'We better face the fact that zombies
have declared war.'
Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
Zombie Lake was directed by Jean Rollin.
He was so embarrassed by it that he used the alias J. A. Laser, but it starts in typical Rollin fashion.
It is an immutable rule of cinema that no attractive woman can walk past a body of water
without stripping off and diving in,
'I'll be half way across before you get your pants off.'
'That's not fair, you're not wearing pants.'
and this film really reinforces that.
'You painted your toe nails.'
But when the film is called Zombie Lake, it seldom ends well.
Beneath the surface lie the undead remains of Nazi soldiers killed by Partisans in World War 2.
‘We created these monstrous zombies’
Think they’re being a little hard on themselves, but killing Nazis isn’t the issue, it’s the disposal of the bodies.
Bad idea.
‘The stories about the lake of the damned go back to the inquisition’
and so…
The body of one of the victims is carried back to town.
I guess here is as good a place as any.
‘I’m sure if anything’s wrong, the police will send somebody’
If anything’s wrong?
‘I fear there’s a lot more to this than meets the eye’
There’s not really, that’s sort of it, and to keep the movie going they have to bring in pretty girls by the vanload,
'Come on girls.'
to frolic in the lake of the damned,
which goes well.
The one survivor races for help.
‘The lake, the lake, the lake’
The locals are eager to help.
‘Let’s take her upstairs;'
could someone please fetch my bra from the lake?
The mayor calls in outside help but...
‘It would seems whole team of basketball players  - women – disappeared in the lake.
'Swallowed up by some ghosts’
Like the police have got time for that.
‘Just shut up huh!’
The sceptical police pay the price,
leaving the villagers to sort themselves out.
‘We must find a way to safeguard our town from the mad murdering zombies’
A stirring speech that gets the town all fired up,
'Yeah, lets go, yeah, let get them.'
As the zombies conduct marauding raids at a slow lumbering pace,
relying on people falling down,
or otherwise distracted.
But not all the zombies fall into the mad murdering category.
We learn in a flashback of a tender love story between Nazi and towns girl resulting in a child,
'We'll call her Helena.'
who grows up with neither parent until...
Daddy’s home.
I’m not convinced that’s how you would react.
Off she goes with zombie Dad, who protects her from the other zombies.
Really not sure what his long-term plan was here and I worry this encounter has affected the girl.
‘Bring me a whole lot of fresh blood’
There seems to be no way to save the town from this menace
‘No weapon can kill them’
until someone suggests...
‘Napalm’
which jogs a local’s memory.
‘You could just ask Hank to repair his old flame thrower’
I probably should have mentioned it earlier but the thought of using fire to destroy something simply never occurred to me.
Even with the little girl subplot this is incredibly simple.
‘Too many things have been happening around here’
They haven’t. And that tells in that everything has to be bulked up to reach the relatively light 86 minute runtime.
Which on the one hand means more fighting…
and frolicking...
on the other hand I could have lived without the gripping ‘police ask for directions’ scene.
'It's the castle on the edge of town.'
'This way?'
'Yes just before you get to the forest.'
'Thank you.'
Thanks for watching. See all our Zombie film reviews here.
This has been our first Jean Rollin review, what other films of his should we be looking at?
Let us know in the comments below.
