Oasis of the Zombies (1982)

Title: Oasis of the Zombies (1982)

Director: Jesus Franco

Review:

There are a couple of zombie movies out there that are complete bore fests in which very little happens in the way of action or suspense. It seems to me that filmmakers who do these types of films make them  to make some quick cash, so they can move on to something else they want to do. The trick to making money with these types of movies is to make the cheapest possible zombie movie you can and I mean really cheap, all talk, no action, no gore, and very little in the way of make-up effects work, this way you spend very little in making your film and have a better chance at making back your budget. Then, the second part of the plot involves making the masses believe they are going to see a zombie fest, the greatest zombie film ever made. This is usually achieved by getting a really cool poster for your shitty film and by cutting a trailer that shows only the zombie scenes. Normally what we end up with in this type of situation is a really crappy film, but a cool as hell poster. Most of the time, the poster is better than the film. Then sit back and wait for the ka-shing!, if all goes well, you’ll have made your money back because once you’ve managed to get your audience in the theater seats, they have already paid the ticket; their money is yours! The most notable example of this type of sleazy filmmaking would be the Nazi zombie film Zombie Lake (1981) and the film I’ll be talking about today: Oasis of the Zombies (1982), which consequently is also a Nazi zombie film; barely anyways.

This film concerns a rich kid named Robert whose father is killed in Africa after he reveals the location of a treasure to some greedy bastard. When Robert reads into his father’s diary he discovers that his father actually knew the location of a gold treasure worth six million dollars, a treasure that used to belong to the Germans, but they all died in a firefight defending the gold, so know the gold is supposedly still buried somewhere in an Oasis in the middle of the African desert. So Robert decides that taking his friends with him on an expedition to find the gold will be a great idea! So much for mourning the death of your father! So anyways, these kids take off for Africa to get the gold, unfortunately for them, Nazi zombies are protecting the gold! Will they find the gold, or will they instead find themselves?

Here’s a question I often times ask myself when watching a film like Oasis of the Zombies, when filmmakers make a movie like this one, do they know they are making an extremely boring movie? Are they even aware of it? Are they making a boring film on purpose? Or do they think they are actually making an entertaining flick? Thing is that this movie actually has an interesting premise and back story to it, but it somehow still manages to deviate into an extremely boring movie. For example, the movie starts out with these two hot chicks stopping at the titular Oasis to refresh themselves, and since the camera focuses very sleazily on their bee-hinds, you get to thinking cool, we’re gonna get some hot lesbo action. This isn’t a chavanistic thought on my part, I only come to this conclusion because this is a Jesus Franco film, and Lesbo action is one of the elements his films are known for. So anyhow, you figure these two chicks are gonna get naked and THEN get eaten by zombies. A very similar scene happens in Zombie Lake as well, and since the same filmmakers are involved in this film I thought they’d go with the same ‘modus operandi’, but no, we only get a pair of zombie hands emerging from the sand and attacking the girls. Worst part is the whole attack happens off camera! So right there and then we know, this movie is shying away from showing us the goods in more ways than one, no naked chicks and on top of that, no zombies.

This flick was seriously trying to cut back on costs in another way: the zombies only come out at night for some reason that’s never mentioned in the film. But I’ll tell you the reason:  they only come out at night because it’s an effective way for the filmmakers to hide a lot of the cheap make up effects or even better, it’s an effective way to hide the fact that there’s no make up effects whatsoever! For some shots they simply show ominous looking shadows walking about! Wow, so I’m no Jesus Franco expert, but this must not be his best film. There’s huge gaping plot holes on this one, for example: fine, there’s a lost cache of gold somewhere in the dessert and the Nazi’s who it used to belong to are now zombies…who guard the gold…for what purpose? This is the same question I asked myself when watching John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980). Fine, the ghosts are hiding in the fog, but what do they want the gold for? What exactly are they planning on buying from the afterlife? Same question I got about these Nazi zombies! And why did they turn into zombies? It’s as if Franco simply wants us to take for granted the whole Nazi  Zombie premise, because it’s a sub-genre, and Nazi zombies simply are? Come on, that’s some lazy writing right there, if there was even any writing involved, which by the looks of things I seriously doubt.

