Zombie Lake (Le Lac des Morts Vivants) (1981)

Really, it must have seemed a good idea on paper. Nazis are as close to pure, uncompromising evil as you can get with any historical phenomenon, so it’s only natural to want attach ‘Nazi’ to any supernatural threat in your horror movie: Nazi vampires, Nazi werewolves, Nazi mutants, Nazi killer-leprechauns (I call exclusive rights to Leprechaun IX: Leprechaun in the Third Reich), and, here, Nazi zombies. What’s that, Nazi zombies still don’t rate high enough on the Schlock Meter? Well, make them aquatic Nazi zombies, and then we’re cooking. Ask Jess Franco to direct and get Howard Vernon in on the cast and you have an instant, ah, ‘masterpiece.’

Unfortunately, the end result isn’t exactly the ‘Euroshock classic’ the production company has half-heartedlytried to bill it as. To some b-meisters, Zombie Lake occupies a hallowed place aside such delightful cinematic atrocities as Santa Claus versus the Martians, Devil’s Rain, and even Manos: The Hands of Fate. Since it is a French production, there is copious and gloriously unnecessary female nudity, but the production was rigged with a number of fatal flaws from the start. Most astonishing to anyone who knows the name, Jess Franco, responsible for decades’ worth of unique ‘erotic horror’ like Greta the Wicked Warden, The Sadistic Baron Von Klaus, and Lust for Frankenstein, refused direct the film because he felt the production was too cheap! He did contribute a script for it (although through the pseudonym A.L. Mariaux), but that was the extent of his involvement. It’s like Jerry Bruckheimer or Mel Gibson refusing a project because of its blatant historical inaccuracies. Yes, let me state it again for those who failed to grasp its enormity: this was the movie too cheap for Jess Franco.

In Franco’s place, Jean Rolin was pegged to do directing duties. Rolin is fairly well-known (at least as far as you can say that cult figures are ‘well-known’) as a horror/erotica director in his native France, but he is obscure even among cult movie fans on this side of the Atlantic and few of his films (besides, ironically, this one) have been translated into English. Like his more recognizable peer Jess Franco, Rollin applies intellectual approaches and edgy, surrealist narratives to his subject matter, no matter what it is. Along with many directors whose work is very unconventional (especially if they choose to work in genre films), Rollin had to struggle to raise money for his more passionate ventures and to that end he directed hardcore pornography (at least one of the Emmanuelle movies is under his belt, as both director and writer) and near z-grade horror films like our subject here. Also like Franco, he was at least somewhat embarrassed to be linked to Zombie Lake. Rollin is credited as ‘J.A. Laser’ while his brief cameo as a doomed detective goes uncredited.

Yet the hand of an ‘artsy’ director like Rollin can be seen in this production. There are a few ambitious and frankly beautiful shots scattered through out: victim #1 swimming through a pristine lake; a crowd of mourners silently carrying the body of victim #2 through a desolate town street; and a skillful use of close-ups during conversations between characters. For the most part, though, it seems Rollin went at Zombie Lake with vehement disinterest. Of course, that’s often the case with movies like these which really are practically made on an assembly line, but the many, many lapses made in the production of this flick are truly the stuff of b-movie legend.

When our film begins, we instantly see what this film was meant for as we are confronted with full frontal female nudity. As a gay male, I can’t really tell you how much of an improvement on the overall production this makes, but considering how my red-blooded heterosexual male webmaster Nathan reacted to this movie (“a very silly movie” and “bad from beginning to end”), it doesn’t really make much of an improvement. Our obvious victim makes her way through a field to a lake, stopping to not only ignore a warning sign with a large skull drawn on it, but to take it down (!). As music that makes it hard to convince ourselves that we are not, in fact, watching a porno plays lovingly in the background, the woman swims nude aimlessly through the infamous lake. Note that everything leading up to this scene has implied that the lake is far outside the nearby town, rather than right in someone's back yard, which is what's suggested later. At any rate, such matters won't matter to our reckless nude swimmer for long. After stalking her underwater long enough so the audience will get their money’s worth, a one-eyed Nazi zombie makes a grab for her...

