Zombie Lake (1981)

I've mentioned Zombie Lake (1981) before - it is often cited as one of the worst, if not the worst, zombie movies ever made.  Jesus Franco was originally attached as director, but dropped out and was replaced at the last minute by Jean Rollin, who found himself directing a movie with zero budget from a script he hadn't seen before starting shooting.  Not that he did actually direct most of the film - by his own admission, his disinterest in the project was such that he left much of the actual direction to his assistant, Julian de Lasema, (the final film was credited to 'J A Lazer', a joint pseudonym).  All of which begs the question of just why Rollin would agree to direct a film passed on by Jesus Franco on the basis that the budget was too low, in the first place?  Apparently he did it as a favour to the producers, later admitting that if he had seen the script beforehand, he would never have committed to the film.  But is it really that bad?  It has to be said that Zombie Lake is an incredibly shoddy looking film - its paucity of budget evident in every scene.  The very film stock that it is shot on looks bleached out and scratchy, while the sound quality is atrocious.  The musical score is utterly undistinguished and generic sounding, while the acting generally matches the script in being inadequate and underwhelming.  The closest thing to a 'star' in evidence is Jess Franco favourite Howard Vernon - who can usually be relied upon to give a memorable performance in a B-movie, but here looks as if he could barely be bothered to turn up.  

The film's scenario certainly had possibilities - during World War Two a group of German soldiers are ambushed and killed by a village's local resistance fighters, their bodies dumped in a lake, post war they return from their watery grave to wreak revenge - but the script does little to develop them.  It instead gets bogged down a lengthy flashback chronicling how the Germans first arrived there in the middle of an economically staged air raid, (no planes are seen - only a series very small explosions representing bombs), with the token good one saving a local girl, before getting her pregnant.  Next thing we know, they've been sent to fight on the Eastern front courtesy of stock footage from another cheap B-movie, before returning to the village, where the 'good German' finds the girl dying after having given birth to their daughter.  Then he's shot and killed along with the other soldiers.  To be absolutely fair, while this feels like a desperate attempt to pad the film out to feature length, the business about the 'good German' having a daughter in the village does establish what later becomes an important plot point.  Because when he comes back from the dead, he naturally seeks out his little girl who, incredibly bonds with him.  Now, I can't deny that, initially,this sub-plot confused me as I had assumed that the 'present day' parts of the film were taking place in 1981, so couldn't understand why his daughter was still only ten years or so old.  But, apparently, it is only meant to be a decade or so since the massacre of the soldiers.  Unfortunately, the budget is too low to actually establish that fact - all the vehicles look contemporary to the eighties, there are no details in terms of props, costumes or even dialogue to suggest that we're meant to be in the mid fifties.

Rollin and Lasema's response to the film's complete lack pf resources seems to have been to emphasise the sheer ludicrousness of the project, abandoning any notions of logic or realism.  Hordes of naked young women seem to keep turning up to bathe in the lake, culminating in a minibus full of female basket ball players pulling up, stripping off and jumping into the water to be fatally molested by green faced Nazi zombies, (many complete with coal scuttle helmets still strapped to their heads).  The village itself seems inhabited by French rustic stereotypes, who appear unperturbed by the bodies that keep piling up, (they seem to end up dumped, unceremoniously, outside the Mayor's house rather than taken to a mortuary).  Even when a topless woman comes running into the local bar, hysterically screaming about Nazi zombies, they barely seem to react.  The police seem equally uninterested, sending down a pair of detectives, (one portrayed by Rollin himself), who quickly fall victim to the zombies.  At which point the Mayor (Vernon) decides that they are going to have to deal with the problem themselves - 'They've declared war on the village', he observes.  Which is where that little girl comes back into the plot - she's persuaded to use her dead father to lure them all to the old mill, where the villagers incinerate them, (by a stroke of luck, one of them owns a flamethrower, as one might, which he repairs in the nick of time).  The scenes involving the child and her zombie Nazi dad and her agonising over whether to betray him and allow his destruction along with the other zombie, should have been poignant.  Unfortunately, the girl playing her is such an awful actress, (she was the daughter of one of the producers - she's also dubbed into English by an equally bad actress), as is the actor playing the zombie, that these scenes end up having no emotional impact whatsoever.

Yet, in spite of all of this, it is impossible to really dislike Zombie Lake.  In its ramshackle, utterly insane way, it is surprisingly entertaining.  Certainly, it is far more enjoyable than the Nazi zombie film that Jesus Franco did make: Oasis of the Zombies.  The zombies themselves are an absolute hoot, staggering around, green faced, stiff legged, waving their arms in front of them like Bela Lugosi in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943), gurning maniacally all the while.  Quite how they ever catch any of their victims is a mystery - they seem to rely upon them falling over, or standing and  screaming instead of trying to run away.  The underwater scenes, with various naked women being pulled under by Nazi zombies, should have been atmospheric, had they not been so obviously shot in a swimming pool.  There are times, however, when it teeters on the edge of the surreal, conjuring up some of the dream like quality that characterises much of Rollin's best work.  Other Rollin touches include several lengthy dialogue free sequences and the fact tat the zombies seem vampiric, drinking their victims' blood rather than eating their flesh.  It isn't surprising, though, that Rollin disowned the film.  The following year he turned out his own, distinctive take on the zombie genre with The Living Dead Girl (1982), a far more satisfying film that, interestingly, picks up on the theme of love transcending mere mortality, alluded to in Zombie Lake with the little girl's relationship with her living dead father, but gives it a far better and more affecting treatment.  In the final analysis, if you want to see an effective treatment of the theme of underwater Nazi zombies, then try Shockwaves (1977),  but if you'd prefer an excursion into micro-budgeted lunacy, then Zombie Lake is the film for you.