Funny thing about this poster for Oasis of the Zombies, there are no tanks, no graveyards, and no zombies shooting guns in this movie! At all! 

It doesn’t surprise me that this ultra cheap-o zombie movie was such a bore, it was written and directed by Jesus Franco, the same guy who wrote Zombie Lake, the most boring zombie flick I’ve ever seen.  I guess I knew going in the kind of film I was getting myself into, and I was absolutely right. I’m still going to watch some Jesus Franco films, Vampyros Lesbos (1971) looks good, and I’m sure Franco has some more good ones in his roster,  but Oasis of the Zombies was a complete disappointment. It does have a couple of cool shots of zombies walking in the dessert dunes, and some of the zombies are cool looking, but these few scenes do not save the film from what it is: a complete waste of time. I gave it the benefit of the doubt and it failed to surprise, shock, or entertain, three things a zombie film should always aim to do. My advice is skip this one, you’ll be doing yourself a favor. 

Rating: 1 out of 5

Dead Snow (2009)

Title: Dead Snow (2009) 

Director: Tommy Wirkola

Writer: Stig Frode Henriksen, Tommy Wirkola

Review: 

The Nazi Zombie sub-genre was never one of the best sub-genres in horror. Theres a reason why there are so few of these nazi zombie movies out there. Now, I don't think this has to do with people not liking nazi-zombie movies. I think it has to do with the fact that the nazi-zombie movies that have gotten made simply aren't very good films. For example, take Zombie Lake directed by Jean Rollin in 1981. The story with this one is that a group of nazi's were killed and buried in a lake. A couple of years later, they are revived and the come back to get revenge upon the town that laid them to rest. The problem with this film is that its so boring! The zombies themselves look like they simply have green paint on their faces! It simply wasn't a good zombie film. The cover of the film is a whole lot better then the movie itself, so I guess that says a lot about the movie. It was simply an excuse to show naked girls skinny dipping in a lake. The movie feels more like soft porn then anything else. Its the kind of movie that feels like it was made by a group of pornographers looking to get out of the porn business by making a legitimate movie. In other words, the film stinks. 

Another example of the nazi-zombie genre is Shock Waves (1977). This one was directed by Kevin Wiederhorn, the guy responsible for directing Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988). Thing about Shock Waves is that its considered to be the best of the nazi-zombie movies. Which is strangely true, but its only the best because the others that came before it were so bad. Shock Waves is a shockingly boring affair. Though the movie does have its virtues. For example the thing I like the most about it is the cinematography. Those images of the zombies emerging from the water are awesome! The zombies have these goggles attached to their faces that makes them look even creepier. One thing that Shock Waves got right was the look of the nazi zombies. But striking images aside, the films major flaw is its pacing. Characters end up in an abandoned mansion in an isolated island. A cool setting in deed, everything looks so abandoned. But aside from a spooky setting, and some nifty looking zombies, the film is so slow you will be bored to tears. One other good thing the film has about it is that Peter Cushing stars in it in an extended cameo. He is the one responsible for telling us the background story for the nazis. So, Shock Waves, though visually interesting at times is still not a great nazi-zombie film.

And heres what always bothered me about Nazi-zombie movies: they have such a cool premise, yet somehow they always fail to live up to it. Think about it, the supernatural roots of the nazi movement, the undead, those scary looking nazi uniforms. I mean, right there, you got all you need to make a cool movie if you do it right. Unfortunately, these nazi zombie movies always end up being a freaking bore. Another fine example of just how boring nazi zombie movies can be is Oasis of the Zombies (1981) directed by Jesus Franco. So in essence what Im trying to say here is the nazi zombie movies have never really been all that great. Until now. Until Dead Snow! Literally, without a shred of a doubt I can say that this is the best nazi zombie movie ever made to date! The movie isn't a masterpiece (for reasons I will go into soon) but it doesn't commit the same mistakes previous zombie movies made in the past. Its not boring at all!

