Zombie Lake (1981)

- Le lac des morts vivants
What was that?, 4 February 2005

A group of Nazi soldiers are gunned down by the locals in a small French village. Deciding they must hide the bodies as quickly as possible, the dead Nazis are thrown into the local lake. Twelve years later, several young females either go missing or turn up dead. Could it be the legend the locals call "The Ghost of the Lake"? The Nazis have come back as zombies to seek their revenge on the people of the village.

There are a lot of bad movies, but Zombie Lake must surely be near the top of the heap. To start with, the pacing is non-existent. The movie gets off to a snails pace and goes downhill from there. By the time the flashback sequence rolls around, things come to a grinding halt. The acting is just as bad. I would be amazed to learn that anyone other than Howard Vernon ever had much of a career in acting.

There are scenes in Zombie Lake that will amaze and astound. Some of the more memorable moments include:

- Zombies with ever changing skin color. When the zombies first emerge from the lake, the skin color is almost normal. Within a matter of minutes, the zombies are a fluorescent green. In some scenes, the whole head and neck are green. In the blink of an eye, only the face is green.
- Zombies have feelings too. The sight of the love sick zombie staring hopefully at the house of his former lover is almost too much to take.
- Zombies make good fathers. As if the love sick zombie wasn't enough, imagine a green faced zombie walking down the street holding his little girl's hand.
- Boots are fascinating. The movie gives us several minutes of shots of zombie boots stumbling along a path. At first, they go left. Next, they go right. The excitement was almost more than I could take.
- 12 year old girls are the best defense against zombies. Of course no one in the village except the little girl has the slightest idea of how to kill the zombies.
- Zombies pull knives on each other. Watching two zombies roll around on the ground as they try to stab each other is one of the most amazingly ridiculous sights I've ever seen. They should have asked the 12 year old girl about how to fight a zombie.
- There's so much more, but you get the idea.

The ineptitude on display is amazing. But, then again, the movie was directed by Jean Rollin and co-written by Jesus Franco. I don't know why anyone would expect any better.

Even though I've rated Zobmie Lake a 1/10, I still recommend the movie to anyone with a stomach for bad cinema. This movie really must be seen to be believed.

1/10