Le Lac des morts vivants

Jean Rollin´s ("The Living Dead Girl") "Zombie Lake" is a giant laughfest, however a very entertaining one! The story (Yeah, what story?!?) is about a squad of German Gestapo soldiers who were killed by a bunch of French partisans and afterwards sank in a lake. Twelve years later they rise as living dead and take merciless revenge... As I said, a very cheesy flick, because the quality of this film is on not higher than amateurish level: the zombie´s faces were painted with green color, the acting is a joke, the camera is permanently wobbling and the location also could be the dump where I´m living in! The main attraction is when a bus of young chicks arrives at the lake, the girls take off their clothes, rush into the water and then get munched by the dead one by one! Absolutely hilarious!! You don´t have to wonder when you´ll notice that the script was written by sleaze master Jess Franco..! However, the liked the underwater shots and the WW2-flashback was well-executed, too! Finally another great party movie, extremely enjoyable when you´re drunk, and an absolute icon of bad taste!!!

This film can get pretty amusing at times in its ridiculousness. I gave it an extra point just for the subplot which while silly was an unusual touch that added something to this otherwise awful film.

Zombie fans often list this film as THE WORST zombie film ever (Jess Franco's Nazi zombie film "Oasis of the Zombies" is similarly categorized for its awfulness). There are equally bad and even worse zombie films, as hard as it may be to believe if you haven't seen them before this (shot on video backyard films like "Stink of Flesh" or Super8mm epics like "Dead Life" come to mind). Jean Rollin made a better not-quite-zombie story with the tainted vineyard plague film "Grapes of Death" which I recommend over this and which had vague similarity to Romero's "The Crazies". If you want a decent Nazi zombies film, check out Ken 'RotLD2' Wiederhorn's "Shock Waves" instead.

Now back to the bad movie at hand: This is a low point for Jean Rollin, a well-known Eurotrash filmmaker who made some visually interesting and atmospheric films, of which this is not one. The overwhelming amount of nudity here seems fairly typical for him (he did make some lesbian vampire films, after all) but the atmosphere does not remind me of other work of his I have seen. It took me a couple sittings to make it through this garbage, but it did have its moments. How many times have you seen zombies attempt hand to hand combat, even using a knife? Sadly there are not enough of these painfully silly moments to rescue this film to the 'so bad its good' list.

ZOMBIE MAKEUP: green hands & face paint with movie blood, which often washes off in underwater scenes which seem to be shot in a swimming pool with a greenish curtain backdrop.

DE-ANIMATION METHOD: Napalm them to dust with a flamethrower! ZOMBIE FEASTING?: these are what I call 'necking zombies'. They don't feast in traditional Romero or O'Bannon sense; they simply chew at necks and drink blood like they are pretend vampires. Their victims, however, do NOT turn into zombies.

STORY: During the OP credits we see an attractive woman strip down for a skinny dip in a lake like a bad attempt to recreate a scene out of 'Jaws' or 'Piranha'. She ignores a warning sign by knocking it over. It's not a simple 'no swimming' sign mind you, but a skull and crossbones that would seem to indicate some reasonable level of danger. Needless to say, she gets killed by a zombie. Another village woman gets killed and her father pays the mayor a visit wanting it investigated.

The mayor tells a visiting reporter about the haunted lake with some mumbo jumbo about black magic sacrifices being done there and Nazis killed by the local resistance whose bodies were dumped there for hiding. Now the Nazis are back as zombies killing locals.

A van packed with a girls' basketball team strips down for full frontal underwater footage (while indescribably bad cheesy music plays) and the girls are attacked by zombies whose makeup is coming off almost as quick as the girls' clothes did. Inept horror movie cops are dispatched to investigate.

***WARNING, SPOILERS AHEAD*** There's a young girl whose daddy was a German soldier killed in a local battle right after her mommy died in her childbirth. Now daddy comes back from his watery grave to meet her and protects her from other zombies including being attacked by a knife-wielding zombie. Yes, you read that right! The zombies also attack villagers with sideways karate chops. Go figure.

Enlisted to help solve the locals' walking dead problem, the zombie's daughter asks for a whole lotta blood to set a trap for them, but she wants her daddy spared. Her guardian convinces her that daddy zombie WANTS to die (probably to escape from being trapped in this awful movie). During the final zombie rampage through town, the reporter follows a movie tradition of stupidly needing to get that all-important photo shot.

ZOMBIE LAKE starts off with a young lass taking a VERY lovely swim, sans attire, in the dreaded lake -more like a smallish pond- of the title. Ah yes, we immediately know we're in Jean Rollin country!

Oh my!

Her delightful dip is interrupted by a man in green face paint, wearing a German uniform from WW II! The very same paint that will rub off during a future attack!

Meanwhile, the Mayor (Howard Vernon) is worried, and a reporter (Marcia Sharif) snoops about. She wants to do a story on the lake / smallish pond. The mayor tells the tale -through questionable re-enactment- of soldiers running around, and a clumsy, forbidden romance, that apparently produced a child. It seems that the town is cursed, since the German soldiers met their doom, and were dumped in the pond-ish lake.

Back in the present, a female volleyball team visits the lake-ish pond, disembarks from their van, disrobes, and goes for a lovely swim of their own! Let's hear it for team spirit! Alas, Nazi zombies attack, ruining everything! Soon, the living dead (aka: men with pool-cue chalk on their hands and faces) are on the move, lurching toward town to kill! Kill! KILL! No woman bathing outdoors is safe!

There's a touching scene where zombie dad returns to his non-zombie daughter, but their reunion is interrupted by his cohorts, who want to eat her. Is "zombie soap opera" a true sub-sub-genre?

The fiery finale is a rib-tickler beyond measure, as flaming dummies topple everywhere! Fabulous fun for those looking for something that can't be taken seriously on any level..

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.

Really can't say anything clear about this movie because it just leaves me breathless. The laughter is a thing you won't be able to control on this atrociously awful turkey, where zombies are rapists, and lose their green make up behind the ears. Maybe they made this movie to see if they managed to make the worst movie ever, because it is a pretty good candidate to the title. This movie is probably the equivalent of used toilet paper, it looks as it's been made by a alcoholic butcher with the sexual appetite of a 18 year old. See it, it is absolutely unmissable, the crap is everywhere, and probably it was made on purpose: even the gunshots are out of sync! Don't miss the lake scenes, where the women are standing in a shallow water but the underwater shots show them swimming with water by their necks! Incredible piece of bad moviemaking, see it to believe that there are movies like this one!