Premise for Dead Snow has a group of friends going to the mountains of Norway for a little rest and relaxation. Basically, people start playing in the snow, they run around in their snow mobiles at high speeds, they have snow ball battles, you know, your basic "fun times" montage type of deal. While there, an old man comes into the cabin suddenly and starts telling the group all about this group of nazi's that were killed and buried somewhere in the area, and that its all real, it happened, and you better watch out. Your basic "these woods are haunted" "this town is cursed" type of character. Pretty soon, the old dudes story is confirmed. Nazi zombies begin to come out of their graves and attack the group of youngsters.

Anybody seen Ash? Wheres Bobby Joe?

First, Im going to go into the bad elements of the film. Which weren't really all that many. My main gripe with Dead Snow is that its opening sequences feel way to much like other movies. What I really want to say is that this film is sucking Evil Dead II's dick all the way. I mean, fine, your a fan of Sam Raimi and his movies, thats great kid. But do you have to shove it into our faces every five seconds? The script has characters referencing a bunch of films at one moment, talking all about Evil  Dead I and II, April Fools Day (1986) and Friday the 13th. Not to mention that the token movie buff character in the film is wearing a Dead Alive t-shirt through out the whole film! So this is the kind of movie that is constantly reminding us where its influences come from. And trust me, you will notice this director just LOVES Sam Raimi. The film follows step by step the whole set up for the Evil Dead films. Lets see: 

- Characters driving up to a lonely cabin in the woods and talking all sorts of bullshit along the way? Check! 

- Characters having fun in the cabin, drinking, making out with each other? Check! 

- The evil threat comes from the woods? Check! 

- The Cabin has a tool shed in the backyard, where the characters get among other things a chainsaw? Check! 

- A character chops off his hand (actually his whole arm) with a chainsaw because he was bitten? Check!

So these are just some of the similarities this film has with Evil Dead I and II. The film also feeds off of other famous horror films like John Carpenter's The Fog (1980). There is this whole backstory about how the nazi zombies are looking for their gold, and they will stop at nothing to get their gold. Actually, in that way its also similar also to the Leprechaun movies, but never mind that. So basically, this movie has a lame sort of back story to it involving gold hungry zombies. One thing I never got about movies like The Fog and this one is: exactly what do these zombies want with their gold? Go shopping for new nazi uniforms or something? But whatever, I just went with it because this backstory is really just an excuse to see some cool looking nazi zombies, and the mayhem that ensues while the good guys try to stop them. So, did this movie deliver in that department at least? My answer to that question would be a resounding "Hell Yeah!"

Dead Snow  delivers where it matters when it comes to nazi zombie movies! First off, the nazi zombies themselves look freaking awesome! The movie does take a while before the nazi zombies actually do show up. I counted 45 minutes before things really got moving. Thats the one thing I didn't like about it, you have to go through all this predictable set up phase of the movie (which pretty much takes 45 minutes to develop) before we get to what we came here to see: Nazi Zombies! But I tell you, once the movie gets going, it only gets better and better. This movie will have you cheering by the time it finishes. There is enough zombie mayhem to satisfy the biggest zombie fan (thats me!). One amazing sequence has the leader of the nazi zombies give out this supernatural yell that wakes up all other nazi zombies that are laying around buried in the snow! Suddenly were dealing with a freaking army of nazi zombies! Great moment right there. This actually had me clapping quite a few times saying "well done! well done!" The gore is simply fantastic in certain moments, you wont be disappointed there. 

One of the things I loved the most about this movie was the make up effects for the zombies. They simply look awesome. I think what makes it work is the black and white look they have to them. They are pale and have black bruises and blood stains all over their faces, plus, that nazi uniform simply makes them look even cooler. So in essence, this movie is very inspired by other horror films, and it shows, but by the time we get to the nazi zombies, and the mayhem that accompanies them, this film more then makes up for all its flaws. The film simply gets better as it progresses, till by the last frames you will be cheering it on. This film has set the standard for nazi zombie movies, who will be next in line to up the ante?  

Rating: 4 out of 5

Memorable Moments in Zombie Zinema III

Conquistador zombie resurrects from the dead in Lucio Fulci's Zombie (1979)

Well, Halloween 2012 is finally here and what better way to celebrate it then with a fresh new bash of Memorable Moments in Zombie Zinema? In celebration of Halloween (everyones favorite holiday!) the folks here at The Film Connoisseur (that would be me) have cooked up a whole new batch of these grizzly, gruesome zombie moments! Also, don’t forget to come back regularly to the blog, it’s zombie month on The Film Connoisseur and I will be doing all sorts of articles, lists and reviews entirely composed of zombie films. Hope you enjoy zombie month! And remember, if you enjoy this article, don’t forget to check out parts I and II…if you dare!   

