Zombie Lake (1981)

Undescribable Perfection

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Don't Believe the Hype

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

There are so many things wrong with this trash that throwing an entire thesaurus of negativity at it still wouldn't come close to describing how painfully slow and terrible this is. Basically, (by way of a flashback story), a bunch of Nazis are killed by the French resistance in world war 2 and their bodies are disposed of in a nearby lake. Roll credits please. Anyway for no other reason apart from a pathetic script, these deceased soldiers are now zombies because of, oh who knows why, let's just say why the hell not and save on logic. These zombies decide to come to life several years or maybe decades later with green face paint, still brand new looking uniforms, ridiculous expressions and they start to take their revenge on some travelling female sports team who decide to get naked and go frolicking in the titular lake. So queue the back up team left over from Shock Waves to suddenly surface at this point and pull the naked screaming girls to a watery grave. Somehow and seemingly much, much later, all these dead dudes are corralled in a warehouse or mill of some kind, it's burnt to the ground by local townspeople, take bath with toaster, kill self, the end!I could make random guesses on why this got made, voodoo, gypsy curse maybe, director caught sleeping with boss' wife, who knows; maybe when this crap was being made they were attempting some kind of weird zombie/porn crossover cult film and failed dismally. Even with all the naked underwater shots and inappropriate zombie gropings going on, nothing except fire, lots and lots of heaven sent holy fire can save us from this.....whatever this is. If you really want to punish yourself then watch this. If you really hate somebody at work, it becomes the perfect secret Santa gift.

Jean Rollin replaced Jess Franco as director of Zombie Lake at the 11th hour, but to be honest, you would be hard pushed to tell: Rollin's direction is every bit as clumsy as Franco at his worst, and like so many of the Spaniard's films, the film is only worth watching for the full-on nudity from some quality Euro-crumpet and a few unintentional laughs derived from its overall sloppiness.Zombie Lake opens with a hot brunette sauntering over to the film's titular lake for a spot of skinny dipping, during which she is attacked by a zombie Nazi sporting green face paint that only extends as far as his jawline. The scene is gore-less, scare-less and technically inept (the underwater scenes having been filmed in what looks like a cunningly disguised swimming pool), but it does allow Rollin's audience to become very well acquainted with the girl's genitalia.The sneaky vag shots and lame zombie attacks continue throughout the film, the lake continually drawing fit French fillies to its waters to frolic in the buff—and when the naked chicks are on screen, all's right with the world; but whenever Rollin tries conjure up a creepy atmosphere, scare his viewers, or inject some drama into proceedings, it all goes horribly wrong, becoming a painfully embarrassing and dreary exercise in how not to make a zombie film.3 out of 10, all points awarded purely for the T&A, best scene being the arrival at the lake of an all-female basketball team, who strip off for a refreshing dip with inevitably disastrous results.

A thoroughly enjoyable film. The problem is that the gulf between director's intention and viewer enjoyment is massive. The notion that someone is presenting this film as an earnest and professional endeavour borders on the hysterical. A glance at the 'Goofs' section on this website only tells half the story. I've never witnessed so many actors clearly acknowledge the camera and grin sheepishly as in this. Most of the on screen appearances of crew and equipment mercifully passed me by but the use of a swimming pool for underwater lake footage was obvious enough, though forgivable. The dubbing is also a real treat, in particular the attempts to synchronise words with the actor's lip movements by stretching syllables in such a peculiar way that the characters often sound overly-contemplative and high on drugs. There is often lip movement that is not dubbed over, which only adds to the riotously amateurish feel. Female nudity seems to have been used as an attempted distraction from the painfully slow moving and incoherent narrative. The film opens with an attractive, bronzed mademoiselle skinny-dipping in the titular lake. There are utterly gratuitous underwater shots of between her legs which set the tone for the rest of the film, although we are not treated to quite such 'gynaecological' shots thereafter. Benny Hill and other such shameless slap-and-tickle content comes to mind, especially with the van-load of young girls (supposedly a female basketball team, although its doubtful basketball was popular enough amongst French women in the '50s to warrant a tour) who gaily strip to the bone and plunge into the lake's stagnant waters. There is something about the entire cast of characters and their behaviour that really jars. From the absurd way a group of men openly carry a dead woman through the village to leave her at the mayor's door to the bizarre behaviour of the two policemen who turn up to investigate the recent deaths in the area, one is left feeling that this is a wildly surreal collection of people in an equally surreal situation. The way the zombies repeatedly get in and out of the lake throughout is entirely inexplicable and seems only to have been scripted so that the flimsy narrative progression can be slotted artificially in between zombie-on-human encounters. Zombie behaviour is ludicrously erratic: they jerk down the road like alcoholics, lunging at people for the sake of the kill, then not bothering to eat their victims. The scene in which the zombies burst into the pub sees them more full of irritation and anger than any mindless lust for human blood – see the moment when a would be escapee's attempt to dash past the first zombie provokes a disciplinarian slap to the fellow's back. The very nature of the community that the zombies victimise is highly questionable. The population seem to look to the mayor as if he were some kind of endlessly wise deity, following every order he gives unquestioningly. Every newcomer to the village is directed straight to the mayor's odd castle-like home, as if he's the only one equipped to deal with the outside world. His exchanges with the stupid reporter are intended to be the intellectual element of the film, superstition versus science and all that baloney. When we hear him alluding to a type of fire that man cannot create we assume he means the fires of hell or something but when the reporter suggest napalm he reacts like it's the most logical and certain solution to the zombie problem he has ever heard! So they proceed to dust off the old flamethrower that every small French village has lying around somewhere and lure the zombies into a barn where they can incinerate them. We then see some shoddy replicas of the zombies being flamed, while the time of the day alternates wildly outside. The inclusion of a sub-plot revolving around the illegitimate offspring of a villager and one of the Nazi soldiers who subsequently became a zombie is a freakishly misguided attempt at an emotionally involving thread to the main 'story'. When/if you finish watching this film, pause for a moment and try to recall any of the characters' names. Chances are you won't be able to. This is mainly to do with the fact very few characters are endowed with a name, something symptomatic of the film's downright amateurism. I will probably watch this film at least five more times in my lifetime because it is a thoroughly entertaining, incoherent mishmash. This does not however excuse the people who made it, as there can be no doubt they were attempting to pass this off as legitimate cinema entertainment. It is similar to the way you might enjoy someone falling down a flight of stairs as they descend them in order to show you their awful new clothes.

