Don't Wake the Dead

Horror-gore shot-in-English flick from Andreas Schnaas (VIOLENT SH*T series) that has its heart in the right place. Unfortunately, everything else isn't so easy to find. A gaggle of hot chicks head to an old German castle to help set up for a performance by a German metal band (amusingly, they are named Gang Loco). What they don't know is that every 66 years an Army of Blind Dead Knights Templar arise from their graves (alongside some Nazi zombies) and it is going down - as Phil Collins said - tonight, tonight, toniiiiight. The only person there to protect them is Vincent (Ralph Fellows), a Carthusian monk in a leather jacket who has the Sword of Mecca and Flying Guillotine (!) that can defeat these zombie bastards.

German helmer Schnaas continues to have better production values as his career progresses and there is plenty of the expected gore and nudity. Oh, and the terrible acting brings up some good laughs. But the film is still pretty rough. The worst thing is the end where - in the biggest directorial WTF? moment by a German since Uwe Boll inserted video game footage into HOUSE OF THE DEAD - Schnaas spends the time cutting between the climatic chase and the zombie band rocking out. It is totally unrelated as characters appear in both bits and it is awful. Like ever 4 minutes the action stops as he cuts back to the band playing and then back to the movie. Think NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR without the leg warmers. Bizarre. Even funnier is that after enduring that "song" being stretched out for nearly 15 minutes, the credits start to roll and - you guessed it - that song starts playing again! Damn you, Schnaassssssss!

I love a bad horror movie now and then, but this movie is really bad. REALLY REALLY BAD!! I would call the movie unwatchable on every level.

Acting... bad.

Screenplay. Really BAD!

Directing. I'm not sure if he is trying to ruin dreams of acting careers, but I hope to never see anything by him again!!

Cinematography. You guessed it. BAD!!!!

The ONLY way this movie would be REMOTELY watchable, would be if I knew the people in it, or if I found out that it was for a HS school project or something. I'm all for low budget... but this is offensive to low budget projects.

FAIL!!!

Seriously... please do not watch this. Just rate it as less than a 3 and move along.

A group of girls go to a castle to help an old friend set up for a rock concert, but when they arrive they find out that they are there on the 66th anniversary of a Nazi séance that brought dead Templar knights back to life. The Templars return from the dead but so do the Nazis. Then a descendant of one of the men who fought the Nazis shows up and fights the undead using skills he gained in the Orient. Sound confusing? Well it is.

Andreas Schnaas's new movie is easily his best looking but like most of his previous ones, Don't Wake the Dead is way too complex for its own good, has way too much nonsense (the final battle is intercut against a 10-minute rock concert) and is edited poorly. There are several great actors in this movie, and many who are very hard to understand (like Demonium). The castle they are in looks amazing and the Templars look great, appearing like a nod to the Blind Dead films.

It is not a good movie, but if you want a lot of cheesy gore, nudity, and the Shaw brothers Flying Guillotine for some reason - this is the movie for you. It defies all convention, which - after all - makes it a Schnaas movie.

Andreas Schnaas had made some reputation with the Violent Sh*t trilogy (1989-1999). It was just made for the gore but everybody liked it a lot. But almost 20 years later he made this flick and I must say, having some kind of name as a director he didn't proceed in filmmaking.

The story itself is a mixture of old school horrors like Amando de Ossorio's La Noche Del Terror Ciego (1972) were we had some dead Templars. On the other hand it also contains some zombie nazi's , yep, remember Jaen Rollin's Zombie Lake (1972) and to end some cursed girls who moved like Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead (1981). They are all hunted by some cheap Van Helsing look-a-like. The acting was really bad and the effects used extremely cheap. There's even a decapitation scene were the body is coming up, but if you watch closely you can see that the camera just kept the head out of the lens, but you still can see the head on the body. On the other hand there's a lot of red stuff and a lot of gratuitous nudity but the whole flick just didn't work, I regret it to have been wakening the dead.

Gore 3/5 Nudity 2/5 Effects 1/5 Story 1/5 Comedy 0/5

Wow, this was one heck of a sleazy low budget movie.

You have zombie Nazis, reanimated templars, a bunch of women stuck in a remote location, a creepy old castle, nudity... Basically the essentials to make a horror movie. But this movie went oh so horribly wrong!

The dialogue is hilarious, stupid and stumbling.

The cast, well, there are some who are adequate to behold, while some are downright horrible.

The effects of the movie are laughable and most of the make-up is bad as well. Some of the zombies were adequately made with the make-up though. One thing really puzzled me though, these undead templars have been dead so long that there is no more skin and flesh on their horned skulls, but yet somehow their torsos, arms and legs are surprisingly meaty! And they were growling like demons? Hmmmm...

The costumes and outfits were of somewhat mixed value. Some were really bad, and some were good. The guy showing up at the castle with the cloak-like jacket, what was up with his costume? Who actually wears clothes like that? He seemed to be a parody of a typical Van Helsing character.

The story of "Don't Wake the Dead" is bad and have too many strange elements tossed into it. As if the people making the movie just added stuff to the plot as the shooting progressed. There is no overall whole connection to the movie.

Oh, and the movie had way too much nudity in it. Most of which was senseless, pointless nudity, just to show off some skin. That was really pathetic. But I guess being dead for centuries makes even the undead horny!

Not all in this movie was bad though. There were some really nice locations and sets in the movie. Especially inside the old castle, there were places there that looked like they were taken right out of the first "Resident Evil" game. They were really nice. And also somehow, despite the overall crappiness of the movie, there was a strange sense of those old Italian horror movies to it, so that sort of came off well on the screen.

Despite this movie being so bad, I watched it and was laughing a lot throughout the movie. If nothing else, watch this movie for some good laughs at a very bad attempt at making a horror movie. You will just keep watching to see the next bad effect or hear what the next wonderful dialogue will be...