Zombie Lake (1980, Review)

Director: J.A. Lazer

Cast: Burt Altman, Anouchka, Gilda Arancio, Edmond Besnard, Jean Rene Bleu

Image Entertainment / Unrated / NTSC R1 / Widescreen 1.66:1 Color (Anamorphic) / ENGLISH: Dolby Digital Mono & FRENCH: Dolby Digital Mono / 84 minutes / PURCHASE

After a girl is reported missing and another found dead in a small town haunted by “ghosts” in a lake, a reporter comes to town to get the scoop. She is directed by the townsfolk to the home of the Mayor who has first hand knowledge of the history of the lake. The story; A squad of German soldiers are fighting in the town when one of them (we’ll call him “Nazi Zombie Daddy”) saves a woman (we’ll call her “Nazi Zombie Baby-Mama”) from being blown to bits. She shows her appreciation by screwing him in a local barn and naturally they conceive a child.

After the baby is born and Nazi Zombie Daddy sees his baby for the first time, he and his squad are killed by insurgents and dumped in the lake. The lake however was once a place of sacrifice, and when the dead bodies were dumped in there, but not for the right reason (the aforementioned sacrifice), they return as zombies! So it goes, the zombies wreak more havoc by killing off some more people (mostly nude young ladies) so the Mayor, along with the townsfolk devise a plan to rid themselves of the undead Nazi threat.

It’s a very simple plot and horribly made. There is a weird sub-plot that involves Nazi Zombie Daddy finding his baby girl and giving her a necklace that Nazi Zombie Baby-Mama gave him after they conceived her. Later he saves the girl from the other zombies by throwing down with one of them slow-motion UFC style!

The production and effects were horrendous. During the lake scenes, the victims were shown above the water frolicking in 2-3 feet of water in the lake, while the underwater scenes had the victims flailing about in water over their heads…in a pool! How do I know they are in a pool, you ask? Well, aside from seeing the side of the pool complete with white walls, lights and filter, the water was blue and clear. The lake was brown, sandy and murky. One of my favorites though was seeing the same people getting attacked but wearing really bad wigs so they seem like diffent people. In one scene you can actually see the equipment cords strewn on the floor of the Mayer’s house. Wow, the time and love put into this one…ugh.

There was also no gore whatsoever and the blood looked like watery tomato soup. The zombie make-up was almost non-existent. They painted them green and stuck on a piece of latex (or was it papier mache’?) on one or two with a little of the tomato soup blood. It may be the worst zombie effects I have ever seen.

The only thing that made this movie watchable – aside from the chuckles I got from the production – was the copious amounts of nudity and the awesomeness of Howard Vernon. It wasn’t his best work by far, but just his presence makes this crap heap watchable. But the nudity is relentless. At one point an entire women’s volleyball team gets totally nude and takes a dip in the lake! And in the underwater zombie point-of-view of the totally naked ladies, there were lots of lingering shots from underneath the women while they kicked their legs about. I think a couple of times I saw uterus! On a Euro-trash side note, Jean Rollin was co-director and it is/was rumored that Jess Franco wrote the story because a lot of the music was lifted from his movies The Awful Dr. Orlof and Female Vampire.

Greg Baty

Greg is a lifelong genre film fan who digs boobs, blood and beer. He also enjoys old school punk rock, comic books and spending time with his beautiful wife Ellen and his cats Sydney and Alabama. Greg is the webmaster, Editor in Chief and Head Writer for Cinesploitation.

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