Le Lac des Mortes Vivants, or Zomie Lake as it's more commonly known amongst English speaking audiences, is set in a small French village during the 50's, it starts with a girl going missing. Local pipe smoking, beer swilling, silly mustachioed fat-boy villager Chanac (Youri Redionow) becomes worried & reports his fears to the local Mayor (Howard Vernon) who is convinced that it has something to do with a nearby lake which is supposedly haunted after a bunch of German soldiers were killed & unceremoniously dumped in it during World War II. The Mayor calls the police & they send in Inspector's Morane (Robert Foster) & Stiltz (director Jean Rollin) who don't believe the local legends & end up paying for it by being killed by German zombie soldiers, the villagers are on their own & must find a way to send the German soldiers back to their watery graves for good!This French & Spanish co-production was directed by Jean Rollin who replaced Jesus 'I have no talent' Franco at short notice when he disappeared, the production company went on to make Franco direct Oasis of the Zombies (1981) instead & the very fact that Oasis of the Zombies was made prevents Le Lac des Mortes Vivants from being the single worst European zombie film ever. Don't get me wrong because Le Lac des Mortes Vivants is still terrible & the second worst European zombie film ever, it's just that Oasis of the Zombies is even worse. Anyway, the script by intended director Franco under the pseudonym A.L. Mariaux is simply awful, there's barely any dialogue, the character's are awful, the story is rubbish, the pace of the film almost left me in a coma & Le Lac des Mortes Vivants is quite simply one of the worst films your ever likely to see. The spoken English dialogue is laughable, the English dub is full of awkward broken English that you understand but at the same time know people simply don't construct sentences or talk the way these character's do. There's virtually no violence, the story makes virtually no sense & tries to have some bizarre romantic angle between a zombie & his daughter where when he's not terrorising & eating the local villagers a German zombie visits his young daughter which just comes across as laughable, there's no explanation given as to why the zombies come back to life in the first place & there's just very little, if anything, here to enjoy.It's obvious Rollin's heart wasn't in the project, the continuity is terrible, the camera work & cinematography are awful as well with really jerky pans & zooms. The German zombie soldiers uniforms dry out incredibly quickly once they are on land & that one who visits his daughter might have been stuck at the bottom of a lake for 10 years & have pale decomposing features but at least he combs his hair & keeps it looking nice! Seriously, the production values are rock bottom & you can sit there & literally tear it to pieces, nothing works, nothing is thought out & we are basically talking amateur hour here. A World War II battle sequence is achieved using one vehicle & about four German soldiers in another embarrassing & amateurish scene. There are so many things wrong with Le Lac des Mortes Vivents I started to feel sorry for the filmmakers & actor's stuck in it. There's some nudity but not as much as you would expect & there isn't any gore at all apart from two very tame neck bitings & a bit of fake blood. A few decent gore scenes might have made Le Lac des Mortes Vivants watchable but alas the filmmakers didn't even have the budget or enthusiasm to buy some animal intestines from the local butcher. The zombie make-up sucks too, it's just green face-paint randomly applied to the actor's face, you can clearly still see patches of pinkish human flesh where the makers haven't applied the green paint evenly!Techhnically the film is a disaster, I hated the music, I hated the photography, I hated the special effects as well as the lack of them & Le Lac des Mortes Vivants really does have rock bottom production values. Filmed on location in France the picturesque village where it was shot & the surrounding countryside looks quite nice actually & is the only thing the film has going for it. The acting is awful, sure everyone's dubbed but you can just tell it's awful.Le Lac des Mortes Vivants is awful, only Oasis of the Zombies saves it from being just about the worst zombie film ever made. Even if your a die hard European horror junkie your going to have a hard time watching & enjoying this, one to avoid.