Film: Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)

Memorable Zombie Moment: THOUSANDS OF ZOMBIES CHASE ALICE AS SHE JUMPS FROM THE ROOFTOP OF A BUILDING

Zynopsis: Alice is still looking for that “promised land” free of infection, but is it real? On her journey, she meets up with a group of people who are surviving the zombie apocalypse by living in an abandoned penitentiary. Will they even find the ever elusive “Arcadia”, a land supposedly free of infection? This zombie moment is so epic and could probably be my favorite moment in the whole Resident Evil series of films. At one point in the film, a hoard of zombies’ breaks into the building where Alice is hiding out. Suddenly, she finds her self trapped in the roof with nowhere to go! What to do? Zombies are coming up the stairs and the only way out is to jump! So, as thousands of zombies are chasing Alice, she jumps of the roof while strapped to a rope and manages to escape all the zombies! Problem is that all the zombies follow her and jump with her! Ever wondered what an avalanche of zombies would look like? Look no further! 

Quote: “Day 6. 1800 Hours, Los Angeles. No signs of life. Not even the undead. They must have burned with the city. But what about the rest?”

Film: Flight of the Dead: Outbreak On A Plane (2007)

Memorable Zombie Moment: ZOMBIE GETS RIPPED TO SHREDS BY THE ENGINE OF A COMMERCIAL PLANE

Zynopsis: So basically, these scientists have smuggled an infected body onto a 747  commercial flight. Stupid I know, but as we can expect on a film called ‘Flight of the Living Dead’ well, the infected body is somehow set loose upon the unsuspecting passengers of the flight, the result? Complete zombie mayhem! One of the best scenes has one of the good guys throw a zombie into the engines of the plane! Memorable Zombie Zequence in deed!  

Quote: “You thought it was me gnawing on the passengers? Nah, I’m a vegetarian.”

Film: Return of the Living Dead Part II (1985)

Memorable Zombie Moment: CHOPPED OFF ZOMBIE HAND GIVES US THE FINGER

Zynopsis: A drum containing an experimental toxic chemical known as ‘245 Trioxin’ falls into the sewer system of a small town, three kids find it and by mistake release the deadly toxic into the air, a deadly toxic that ends up bringing the dead back to life. Through out the film we follow a group of kids who try to eradicate the zombie plague and save their own town. Some people don’t like this sequel to Dan O Bannon’s Return of the Living Dead (1985), but I freaking love it for many reasons. It’s fast paced, it has tons of zombie gags and it has a fun vibe to it all the way through. One of the funniest gags has a zombie-hand attack a bunch of people while they are riding a car. After the hand terrorizes everyone in the car, the people end up throwing the zombie hand out the car window! When the hand falls on the road, it gives everyone the finger, even us!  

Quote: “Hardly anything to get excited about, it’s only a severed hand”

Film: Zombie Holocaust (1980)

Memorable Zombie Moment: ZOMBIE GETS HIS HEAD SLICED TO SMITHEREENS BY BOAT ENGINE

Zynopsis: So basically this movie tries to mix Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979) with Rugero Deodatto’s Cannibal Holocaust (1980). The results are a film with zombies in a tropical island…and Cannibals thrown in for good measure. If you can believe it this film mixes a crazy mad scientist that experiments with the resurrection of the dead with a cannibal tribe that worships a God known as ‘Kito’. Scholars decide to do an expedition to study this tribe and well, they end up getting eaten up. Gotta admit, the idea of mixing cannibals with zombies is pretty nifty, unfortunately the film is lackluster in my book because it borrows too much from Fulci’s Zombie. Actually this film is so freaking sleazy that it actually re-uses footage from Fulci’s Zombie! But there’s this one memorable moment in which one of the good guys fights a zombie and smashes the zombies head against the moving propellers of a boat engine…gruesome stuff! 

