Horror Movie Review: Zombie Lake (1981)

There are bad zombie movies (Zombie Strippers, Children of the Living Dead etc.) & then there is Zombie Lake. If I was to do a top 10 worst zombie movies it would be near the top, I can assure you of that.

So how did I come to this conclusion? Come closer…

Zombie Lake takes place in a small French village years after the end of World War 2. Nearby is the ‘lake of the damned’ because of all the deaths that occur in it. You see the lake is home to a bundle of Nazi zombies that wait until you’re going for a swim (preferably female & naked) then drag you down & drown you.

Why Nazi zombies? Well you see during the German occupation of the town one Nazi soldier protected a female villager from gunfire. After nursing him back to health she promptly had sex with him & gave him her pendant. The soldier returns to his squad until eventually he is able to get back to her. By now she is giving birth to his daughter (Helena) & she dies during childbirth.

The daughter survives but her Nazi father & his squad are all killed by the village uprising & their bodies are dumped in the lake. See, Nazi zombies…totally makes sense now!

Back at the village the zombie attacks are getting more frequent & they are now venturing into the village. The mayor buries his head in the sand until a female reporter arrives to cause trouble. With more & more attacks coming (on young nubile females, who else?) the mayor & the townspeople are forced to act & maybe Helena is the answer….

Ignore what I’ve written above, I make it sound interesting & it really isn’t. The movie is slow & boring, filled to the brim with unnecessarily naked chicks, some of the worst acting outside a Wicker Man remake & awful zombie make-up.

Do you like naked ladies (80’s style, no less?); well you’re in for a treat as almost all the young female actors end up naked at some stage or another. The few that get any lines make a mess of it & the rest just stand around awkwardly. The basketball team skinny-dip deserves special mention for just being so awkward to watch, you can clearly see most of the girls have been told to get in the lake & cavort but still can’t manage that.

Naked girls aside (half the movie later) we have zombies & oh what zombies they are.

Someone’s idea of zombie make-up was to paint their faces green but rarely the same shade of green. At times the zombie make-up is light green with clear patches of normal skin really obvious while at other times it is bright green. All the time it looks horrible but none worse then when the zombies are stepping out of the lake as you would expect the make-up begins to run off. It’s so bad….oh & don’t get me started on the supposed gory bits.

So, what else…have I mentioned the acting? Those with jobs that don’t involve taking their kit off probably should have, they would have been even slightly more interesting & memorable…even the men.

I’ll end this review with a positive…if I can. There are some really artfully done underwater shots of naked women.

Artsy, huh?

That 1 there is for the nudity because it is impossible to give nudity a 0. The rest is just terrible, no zombie movie should ever be boring.