It's when we catch sight of our first waterlogged Nazi zombie that we realize just what we're in for. Not only does the "one-eyed" zombie look like he just has a really, really bad eye infection, but it's clear that the green paint used to give our 'zombies' that special undead glow isn't waterproof. It chips, it peels, it leaves traces on the victims' skin! Nor were the movie's special effects crew all that thorough: whenever our zombies blink, their eyelids are fresh and pink and, in at least one scene, so were their hands.

Just when I began to despair, the real star of the film, Howard Vernon, makes his first appearance, playing...The Mayor! Not only is it Howard VERNON and he's playing THE MAYOR (no name necessary), but his home and office is in a Gothic castle filled to the brim with ancient books, stuffed owls, and vaguely sinister-looking furniture. There’s even a lamp that looks like it could be a centerpiece…for evil. At least there's one thing to truly appreciate in this movie. Anyway, The Mayor and the villagers just assume our nudist swimmer went running off with some "young stud" and her disappearance has nothing to do with the lake people saw fit to place a sign with a skull nearby.

Unfortunately, the matter will not rest so quietly, as our nudist swimmer had...aroused the interest of the long dormant Nazi zombies, so they start coming ashore. All in all, it seems a bit of a cheat to make your aquatic zombies amphibious, but I've always been an aquatic Nazi zombie purist. Anyway, our victime deuxième is a woman who came down the lake to do the laundry. Apparently, even though signs of 1970s civilization abound, our old French town eschews decadent luxuries like indoor plumbing. As she wheelbarrows the laundry back to town, Col. One-Eye grabs her and starts spitting red dye all over her neck while leaving traces of green paint on her. Oh, the horror…

Presumably because this is a town run by Howard Vernon, the locals gather around to pick up the body of Victim #2, her arms bizarrely akimbo as though she was an obvious mannequin, and carry her to literally leave her on The Mayor’s doorstop. Even now the film bravely offers up a couple of postmortem panty shots and, hilariously, one of the locals, at the last possible minute, runs up to correct this ‘oversight’ by pulling down her dress. If not for the blatantly wooden nature of the corpse and the half-hearted attempts at titillation, this might actually be a rather effective scene, completely done without a single line of dialogue but, then again, we are watching Zombie Lake. Anyway, Howard Vernon finally springs into action by attempting to console the ‘grieving’ father of Victim #2.

”Listen, I know how you feel about your poor daughter.”

(deadpan)”Yeah, I know.”

There’s also a weird scene where, with his arms around their shoulders, The Mayor gently interrogates two boys who presumably witnessed the zombie attack. For no real reason except maybe out of sheer terror of Howard Vernon (can you blame them?), the boys just laugh awkwardly.

A female reporter, who fashion-wise looks like she’s coming from ten years in the future, comes around to the bar, which seems to be where all the locals go when they’re not standing around in silent mobs. After ordering a small cognac, she announces herself to the room and says she’s in town to write about “that weird lake of yours.” Then there’s the following exchange between locals.

”Ain’t nothin’ to write about.”

”You can say that again.”

”Ain’t nothin’ to write about.”

One of the locals a little too cheerfully directs her toward The Mayor. At first The Mayor is rather annoyed, but then the reporter tells The Mayor she’s interested in the supernatural and gives him a rather ancient looking tome about such things. Now beaming (at least, as much as Howard Vernon can beam), The Mayor launches into flashback mode: we see a troop of Nazi soldiers into the town and one of them promptly rescues a young local woman, who apparently feels that standing out in the open and screaming is the perfectly sensible thing to do when caught in a battlefield, from a bomb. Immediately the two start making out and, yes, fall in love, as shown by a rather lengthy love making scene that takes place in a barn (I can only imagine how The Mayor narrated this part for the reporter: "He is on top of her, then he pressed his hand over her hair, and they kissed, and then he kisses her neck and then they kiss again, and by the way her boobs were really effin’ sweet"). Of course, tragedy strikes: not only does our heroine die soon after giving birth to a daughter, Helene, but, while withdrawing from the village, our soldier and his comrades are massacred in an ambush by the French Resistence. An unchanged Howard Vernon (Howard Vernon is ETERNAL!) appears and demands that the troops be buried to avoid retaliation on the town by any passing Nazis. There isn't enough time to give them a proper burial, so the bodies are just dumped in the lake (and stripped of their boots, which they conveniently have later). We cut back to the reporter and The Mayor, who adds that the lake was used for human sacrifices in the Middle Ages and finishes with these solemn words: "Yes, you can call it a Damn Lake of the Damned."