Quote: “I could easily kill you now, but I’m determined to have your brain!”

Film: Heavy Metal (1981) – Segment ‘B-17’

Memorable Zombie Moment: FIRST ANIMATED ZOMBIES

Zynopsis: This film is an animated anthology film, the stories range from funny, to weird, to just plain bonkers. But one of the stories has zombies in it and it is called ‘B-17’.  It’s all about these soldiers flying a B-17 bomber plane during WWII. At one point in the film, right smack in the middle of a battle with enemy planes, a mysterious green orb crashes into the plane, then leaves again! Then, the B-17 crashes into the jungle! The mysterious green orb might have flown away and dissaperead, but its passage did something to the crew members of the bomber plane. It isn’t long before the powers of the green orb bring the dead soldiers back to life as zombies! In my opinion, this is one of the first instances where we get to see an animated zombies! I really can’t think of any other film.   

Quote: “Very few escape my grasp…even in death, my powers continue”

Film: Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1983)

Memorable Zombie Moment: MICHAEL JACKSON GETS TURNED INTO A ZOMBIE

Zynopsis: Michael Jackson decides to watch a werewolf film with his girlfriend at the local movie theater.  Unfortunately, the girl gets too frightened and decides to walk out of the movie; Michael follows her even though he is obviously enjoying the fright flick. Outside, the streets are lonely and dark. To make things worse, they end up having to pass through a cemetery as the dead start to rise from their graves! Suddenly they find themselves running for their lives! This music video is a glorified short film; something that Michael Jackson loved to do with all his music videos, turn them into little movies, which of course was awesome because we got short films like ‘Thriller’ directed by none other than John Landis. Jackson was so impressed by Landis’s An American Werewolf in London (1981) that he got Landis to direct this video for him. Turns out it’s one of the best zombie films ever made, at least in my book. The images that take place in the cemetery ooze darkness and atmosphere and the zombies actually look like rotting corpses, which is something that some filmmakers seem to forget while making their zombie movies. Were talking about walking corpses here people! Thankfully, Michael Jackson and John Landis made sure these zombies looked cool. Finally, we get Michael Jackson as a zombie, ,memorable in deed.   

Quote: “And grizzly ghouls from every tomb are closing in to seal your doom…”

Film: Return of the Living Dead (1984)

Memorable Zombie Moment: ‘TARMAN’ MUNCHES ON ‘SUICIDES’ HEAD

Zynopsis: Zombies are coming out of their graves after a deadly toxic spreads through the cemetery. A group of punk kids take refuge inside of a morgue to try and survive; will they make it out of their town before the military decides to nuke it? This film is filled with many memorable moments but one of my favorites has these kids suddenly stumble upon a zombie that’s been hiding in a basement, everyone manages to run away except this kid known as ‘Suicide’! The zombie leans back and then lunges for Suicides skull, effectively taking a bite right out of it! It’s a shocker of a moment! Every time I see this film with some friends, this moment makes them scream in shock.  

Quote: In reference to his punk wardrobe Suicide tells his friends: “You think this is a fucking costume? This is a way of life!”

Film: Dead Alive (1992)

Memorable Zombie Moment: LIONEL CHOPS UP A HOARD OF ZOMBIES WITH A LAWNMOWER

Zynopsis: Lionel’s mom has gotten infected with a bite that has killed her and brought her back from the dead, now she’s turning everyone around her into a zombie! Best part is that Lionel’s uncle has planned a Halloween party in his home, without telling him. It isn’t long before everyone in the party gets turned into a zombie! One of the most memorable scenes has Lionel killing a hoard of zombies with the blade of his trusty lawnmower! It’s a bloodbath of gargantuan proportions! 

Quote: “They’re not dead exactly, they are just sort of…rotting”

Film: Juan of the Dead (2011)

Memorable Zombie Moment: JUAN FISHES A ZOMBIE OUT OF THE WATER

Zynopsis: Juan and his friend Lazaro are contempt with simply spending their lazy days away hustling to survive, ah yes, life in Cuba. That is until a zombie outbreak erupts and everyone in Cuba starts turning into zombies! But before that, Juan and Lazaro start the film out simply fishing on this little makeshift boat of theirs and just when Juan thinks he is out of luck with the fishes, he catches something! Only problem is that it isn’t a fish Juan catches! It’s a zombie! The zombie outbreak doesn’t stop Juan from capitalizing on the whole thing, soon he starts up a service where you call them up and they’ll come and get rid of zombies for you, kind of like The Ghostbusters, but for zombies.

