cinema history class: zombie lake (1981)

 

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL.

Session: A Brief History of the Nazi Zombie Films (Week 4)
Movie: Zombie Lake (1981)
Directed by Jean Rollin and Julian de Laserna

Plot:

Having been ambushed, killed and dumped in a lake by the French resistance during World War II, Nazi soldiers are coming back to exact revenge on the town. Also, one of the Nazis is father of one of the girls in town, so they're trying to have a good father-daughter relationship amidst the carnage. Horror ensues.

Reaction and Other Folderol:

This is an example of poor execution of a reasonably interesting concept.

The biggest problem is the way the movie handles time. Given the age of the little girl, and the fact that she was conceived during the war, we can surmise that the movie takes place during the 1950s. But it doesn't look like the 1950s. The clothes and the vehicles all look way too contemporary. It's like they made no attempt to make it look of the time.

But that's hardly the only flaw. The green zombie makeup is incomplete and inconsistent enough that its effect is more comical than anything. The subplot about Helena (the young girl) and her zombie Nazi dad trying to build their relationship is supposed to be moving. But it just comes off as comical. That's especially true in the end when it comes down to Helena being forced to sacrifice her father and the relationship in order to defeat the Nazis. The clear intent is that we should feel sad or her. But it's really just laughable.

I'll give the movie a pass for the fact that, in the underwater scenes, it was visually clear that we were in a pool. Keith pointed out that that may have been a result of the movie being cleaned up for DVD. If the movie, as shown onscreen in 1981, didn't reveal those details, then I shouldn't hold it at fault. And, I suppose, the underwater scenes had enough interesting visuals that I wasn't really paying attention to the background.

Another interesting part of the film is the sparsity of the sound in some sequences. When Helena's zombie Nazi dad is confronted by the other zombie Nazis who want to kill her, there's no dialogue. Which, I guess, makes sense since they're zombies. But they fight while making no vocalization, accompanied only by sparse atonal music. It was awful but fascinating. Like watching a misguided art film.

I also note that the green makeup was of very poor quality. It was coming off, and wasn't applied far enough down the neck, so the effect was incomplete, which also made things laughable. There's just no excuse for that. Back in 1998 I attended my friend, Elliot's wedding the day after an Arena Football playoff game between the New Jersey Red Dogs and the Albany Firebirds in Albany. I went to that game covered in red and black body paint, only to discover in the shower that night that the paint didn't wash off easily. I spent hours in the shower scrubbing with powdered dish detergent. Ultimately, I was able to get most of the paint of my face, hands and neck, which was all I really needed. But it was very difficult. And, given the level of difficulty, I find it inexcusable that the producers couldn't find green facepaint that would stay on in the pool.

Ratings

Me: 4

Bob-O: 5

Christina: 7.2

Dave: 8

Joe: 9.2*

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*Joe noted that "genre films" automatically start at a 9 and can range up to 12. He likes the genre that much. He noted that most of this genre film gets a 9, but the scenes of skinny-dipping women gets a 10. A weighted average of those two would give him something like a 9.2 He did offer that, in the real world, outside of his genre bubble, he would grade this movie a 5. He also suggested afterward that he could give these movies two grades -- one reflecting his genre-love and one for the real world. I said that I would like that, but I think his latest word is that that complicates things too much. It should be noted (and, indeed, it is -- you're reading the note!) that when challenged on his "9+" policy for genre films, he agreed to retroactively change his grade for The Woman in Black to a 9. I wrote about that session here.