Zombie Lake (1980) You guys got my back,
right? I mean, I count can count on you to step up and bring the drama when it
needs to be laid down, okay? See, I'm going to do what I do I best here and
take on the conventional wisdom (you probably know it as group-think or pack
mentality) and tell you that you should all go out and buy a brand new copy of Zombie Lake (besides you really like tearing the shrink wrap off a DVD, don't you?) in the
face of the overwhelmingly negative reviews the self-anointed experts regularly
spew forth like warm Keystone after a fight with your old lady.
Now, if I said it once, I've said it a dozen times, I don't read any other
reviews (because frankly, most of these people are too-serious boobs who are
looking to make a name for themselves as if they'll be getting their own show
with Roger Ebert and be able to take their thumb out of their butt long enough
to weigh in on some thirty-year old Jess Franco debacle), but my human intel
has informed me that this Zombie Lake thing didn't fare too well with all these dopes who agonize over what the
correct running time of Fulci's Zombie should be. Apparently this little French movie had the temerity to be just a
little different than the usual pig-gut-starring Italian flesh-chomper. What's
wrong with these people? This is a French zombie movie, not an Italian zombie
movie! You've got to expect some cultural differences, besides I don't remember
who crowned the Romans as the be all and end all of this genre. Zombie Lake features a number of departures from the usual zombie fare and is obviously
better for it. Sure, we're used to zombies with maggot-encrusted faces and
chunky rotting flesh, but is it really so wrong for someone to make the
artistic decision to have your zombies appear in green face paint so that
sometimes you think you're looking at a really skinny, red-headed Incredible
Hulk? Of course not! The movie even keeps you interested in this particular
effect, because sometimes the green paint is just on the faces and sometimes
they go that extra mile and grease'em up in green on their chest as well! It's
that attention to detail that makes all the difference.  Of course, this movie would be worth getting just to see green-painted zombies
terrorizing a French village, but this one is out to prove that the French can
make a zombie movie just as well as an Italian (err, is that really the
compliment I intended?) so they serve up a heartwarming subplot about a little
girl reuniting with her father, a mayor who knows the secret of the lake, but
is reluctant to do much about it, and skinny dippers galore! I'm sure the
prudes out there are whining and moaning about how unhealthy it is for people
to be watching naked folks swimming around when we could be doing so much more
healthier things like watching someone get a drill shoved into his head, but
this argument is a baseless one against Zombie Lake for a couple of reasons.
First of all, for all you strong Christians like me who like to see people get
dismembered, but keep their clothing on (because we all know the human body is
just plain icky) this very special edition DVD features alternate sequences
that were filmed with everyone's clothes on! Yes, apparently they realized that
if this movie was going to play at Sunday Schools and ice cream socials, they
needed a more family friendly approach to things, so we are provided with these
shots of people un-skinny dipping as it were. They aren't integrated into the
film, so you'll probably need to preview all the nudie scenes before your wife
and kids get home so that you know what parts to skip and when to switch over
to the G rated stuff. The other thing you need to remember when you see the
volleyball team skinny dipping (they're referred to as a basketball team for
some reason), the couple doing the bump and grind in the barn, the skinny
dipping in the prologue, and the gal taking a bath in a big barrel in her back
yard, is that all these people are French! These folks are naked most of their
lives! Besides, do we really want to do anything to discourage a French person
from ever taking a bath? So what's the deal with this Zombie Lake? Is it some type of theme water park
or voodoo campground or what? Glad you asked, mon ami! Seems that somewhere in
the beautiful French countryside there's a village that is near this lake
(sometimes called the Lake of the Dead by the locals , but this is discouraged
by the Chamber of Commerce during July's annual Zombie Days) and the lake is
remarkable for two reasons: first and most obviously is that it holds an
inexplicable drawing power for young ladies with a penchant for swimming au
naturale. The second is that there's about eight Nazi zombies that live in the
lake with a penchant for tearing up the necks of young ladies with a penchant
for swimming au naturale. In the wild we simply refer to this as an "ecosystem".  The locals get antsy whenever some lass gets herself munched by these
sickly-skinned losers and demand that the mayor (played by Howard Vernon, star
of hundreds of bad French horror movies you've never seen) do something about
it. He's not too excited to take on the zombies for some reason (at first I
thought there was something dastardly about his reluctance to act, but it turns
out to be just one of those "I quit caring after it became apparent that this
was as good as my film career was going to get, so screw it" things) and is
content to live in some type of castle just outside of town. With an attitude
like that, I was worried that we were never going to get the real story out of
him as to just why a platoon of Nazis were camped out in the lake. Then, like
an angel come to answer all our back-story prayers, into the picture sashays a
rough-looking blonde reporter from Paris. Ignore the fact that she looks like
she was rode hard and put away wet, because the important thing here is that
she is nosy!
