1980'S BAD BAD RUBBER PIGGY PART THREE AKA DID I ALREADY DO STUPIDEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR YET?





Oasis Of The Zombies aka L'Abîme Des Morts-Vivants (The Abyss Of The Living Dead) aka La Tumba De Los Muerto Vivientes (The Tomb Of The Living Dead) aka Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies aka Le Tresor Des Morts Vivants (The Treasure of the Living Dead) (1982) France

Yeah yeah I know, I've already proclaimed my pick - so we'll just predate this one for last year, okay? 'Cause this was by far the most horrible, boring, stupid, pointless zombie movie ever made. How bad was this movie? This movie made Zombie Lake look like something created by Einstein.

You know how when a movie is bad they just try to sell it under another title? Well this one has more titles than it has a plot. I'm not kidding either. Where Zombie Lake at least attempted some sort of story, this is merely Nazis who intercepted a French troop who happened to be moving six million dollars worth of gold across the desert. What desert? What French troop would be that stupid? How would the Nazis know? 

Point being, according to the movie anyway, that six million was seized by the Nazis and then they and the gold mysteriously disappeared (read sunk down in the sand or were buried by the French - it's not clear). So we have two different groups going after it independent of each other - one an ex-military type of Frenchman and his cohorts, the other a bunch of colleges students 'cause hey, nobody's gonna miss either group, are they?

Is the gold recovered? Pffft. Was there at least some nudity to keep interest at a minimum level? Pffft. Which group won, the students or the ex-military? Pffft. Were these Nazi zombies at least better done than those in Zombie Lake? Pffft.

Excuse me, I have to go get a gallon of water, I seem to have run out of spit.

From the metallic-sounding scratching of zombies climbing up through the sand (Metallic?) to the only site of zombie being a skull popping up and cutaways to people putting up their arms and screaming, to in the end when there is a zombie to be seen (in a dark, it-could-be-anybody scene) it is soooo obviously a mannequin and fell over like wood when 'attacked', this piece of garbage couldn't be saved by hundreds of incidences of nudity, which, of course, this film does not have. I highly recommend this movie to people you really really hate.

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1980'S BAD BAD RUBBER PIGGY PART TWO

Zombie Lake aka Zombie's Lake aka Le Lac Des Morts Vivants (The Lake of the Living Dead) (1981) France

You've got to give the French credit. What do you do when you've got a zombie movie you want people to see when they're not quite that popular yet, plus you don't have a whole lot in the way of makeup skills or even a decent plot? Why, put a bunch of naked women in it of course - it fixes whatever ills a movie has and guarantees to bring at least the guys into the theaters.

Zombies without makeup...

But this movie did have a couple of interesting zombie ideas that I haven't seen much (or at all) in other movies: This one has zombies fighting each other (I'll explain later), remembering their past lives, and, in one case anyway, gladly going to his death. Again. But if you ask somebody if they've seen it, chances are all they'll remember is the major boobage and salute the French for their nonchalance with nudity. That's probably a good thing because this is one of the worst zombie films ever made.

Zombies without makeup...

After starting the film with a good naked romp in a lake that ends in murder by the Nazi zombies hiding under the surface (it WAS pretty funny though when one 'zombie' took a really big breath before hauling his 'booty' under water), we shift to WWII and apparently we're in a French hamlet occupied by the Germans. One woman, reacting in that 'which way do I go' cartoonish way in plain view of anyone wanting a target to shoot gets rescued by a German soldier who receives a wound to the head for his trouble. But he recovers and, of course, after she gives him a necklace (why the hell would he... never mind) they do the wild thing 'cause hey, this movie's got to move along.

But the villagers prove to be treacherous to these poor Nazi bastards. They kill them, rob them and throw their bodies in the lake so they won't be found out. From now on the lake is known as Damned Lake or Lake of the Damned depending on who you talk to. Nice. The woman eventually gives birth and dies (didn't they all back then? I'm always surprised when a woman lives) but has a daughter.

Zombie/vampire losing Playdoh...

So skip ahead skip ahead... but how far forward? This is where I got really confused and had to look the sucker up - the people looked and acted like, well, the '70's type but the now-zombie father's daughter was only eight or nine years old. Turns out the movie was supposed to be set in 1957. Ah. Another case of movie suckitis, that's all. So in 1957 girls (apparently guys don't skinny dip) start disappearing and nobody does anything until an out-of-town girl's basketball team (Whaaaa?) shows up, strips and disappears in the lake. 

Zombie daddy protecting daughter...

NOW somebody comes to investigate. And the zombies decide not to wait for water boobage, they're going into the village now... the aforementioned zombie father remembers where his lover lived, goes to her house and finds his daughter who apparently lives in her bedroom. When he sees a picture of his love with the necklace he now wears (without a spot of tarnish on it either) he knows the girl is his daughter and gives her the necklace. Awwww. Sick.