Quote: “Juan of the Dead, we kill your loved ones.”

Film: The Horde (2009)

Memorable Zombie Moment: A SURVIVOR FIGHTS OFF A HORDE OF ZOMBIES

Zynopsis: This films premise is fairly simply: a group of strangers find themselves hiding from the zombie apocalypse in an apartment building. In this sense, I’d say the film is similar to say George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), where characters are held up in a confined environment and have to wait out the zombie apocalypse, or try to find a way to escape to a safer location. Well, at one point the characters have to make their way out so they decide to go through the buildings basement…big mistake! It’s this sequence that offers us the most memorable zombie sequence I have seen in a long while, one for the books that’s for sure! It’s a scene where a solitary survivor ends up completely surrounded by thousands of zombies and starts shooting zombies left and right! Then when he runs out of bullets he uses his trusty machete and starts hacking zombies to pieces! It’s an awesome sequence! The movie is worth watching for that scene alone, but in all honesty, this is a solid zombie flick from France, highly recommend it. 

Film: Bride of Re-animator (1990)

Memorable Zombie Moment: FLYING ZOMBIE HEAD

Zynopsis: Dr. Herbert West is still up to his old re-animating the dead experiments. He won’t give up until he’s figured out the secret of life itself, problem is he has to go through so many mistakes in order to learn it! On this one, Dr. West tries to bring back Dr. Dean Cain’s dead girlfriend, who died in the first film. In order to achieve this West uses bits and pieces from other bodies he finds and strings them together, trying to reconstruct her. But of course, as it usually happens in these Re-Animator movies things go horribly wrong, and we end up dealing with a bunch of Dr. West’s rejected experiments. Dr. Hill the villain from the first film is still alive and kicking, well at least his head is. Weirdest part is that he ends up getting someone to surgically add bat wings to his head! Now, Dr. Hill, the dead re-animated head, can fly! Fulci pulled this gag off first in Zombie 3 (1988), but it’s better developed here, on Bride of Re-Animator.    

Quote: “West, you stupid biped!”

Film: Pet Sematary (1989)

Memorable Zombie Moment: HUSBAND KISSES HIS ZOMBIE WIFE

Zynopsis: This film is all about this kid who can’t take the fact that his little kitten was ran over by a truck, so the kids dad, instead of telling his kid that death is a part of life decides to take the cat to a local Indian burial ground to try and bring the cat back to life, and what do you know? It works! But things that come back from the dead don’t always come back as themselves and so, when the man looses his wife, he goes for the same old trick, he takes her to the Indian Burial ground to try and bring her back! Which he does, only thing when she comes back, she’s not herself anymore, she’s a freaking zombie! He doesn’t realize this immediately, so when he sees his wife the first thing he does is kiss her, as the camera slowly turns we see that half of her face is missing! His kissing a zombie! Aaaaarrgh!

Quote: “The barrier was not meant to be crossed, the ground is sour”

Film: Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (1973)

Memorable Zombie Moment: FIRST ZOMBIE WEDDING EVER

Zynopsis: This is a really nutty, low budget movie that comes to us from Bob Clark, the director of the horror classic Black Christmas (1974). But, Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things was one of his very first films, as a result, it’s a very cheap looking movie, but, that doesn’t mean that this film is not without it’s memorable zombie moments! For example, the characters in the film go to an isolated island to practice a play they are working on and while they are at it, perform some sort of satanic ritual said to bring back the dead. You know, just for kicks. In order to perform this ritual, they dig up a corpse! Problems arise when the ritual actually works and the dead do come back! But before all this happens, they play around with a corpse and perform a fake wedding, with the corpse they unearth as the groom!  

Quote: “Get out of the grave Alan and let an artist show you how to call a curse down on Satan!”

