ZOMBIE LAKE (1980)
Starring Howard Vernon and Pierre-Marie Escourrou
This really lame French fear flick crept its way to DVD and I'm sure it'll creep its way out of print without the slightest bit of protest from the horror community. Aside from the presence of Jean Rollin (director of the wonderful "Lips of Blood" and other fear films) in the director's chair, there's not much to remark about this cheeseball low-budgeter from the land of the froggies. What a shame it is to even know that a director like Rollin wasted his talents on such an utter piece of crap. This is like an Al Adamson movie, but not as funny.
The film opens with a naked babe swimming in a lake. Up from the depths comes a "zombie" in terrible green make-up and an old German army uniform. The local townsfolk become concerned when the woman doesn't return home and the mayor (played by Euro-horror veteran Vernon) begins reminiscing about how the French resistance, way back in the WWII days, killed a group of Nazis and threw their corpses in the nearby lake.
A girl's sports team shows up at the lake. The girls quickly take off their clothes, only they too are attacked by, not only one zombie, but an underwater army of them. Underwater photography captures every giggle and stroke as French actors donning German uniforms and bad green make-up grab and grope at them.
Meanwhile, a little girl in town may actually be the daughter of one of the zombies!
It's a terrible, terrible, terrible movie that's being marketed as a cult classic on DVD. I enjoy "bad movies" as much as the next guy, but not when they're subtitled. Somehow all the camp value gets lost in the translation if they're not dubbed. The only worthwhile thing about this clunker is the cheesecake factor. There is a lot of nudity. But the make-up effects are so amateurish and the story so lame that the film is unwatchable when there aren't naked women running around. It was produced shortly after Romero's "Dawn of the Dead" and Fulci's "Zombie" swept Europe and made tens of millions of dollars. Obviously the producers of this were hoping for similar results. It didn't happen.
Rollin has probably never made a worse movie and it's incredible he even agreed to be involved with this one. The story goes that Jesus Franco was originally going to direct, but left at the last minute. Rollin apparently hadn't even seen the script and only had a week or two to make the movie. Still, from the guy who brought us the great “Lips of Blood,” this is unacceptable.