Furthering my explorations into the Nazi zombie subgenre, I tried Zombie Lake, and almost fell asleep.
Zombie Lake, filmed in 1981 with the original title of Le Lac des Morts Vivants,
immediately goes straight to business as a young woman strips off for some skinny
dipping in the titular lake (more of a pond, really). After a few minutes of nudity, the first Nazi
zombie appears and clumsily grabs at the water nymph (underwater sequences
courtesy of a very poorly disguised swimming pool). Neither party seems fully invested in the
scene – in fact, they both look rather bored.
This sets the tone for the rest of the film.
Script, acting, special effects, and dubbing are almost
deliberately bad, but rarely in the “so bad it’s good” way. The long periods in which nothing of interest
happens give the viewer time to admire the pleasant French village scenery, or
take a nap.
In a flashback to World War II, we see a forbidden romance
between a Nazi soldier and a village girl cut short when the Resistance
ambushes the Nazis and dumps their bodies in the lake. “You could call it the damned lake of the
dead,” as the mayor puts it, although why the lake creates zombies remains an
unanswered question.
Damned or not, the lake is certainly a popular
skinny-dipping spot. A septet of
giggling girls is soon disgorged from a VW camper van (one of many
anachronisms) to become the next zombie snack.
Stirred to action, for some reason, after lo these many
years, the Nazi zombies rampage around the village. Their modus operandi is to clumsily wrestle
their victims to the ground, then give them hickeys on the neck while drooling
unconvincing fake blood. Sometimes the
special effects “artists” could be bothered to add slight neck wounds after the
fact, sometimes not. Clumsily applied
green zombie makeup makes the Nazis look a bit like plastic army men. Also, some of them have taken lessons from
Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks.
The only ghost of a plot involves the love child of the
forbidden romance, who is visited by her “good” zombie father. The villagers eventually form a mob to
destroy the “mad, murderous zombies” via flamethrower, leading to some alarming
special effects sequences (one wonders how many Nazi zombie actors were burned
in the making of this movie). The fact
that the zombie-eradication scene inexplicably alternates from night to day is
a little distracting.
Perhaps a drinking game could be made of the numerous goofs
and anachronisms, but the whole thing is so dull and plodding, with awful
special effects and no real frights, that skipping Zombie Lake is probably the best option. Even the director, Jean Rollin, claimed to be
embarrassed by the film, and this was a man who directed such greats as Folies Anales and Discosex. If the abbreviated version above wasn't enough, the entire film is to be had on YouTube.
Incidentally, something about the movie (plotlessness, nudity,
people walking in and out of lakes?) reminded me of Jesús Franco, and sure
enough he’s listed as one of the writers of
Zombie Lake. Next up is Franco’s own
Oasis of the Zombies, which can’t be
worse than Zombie Lake. I hope.