Film: Creepshow (1982)

Memorable Zombie Moment: ZOMBIE COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD BECAUSE HE WANTS TO EAT HIS ‘FATHER’S DAY’ CAKE

Zynopsis: Creepshow was Stephen King’s and George Romero’s way of paying homage to the Tales from the Crypt comics they loved to read when they were little kids. It’s an anthology film with five different stories, most of them are related to the undead; this is a Romero film after all! But the first story is one called ‘Father’s Day’ and it’s about this family that gets together once a year on Father’s Day to remember their dead father/grandfather and discuss what they’ll get from his will. But on this fathers day, their father is coming back! To avenge his death, eat his father’s day cake and kill his greedy offspring as well!

Quote: “It’s Father’s Day and I got my cake! Happy Father’s Day!”

Film: Two Evil Eyes (1990)

Memorable Zombie Moment: HYPNOTIZED ZOMBIE

Zynopsis: This film is an anthology film consisting of just two stories, one directed by Italian maestro Dario Argento called ‘The Black Cat’ and the other directed by zombie master George Romero. Romero’s half is called ‘The Facts in the Case of Mr. Valdemar’ and it’s about this rich old guy who’s on his dying bed. His sleazy younger wife wants him to sign over 3 million dollars to her and the only way she gets him to do it is by hypnotizing him and getting him to sign! Problem is that when Valdemar suddenly dies, he doesn’t die completely because he died in this hypnotic state! Now he sends eerie messages from the afterlife letting his wife know that his soul is trapped in a dark void, between the world of living and the world of the dead!   

Quote: “I married a rich old man. I let him use me for pleasure and for show. Now, I’m going to make him pay for my services”

Film: Day of the Dead (1985)

Memorable Zombie Moment: A ZOMBIE SPILLS HIS GUTS…LITERALLY!

Zynopsis: Day of the Dead is one of the bleakest of all of Romero’s Dead films. The world is completely dominated by zombies, and most of them are really starting to rot away; unfortunately they are also growing in numbers! This plays havoc with the minds of some of the human survivors, some of which are more weak minded then others. Case in point: Miguel, the latino of the group. He just can’t deal with the fact that the world is being overrun by zombies so he starts having these nightmares, one of them involves a zombie waking up from an operating table, with an incision in his stomach! Suddenly, as the zombie gets up, its guts starts spilling out all over the floor! Gruesome in deed!

Quote: “Collapsing from stress? We’re all collapsing! This whole fucking unit is collapsing!”

Film: Zombie Lake (1981)

Memorable Zombie Moment: NAZI ZOMBIE COMES LOOKING FOR HIS ILLEGITIMATE DAUGHTER

Zynopsis: This movie has got to be one of the most boring zombie movies ever made, it is quite literally one of the worst times I’ve had watching a zombie movie. I’ve seen some of the most important ones and I’ve still got a ways to go before I’ve seen every single zombie movie ever made. I’m also sure I’ll see zombie movies worse then this one; I’ve yet to see Oasis of the Zombies (1982) and I hear that one is worse! But Zombie Lake will always be at the bottom of my list, I mean, not much happens in this bore fest. The zombie make up consists of green paint on the actors faces and they don’t even get that right! But one idea in the film did stick out for me: a Nazi zombie coming back from the dead to protect his long lost daughter. I’d never seen that before on any zombie flick; that stood out. The rest of the movie? A total waste of time.

Quote: “So, you think that ghosts killed them?”

Film: Zombie (1979)

Memorable Zombie Moment: ZOMBIES CROSSING OVER BROOKLYN BRIDGE

Zynopsis: So Lucio Fulci’s Zombie has many memorable zombie moments, one of them I mentioned on one my previous articles (Zombie vs. Shark!) but this time I want to focus on the image with which the film ends with. You see, this film is about a zombie outbreak that begins in an a little island in the Caribbean, but by the time the film ends, the zombie outbreak has spread across the seas and has spilled into New York City! Now the undead walk the streets of New York, and that last memorable image is one of the most memorable in all of zombiedom: the image of zombies crossing over the Brooklyn Bridge! 