Before you know it, we flash to the barn where our Nazi and his lover did the nasty. There, possibly sitting in the same spot in which she was conceived, is a solemn-looking child named, you guessed it, Helene. Lest you think we're watching a tender-hearted drama, we have a bus full of female volleyball players pull up to the lake, unload, and almost immediately start stripping as they giggle and the soundtrack churns out a horrific Euro-pop beat accented with a chorus going, "Lalalalalalalalala." Without a line of dialogue, the girls enter the lake and basically...keep laughing and splashing around. The zombies, who lurk around long enough to give the audience time to appreciate the...filmography, take their time going about the massacre. There's one survivor who runs into the ever popular bar (topless, of course) and collapses on a table, screaming, "The lake! The lake!" before promptly passing out. In perhaps the only genuinely disturbing scene in the film, two strapping young men jump up and volunteer to take the unconscious and topless girl "upstairs."

Because of course this is an ancient European town, The Mayor reluctantly calls upon outside autorities. Naturally said authorities don't take The Mayor seriously, although, in their defense, The Mayor keeps insisting that the volleyball...excuse me, now they're apparently basketball players were slaughtered by 'ghosts.' Looking to humor The Mayor, they send two detectives, Moran and Spitz, who, in Abbott and Castello fashion, are one fat, short man and one tall, thin man. Unfortunately, they don't hang around long. After mocking the locals at, of course, the bar, they go on scene to the lake only to end up zombie chow. (By the way, one of the detectives is played by Rollin and he ends up getting devoured by two zombies simultaneously. Now that's symbolism!)

Apparently pissed off by all the recent intrusions, the zombies decide to take a full frontal assault on the town. Obeying horror movie rules, their first victims are a couple having sex. The beau is just brushed aside while his lover is killed. A woman who is bathing in her back yard (and wearing a black bikini bottom while doing so...apparently she didn't feel like letting it all out for the film) is likewise surprised and killed by the slow-moving Nazi zombies. The zombie rampage culminates in an attack on the bar, where one zombie, finding that his would-be victims have figured out that he can be easily eluded, lashes out on the tables and chairs. While all this is going on, Helene and her Nazi zombie father have a...ah, warm reunion that begins after he reveals he's wearing a pendant Helene's mother gave to him (and which Helene recognizes from the photo of the mother she has). The proud papa eventually takes his daughter down to meet the other zombies, who don't seem all that pleased to have a snack they can't touch. So we have the one thing this movie has been missing: a slooooooooooow zombie-a-zombie rumble.

Anyway, now that their sanctum has been infiltrated, the townspeople get riled up and The Mayor encourages them to let loose on the "mad, murdering zombies." Unfortunately, the zombies are so impervious to bullets they don't even damage their uniforms! Our feisty reporter (remember her?) suggests to The Mayor that they just napalm the zombies, something which apparently did not occur to them before (and s omething which was already in ready supply to this old French town out in the countryside). After some convincing (and the mentioning of the death of a character we haven't seen before), Helene grimly agrees to help in the anti-zombie strategem. With a bowl of blood (no one mentions where they get it from, but then again they never mention what happened to the basketball/volleyball team survivor either), Helene lures dad and his posse to the infamous Barn of Love which is promptly torched. Mournfully Helene looks at the camera and begs the father she just betrayed to never forget her. Luckily, I doubt this ineptly made film with its bizarre soundtrack, shoddy plotting, and horrific dubbing will leave my mind any time soon.