Le jardin des morts

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 prisoners hooked on formaldehyde return from the dead after they are killed while trying to escape. A low-budget horror in both senses of the word. Its Grindhouse director was clearly influenced by Romero but possessed not one ounce of his talent. The zombies look convincing enough, but the scenes in which they attack are so poorly handled that the movie actually grows more boring after they emerge from their graves.

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

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.