Zombie Lake (1981) directed by Jean Rollin.
(MF Title: “The posthumous Iron Cross for gallantry in the face of nudism”)
Starring Howard Vernon, Pierre-Marie Escourrou, Antonio Mayans, Anouchka and Nadine Pascal.
Zombie Film Rating:

Summary: I swore I thought I had received the wrong movie in the mail. the first five minutes of the film shows a young woman stripping her clothes off, sunning herself and then swimming (with a startling number of underwater shots, that don’t leave so very much to the imagination).

Intrigued? Sure why not…. our young damsel, while swiming, is not so suddenly attacked by what appears to be a slimy member of the Wehrmacht. He is missing one eye, and despite 40 years of underwater upkeep his uniform seems in rather good shape. His clumbsily executed attack on the young nudist is assumed to succeed as we never see her demise, and instead find ourselves transported to a cafe inside the village where we learn the girl is missing through some badly dubbed dialogue (the first words spoken in the film, we’re seven minutes in for petes sake!)

Our intial confusion however is dispelled when we flash to the mayor of the town explaining to a reporter that the lake is “haunted” by the ghosts of a Wehrmacht squad that was killed by partisans near the end of World War II.

The german soldiers were ambushed, then unceremoniously dumped in the lake, and now they hunger for human blood (or something along those lines). I can only assume that the better part of both France and the Soviet Union have haunted villages…lets hope they have fewer nudists.

The plot thickens when we learn that one of the dashing (pre-zombification) soldiers had a brief affair with a young villager, and together they had a daughter. Shortly thereafter the ambush took place, and the zombie magic took its course.

Despite the notoriety of the “haunted lake” nudists continue to pop out of the woodwork (and their clothes), and soon an all female volleyball team arrives at the lake, throws the ball back and forth twice, then strips down and jumps in the water (damn those Europeans are uninhibited, aren’t they?).

of course their naked shenanigans are cut short by the arrival of the zombie infantry, and they (after another series of underwater shots) are dragged beneath the icy waters of the lake, never to be heard from again…. all except for one, who was getting dressed (theres a lesson here) and witnessed the attack on her team mates. She runs (half naked – guess which half) to the village, straight into the pub and passes out. The villagers sensing something may be wrong, call the police (about time!).

The police arrive just in time to be eaten, and the zombie army marches from the lake and begins attacking the town (which makes me wonder why they spent 40 years in the damn lake to begin with, bad logistics?) which naturally includes several semi-naked and naked women.

By this point the villagers seem to have lost confidence in their leadership, and have armed themselves and march out to do battle with their zombie neighbors (predictably the bullets don’t seem to stop them). Faring no better against dead Germans that they fared against live ones 40 years ago, the villagers flee, leaving the zombies to roam the town and attack unsuspecting victims (just how the hell is anyone “unsuspecting” at this point?)

They discover that the daugher of the zombie soldier has been meeting with her father (and indeed taking walks, which was a strange scene), and feeding the zombie squad. They build a crude and technically unconvincing flame thrower and ambush the zombies.

This ambush goes as well as the first, and the zombies are torched to a man, bringing their reign of nudist-murder to an end.

Critique: Wow… where to start, the movie is crap. The makeup and gore is really, REALLY low budget (so low budget that in most scenes the zombies have green makeup on their faces, but not necks or hands). The acting is horrible (and the bad dubbing doesn’t help this, although it adds humour value).

The nudity thrown in all over the place doesn’t save this film, but might serve to distract the viewer from the general crappy nature of the remainder of the film.

Naturally I loved it. If you want a serious underwater zombie film, check out Shockwaves (which I suspect inspired this film more than a little), otherwise this is an entirely harmless zombie film, a little entertaining, but otherwise unremarkable.

Sorta a “Porkys” meets “Dawn of the Dead”.