I loved the makeup job on these guys. It was... well let's just put it this way. Somebody sold a whole ton of green Playdoh that year. That was the extent of it - they were green. Sometimes. AND they instantly dried off whenever they came out of the lake. That was convenient - don't want to drip all over those people they bite - oh yeah no taffy (intestine) pulling for these Nazis - they bite necks like vampires. YAWN.

Finally the little girl, wanting her 'father' to have some peace, instructs the people to get her a bunch of blood to feed them (Sick. Again.) and she'll lure them to the old mill, where the people will blast them with a flamethrower they happen to have lying around. This was the STUPIDEST part of the movie and that's saying something.

Okay, so there's green and RED Playdoh....

The father pretty much knows what's going to happen - he's already had to fight one of his fellows to keep them from harming his daughter so... uh... they show up, they have a blood feast, then the flame. Now our badly made up zombies obviously turn into mannequins since they become stiff and don't look a thing like themselves the second they turn on the flamethrower. I mean c'mon - DUUUUUUUH! But that's why it was so awful. Probably because there were no more boobs to see by this time, just burning plastic. The end.

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NAZIS IS THE CWAZIEST PEOPLES



Stone's War aka War Of The Dead (2011) US/Lithuania/Italy

I've stopped calling movies that use 'Of The Dead' Romero ripoffs 'cause he doesn't seem too terribly to mind and there are so many now they're not even associated with Romero's zombie movies anymore. This one is set in World War II which I confess I have little knowledge of, having had decent teachers and a good school but no head for history (I only memorized stuff long enough to pass tests) and thus had to look a lot of stuff up to understand what this was about (and whether stuff was legit or not), as well as try to enjoy what was surprisingly a decent zombie movie with minor complaints.

The movie starts by stating this: In 1939, along the Russian border with Finland, Nazi Germany begins secret underground "Anti-Death" experiments on captured Russian soldiers. Two years later they abandon the experiments. All records are destroyed overnight by direct order of Adolf Hitler. The test subjects are piled into mass graves, and buried. Finland, 1941: A small, elite unit of American soldiers is dispatched to assist a Finnish task force in their fight against the Russians. Their mission: to destroy the Russian bunker. This much is true.

Okay, back to me. Now the hubby is a lot more savvy at this kind of thing than me, and immediately said 'Finland? They were part of the WWII Axis.' I just looked blankly back at him (I'm good at that) but did a little research to get the ole' gray cells working. There were three countries that signed a Tripartite Pact - Germany, Japan and Italy. Later Finland became what was called 'co-belligerent' meaning, I guess, that although they didn't sign anything, they sided with the Germans. For a while.

This is a problem for the movie 'cause the whole point is that a platoon of American and Finnish soldiers are on a mission to blow up a German bunker. Since Finland sympathized with the Germans this is... not quite right - but let's get to the good part. Despite what might have been little inaccuracies (discounting the Finland one) in uniforms, weapons, etc. this was actually a solid zombie movie and was fast paced from beginning to end. Captain Stone and his American troops together (for the movie) with Finnish soldiers need to find and destroy a bunker in a German forest. 

Well they seriously underestimated things and most of the soldiers are wiped out in the first few minutes, leaving only a few who actually make it to the bunker. They find a young German soldier who surrenders, offering to help. Why? His girlfriend lives in a small village near the bunker and he wants to get her out of there. He kind of has an idea what's going on. Very quickly we have one American, one Finn, and one German with his girlfriend. And we find out what's been happening.

Even though the three made it to the bunker over the bodies of scores of soldiers, all of a sudden they are attacked by those same soldiers. Who don't go down when shot - unless it's in the head. Maybe. The bunker was a center of experiments and the soldiers 'juiced' with something that made them even more dangerous dead than alive. It plays on the constant theme that Adolf Hitler, heavily into the Occult, managed to overrule death and make super soldiers out of dead ones. That's stupid but hey, this is a zombie movie so, yeah.

Set in Russia, this movie was actually filmed in Lithuania and was the most expensive film ever made there. So expensive that they ran out of funds (it was shot in 2007 but only released in 2011 when they had the money). Uh, yeah, I guess it would be. The gore is decent but the zombies were badly done and looked very lazy. 

As for who shot what kind of weapon, the 'good guys' mostly had, from what I could see, something close to (not actually) a Russian PPSH41 sub-machine gun (without a pistol grip) with a ventilated shroud. What's puzzling is why it took eight years and many cast and crew changes to finish this movie. This wasn't the bloody Lord Of The Rings trilogy after all - it is what it is - a decent if not great zombie flick in a sea of stupid zombie flicks and worth a look if you're bored.

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