Outpost (2008)

Title: Outpost (2008)

Director: Steve Barker

Cast: Ray Stevenson, Julian Wadham, Richard Brake, Michael Smiley,

Review:

My search for that awesome Nazi zombie continues. So far Dead Snow continues to be the #1 Nazi zombie movie for me, nothing out there has topped it yet. Outpost was one of those nazi zombie movies that has managed to elude me. The other two being Oasis of the Zombies and The Bunker, but Im not in a huge hurry to see them. Still my Tireless Reader, I promise to get to them, just so we have that whole Nazi zombie sub-genre thing covered in its entirety.

Outpost is the story of a group of mercenaries who are getting payed by a private firm to search out an abandoned military bunker in Eastern Europe . They are promised that it’s a small operation, in and out, 48 hours the most. The leader of the mercenaries isn’t quite sure that they are going to search for minerals as he was told. The whole team suspects that the true meaning of their search is another. Soon, they discover that the abandoned military bunker used to belong to Nazis that were participating in some sort of experiment that deals with the re-animation of dead soldiers! It isn’t long before the team begins to get attacked by Nazi zombies! What exactly has this team of mercenaries been sent to look for? Can the team escape from the bunker with their lives?

So this low budget flick has a lot of good things for it. First of all, I have to give props to the filmmakers for making this film look better than it should look. This is a very low budget production, the filmmakers even mortgaged their home to make it, but their efforts paid off because the film got some critical acclaim and it was released in theaters in Britain, the films country of origin. These filmmakers were smart, since they had little money they cut back their costs by setting their film in the woods and in a claustrophobic military bunker, filled with shadows and darkness. The bunker setting made me remember films with a similar premise, like for example John Carpenter’s The Thing. You know the premise because its been reused to death in horror films. Basically you take a bunch of paranoid/scared dudes, you locke them up in a claustrophobic environment and then you have them go nuts amongst themselves. That’s what we get with Outpost. During the course of the film, characters get on each others nerves, they betray each other, despise each other, but they have to learn to pull together or perish.

I thought it was interesting how the film addresses the issue of belief. Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot films and documentaries that kind of question the way things are. I swear I’m not doing this on purpose! These are the kind of themes that are appearing in films today, questioning beliefs, questioning society, defying the way things are. For example, on Outpost we have two conflicting characters. One is a soldier who beliefs in god and country, going to church and all that, while we have another constantly defying his beliefs, telling him things like “nothing happens after we die, we just die” and this happens a lot during the movie, the questioning of the idea of god and what happens after death. This theme matches perfectly with the film because in essence this is a ghost movie. It’s never really explained very well, but apparently what we get in the film is a mix between zombies and ghosts. Kind of like the same thing that they did in Blood Creek, where we had a mix of zombies with vampires. So amongst other things, this film questions the afterlife and our belief in it, something that is commonly done in films that deal with the supernatural.

This movie handles suspense and atmosphere very well. The setting of the bunker is appropriately spooky for the kind of film this is. Lots of dark corners and passageways, you get a feeling of claustrophobia. My only problem is that the Nazi zombies take a little too long to appear. For a huge part of the film we don’t really see them up close and personal. This is another great way to save money in make up effects; you keep your characters hidden in the background, in shadows and silhouettes. On this movie, Id say that this worked great, it makes the group of Nazi zombies look more menacing.

On the downside, the film is so low budget that its scare techniques are very low key in nature. The Nazi zombies actually take a while to show up on screen, you get impatient when its been more than 40 minutes without a freaking zombie. But on the plus side, it does build up suspense very well, so I guess it compensates for that. Whenever the Nazi zombies appear in the forest, they do so with a blinding bolt of light that comes from the forest. The soldiers are attacked by a supernatural gust of wind. The Nazi zombies are some times kept far away in the woods, we see their silhouettes far in the woods, and whenever they get close and personal their faces are kept in shadows. Still, for a low budget flick, I say it could have been worse. If anything, what the film demonstrates is that all these filmmakers need is some cash to make a truly great film. So its one of those films that shows promise, but is set back by its budgetary limitations. Dead Snow is still my top choice for best Nazi zombie movie, followed by Shockwaves. Outpost could go on the #3 spot. Not a bad film, but it could have been so much more. Maybe things will turn out better in the proposed sequel: Outpost II: Black Sun.

Rating: 3 out of 5