Oasis of the Zombies (1982)

Film Perfection

Absolutely Brilliant!

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Jesus Franco brings us this fun exploitation film about zombies in the desert, the film has a very bad reputation as being one of the worst films in Francos filmography, but I believe that to be false, this is not that bad.The film has many good aspects to it, the shootouts in the film are pretty well done, they are very fun to watch, they are very well shot and have some very creative shots and camera angles. Another good aspect in the film are the most important part in a zombie film, the zombies, the zombies are amazingly disgusting, they are genuinely creepy, they are a bit realistic and weird enough to look like something out of my nightmares, I never get scared in horror films, or creeped out, but this was just bizarre.The film has some moments that are rich in atmosphere, just what you would expect out of Jesus Franco, there are some pretty good scenes in the film, like the shot of the zombies coming out of the sand, or the zombies in the dunes.The weird points the film are pretty obvious, like the awful dubbing, and the fact that the film has no focus, its easy to get lost in the film, almost like if it were a desert.But even with its weirdness and awkwardness, the film manages to be entertaining and give you some memorable scenes. Something that confuses me its the very last dialog, a man in a camel asks "Did you find what you were looking for?" and the main character replies "I mainly found myself", what does that even mean?, maybe Oasis of the zombies isn't just a low budget zombie film, maybe its genius, we just don't know it.

In the WWII, a platoon of German soldiers is attacked by the Allies in an oasis and only the British Commander survives. The Sheik and his daughter Aisha (Doris Regina) rescue him in the desert and bring him to their house, where he recovers. Years later, the survivor tells to the mercenary Kurt (Henry Lambert) that the German troop was transporting a shipment of 6 million-dollar in gold and he informs the location of the treasure. However Kurt kills him and organizes an expedition to find the treasure.Meanwhile the student Robert Blabber (Manuel Gélin) reads notes of his father and discovers that there is a treasure hidden in the desert. Robert joins his friends and they travel to the desert to seek the gold. However, when they reach the location, they are attacked by an army of German living dead."La Tumba de los Muertos Vivientes" is a lame and cheesy zombie movie by Jess Franco. This film is incredibly awful: story, screenplay, acting, dialogs, cinematography and special effects. The senseless exploitation in the beginning, with two women dressing very short Bermuda shorts is ridiculous. My vote is three.Title (Brazil): "Oasis dos Zumbis" ("Oasis of the Zombies")

Ah, the Nazi-Zombie sub-genre... a comical combination of the fear of death and genocide-fueled hatred; or perhaps just another form of exploitation (isn't all film exploitation?).Sadly, Jess Franco's "Oasis of the Zombies" falls short of the simple parameters of its own sub-genre.This is one the worst zombie films ever made (in my humble horror vet opinion). One would think given that it's one of those rare films to cross Nazi soldiers with zombies that it would be great, but it makes "Zombie Lake" look like an Oscar contender and "Shock Waves" a masterpiece.Some of the zombie effect are so bad you can see the eye-slits in the rubber masks.The only swastika to appear in the film is clearly spray painted onto some rusted machinery in the oasis.The war footage spliced into the film is more graphic and entertaining than the zombie footage, all 6 minutes of zombie footage.I also believe this film was Jess Franco's thesis on bad day-for-night photography. Its so evidently daytime that I feel offended that one is expected to think otherwise.Once again, buy this one only if your a completest and need every zombie film in your personal collection. Don't even bother renting this 84 minute power nap on disc. Check out Peter Jackson's "Dead Alive" or Fulci's classic "Zombie" before you decide to throw your money away on this poor attempt at a horror film.This undead guilty pleasure was almost entirely shot on location at the Maspalomas Dunes in the Canary Islands, not actually in the Sahara like it pretends to be.

I always look for the good in a bad movie, but Jess Franco's Oasis of the Zombies just pushed me to the limit.To cut a short story even shorter, Franco's film involves a young lad heading to the desert to find some nazi gold that his dad knew about from some battle in the Second World War, only there's some zombies guarding it. Now, that sounds great, but as this is a Jess Franco film it takes our 'hero' an HOUR of the film to actually get there in the first place. Plus, the zombies only really appear around the half hour mark.So, what fills those gaps between the entire TWO zombie attacks of the movie (the prologue is so short it doesn't count)? People travelling, people talking, people looking at things, people going for a swim, and much wandering about the desert. There's a rather long flashback scene to a desert battle, which is the only true action scene in the entire film, and it's cribbed footage from some Italian movie from the seventies, that also had it's footage stolen for Luigi Betzella's Achtung! The Desert Tigers.There's some chuckles to be had at the coping skills of everyone involved, as one minute they're finding their friends dead, and the next minute having a good old laugh. The zombies, when they finally appear, look quite good, but don't do much and are filmed so horribly it's as if the cameraman was holding the camera with his feet for a bet. There's also a prolonged death scene which is hilarious, and a guy who looks like Dave Lee Travis.Other than that: scant zombie action, scant nudity, minimal gore, no story, slight atmosphere, and brutal THE END caption as a final insult. Not too good at all - Only watch it out of curiosity.