The mayor, who can't really be moved to do much about the zombies, doesn't mind
spilling his guts about them. Flashback time! Way back in WWII, there were some
Nazis who were running roughshod over the village and then they had to retreat
and the French resistance killed them as they retreated. They dumped their
bodies into the lake and it is there that they turned into zombies. The reason
they turned into zombies instead some turtle's lunch is because the lake was
used for a bunch of black masses and stuff back in the day and that gives the
lake special powers. But wait, there's more! The movie is far deeper than just some French-fried
explanation about why the Nazis became zombies when they hit the lake, even
though none of their victims do when they end up in the lake. There's the story
that tugs at the heartstrings where a Nazi soldier has a love affair with a
local girl and gets her all knocked up. Before retreating, he visits her and
the baby. He leaves and his gal pal croaks, but it all works out because he
gets killed and dumped in the lake. Years later, he rises from the lake with
his army buddies and meets up with his daughter, now about eleven or twelve.
Even though he's green, likes to drink human blood, and smells like a big
stinky lake, the daughter knows that it is her daddy because of some ugly
pendant he has on. She and he make a connection unheard of in the zombie world
and they become fast friends. Unfortunately, before he can go to family court
and try to get his parental rights back, the mayor rolls his eyes and finally
agrees that maybe they should get rid of the zombies (but they're what's called
"local color"!). There's a bunch of time spent with the angry mob of villagers
trying to shoot them and it takes this nasty Parisian reporter to brainstorm
that maybe they should just burn these things up.  I think some of the problems a lot of people have with this film, is one of
expectations. That is to say, they had some. I went in expecting nothing out of
this one and I wasn't disappointed in the least. In fact, it wasn't nearly the
truffle-sized dump I had expected when I had been tricked into believing that
Jess Franco had directed this. It turns out that Jean Rollin co-directed it
with some no name Spanish guy. Jean of course is noted for all his really bad,
nonsensical movies about lesbians, vampires and castles as well as another
French zombie film, The Grapes Of Death. To demonstrate just how much he believed in Zombie Lake, he appears as a police detective who gets chomped by a zombie. Either that or
he didn't believe in it enough to hire an actor for the part.
There isn't much gore in this movie, other than some bloody necks and the
zombies lumber around unconvincingly and do stuff that makes you think of frat
guys more than zombies (hanging out with skinny dippers, busting up local bars,
grunting a lot), but I think as far as slow-moving, badly dubbed, goreless,
French zombie movies go, you really can't beat this one. I mean you even get
crystal clear underwater shots of the lake where you can barely make out the
backside of the tank they actually used to shoot these scenes in (you don't
really think a muddy pond full of lily pads is going to be as clear as Evian,
do you?). Come on, Nazi zombies, skinny dippers, French people getting their
throats ripped out... go ahead and show the establishment that you're no slave
to their pre-ordained lists of hits and misses. With cover art like this one
has, there's no way you'll regret buying it until you're actually watching it!
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