candy as Johnsons' wife Carol.

Whether or not one derives any entertainment from this, they can hardly fail to notice how short it is: a runs a scant 59 minutes long.

Six out of 10.

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 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.

A group of convicts in a corruptly administered work camp get a cheap high by huffing from a tin drum of formaldehyde. They are later killed during an escape attempt, only to rise from their graves and set about doing all the terrible things we've come to expect of zombies.

This is a fairly starch example of skinflint 70s horror, although it does deserve the small-beans honor of being, most likely, the first film to represent zombies as cognitive and dexterous in speech and movement(as opposed to the fish-eyed, lumbering customary type). It would stand to reason that these enhanced capacities should result in more formidable and frightening zombies...unfortunately, they come off as awkward and occasionally laughable.

A slight film of no real importance, GARDEN OF THE DEAD is, at best, sufficient fodder for independent TV station "Tweaking Til Dawn" type shows. Meh.

4/10