Zombie Lake (1980)

​

Here we go, and the subject at hand is a genuine classic of walking dead brainlessness. There have probably been more bad zombie movies than any other genre; primary reason being you can get away with much cheaper budgets. Slap some makeup on your drinking buddies and have them shamble around taking bites out of people. Piece o’ cake, you don’t even need a script. That’s how we got violated with the unforgivably loathsome Day of the Dead remake.

This one, however, has somehow become the unofficial standard bearer for the wretched zombie movie. While it (of course) stinks, it’s far from the worst I’ve ever seen. I think maybe it’s because it got an unusually wide distribution for an Italian zombie flick, or because it showcases its own ineptitude with such exuberance that it’s a blast to watch. Or maybe it’s just because it had such a low budget that Jesus fucking Franco reportedly said, “Are you kidding me? What kind of a hack do you take me for, anyway?”

Anyway, on to the glory that is…

Zombie Lake

I’m not going to kid you, this one was a bitch to write. See, Zombie Lake has got to be the most reviewed movie in cinema history. Almost every single movie site I’ve ever been to has a review of it, even one or two that don’t cater to the genre at all. Hell, you could probably hit a soap opera review site and find Zombie Lake lurking around in the archives. It’s like hazing for would-be movie reviewers; your standing will be judged on the quality and insight of your Zombie Lake review. So the biggest threat going into this is how the hell can I write anything without inadvertently ripping someone else off? I finally settled on sitting down with it one more time, taking notes on my own observations, trying to build only on that, and hoping nobody sends Guido and Nunzio around to my house.

And any excuse to sit down with Zombie Lake is fine by me.

The film makes sure there will be no misconceptions of what we have before us. The first ten minutes tells you everything you need to know. It’s practically a checklist of the entire rest of the movie.

First appearance of the female nipple: One minute, nine seconds. First appearance of female pubic hair: One minute, fourteen seconds. Total amount of time spent watching the naked girl sunbathe and swim: Three seconds shy of five minutes. Well, now we know how that element of the film is going to go.

Oh yeah, the swimming; I should probably tell you about that as an interesting stylistic approach was used here. See, the camera really likes to sit underwater looking straight up at the girl above, and… well, I didn’t know before just how WIDE you girls kick your legs when you swim.

And now the movie really shows what it’s got cookin’ for us as our first shambling corpse makes its appearance stage down, slogging its way out of the titular lake. We now find the effects department consisted of a tube of face paint and a bottle of liquid latex. Now even Tom Savini admitted that he had difficulty coming up with the right color for cyanotic flesh, and didn’t like how blue his zombies came out in Dawn of the Dead. Well, these filmmakers chose green. BRIGHT green. Dollar store Frankenstein Kit green. And most importantly, water-soluble green.

Did I mention the title of the film is Zombie LAKE?

So here comes our zombie with his neon green makeup visibly running down his face, and you can practically hear the director shout “Fuck it, keep filming!” Once he’s out of the lake and his mug has been touched up, we spot another budget cut: His face is green only from the chin up. His entire neck is pink, healthy, and quite living flesh.

But we’re not done! Kermit the Zombie goes shambling off to attack another girl, which should be fine – more mayhem for us. The problem is, now his hands are painted as well (which they most definitely weren’t before, I checked). The further problem is, he has to attack and manhandle the girl. The further further problem are the smears of brilliant green he leaves everywhere he touches her. And the camera lingers on them! We get a long, loving shot of the girl getting eaten with this great big stripe of green zombie paint running up the side of her face. Fuck it, keep filming!

Which brings us to the blood. The inert blood is your standard corn syrup/food dye mix. The flowing blood, in contrast, has the exact texture and viscosity of cherry Kool-Aid. I have my suspicions.

If there’s a serious problem with the movie (as opposed to all the wonderful problems), is that the middle drags its ass on the ground. Fast-forward button drag. This isn’t helped at all by the Mayor who is a central character. Folks, this guy is one SLOW son of a bitch. He talks slow, walks slow, reads slow… he even somehow manages to sit slow. I once entertained myself by laying a private bet on what this sluggard could do the slowest, sit motionless reading a book or stand motionless leaning against something. Standing and leaning won, I don’t know how the hell he does it.

But there are still moments that have charm. We spend a good quarter of the movie in a really confusing flashback sequence (it was my third viewing before I got it nailed down) involving some invading Nazis. I’m no history scholar, but between you and me, I didn’t see a single Nazi uniform, insignia, helmet, vehicle, or weapon. So I guess their Nazihood can be considered an Informed Attribute™. They’re opposed by what is apparently the most terrifying army of foley artists known to man, because there are definitely no enemy soldiers present. One or two flash pots actually do go off on screen, and in one instance the stunt man is already hurling himself backwards through the air a full second before the foot-wide explosion goes off. Fuck it, keep filming!

In a delicious sequence, one of the townsfolk falls in love with one of the soldiers, and coaxes him into the stables for a game of the two-backed beastie. She strips fully nude, lies down with her paramour for some hot monkey lovin’, and a full foot of the white cotton towel covering her nether regions enjoys a good four seconds of screen time. Fuck it, keep filming!

Hey, remember our skinny-dipper from the start of the film? Well guys, get the Kleenex ready, because now we got nine of them! A women's basketball team shows up at the lake for practice, and of course immediately gets rid of all that nasty clothing blocking our view. Then they go for a swim…

This scene has to be seen to be believed. The above water shots show the fully naked women with the water up to about their knees. The underwater shots (in which you can clearly see the wall of the swimming pool) have them in very deep water doing lots and lots of kicking. Really wide kicking. Really REALLY wide kicking if you catch my drift and I’ll let you guess what the camera angle is. The shot switches at least three times: Knee deep, twenty feet deep, knee deep, twenty feet deep, all set to this delightfully weird “La La” music. Did I mention they kick a lot?

Now here come our zombies, wearing swimming goggles with googly eyes drawn on with a magic marker. Here and there we’ve got some in rubber Halloween masks of which the rear edge can be seen because of the actor’s hair sticking out from under it. They emerge from the lake (leaving half their makeup behind), and slaughter all the girls while displaying an amazing talent for severing a carotid artery without breaking the skin. Man, all that Kool-Aid is making me thirsty.

And that’s more or less the rest of the movie. The zombies come shambling out of the lake, go on a greasepaint smearin’ rampage, and go shambling back in. This goes down a good three or four times, with our bovine Mayor eating up the majority of the running time in between doing absolutely nothing of value.

The ending comes knocking when ol’ Kermit from the first scene is revealed to be the one who bumped uglies with Towel Girl in the stable. He recognizes his ten-year-old daughter (who by rights would be pushing fifty by now), who is in possession of what I suppose could be considered the film’s McGuffin™, in the form of a hideously ugly plastic necklace with the silver paint chipping off here and there. Maybe it’s me, but I’ve never been able to figure out just what the hell it’s supposed to do. Does it give her control over the undead? Does it mystically bind her with her undead daddy? Does it just hang there and look so ridiculous the zombies laugh themselves back to death? I really don’t know. It gets so much screen time it must be awful important, but plays no part in the movie at all that I can see.

You have to have heard that old and extremely obnoxious saying “Better to aim too high and miss than blah blah”. Zombie Lake is pretty good evidence this is not true when it comes to film. They attacked a movie that would be a bitch to pull off even today, armed with a pocket-change budget that Jesus Franco turned down. But you know, they went ahead and did it anyway. It’s crap, but by God it’s determined crap, and that alone is worth a watch. That and the kicking.

Okay, I reviewed Zombie Lake. Can I please be in the club now?

Final Rating: Fuck it, keep filming!