Le lac des morts vivants (1981)

... aka: Lake of the Living Dead
... aka: Lake of the Zombies
... aka: Nazi Zombies: Terror from Below
... aka: Sumpf der lebenden Toten (Swamp of the Living Dead)
... aka: Zombie Lake
... aka: Zombies Lake

Directed by:
"J.A. Laser" (Jean Rollin)

Ever since Romero redefined the zombie as reanimated flesh-eating corpses in 1968, some of our more ambitious directors have sought to either elaborate on his creation or to explore all of the metaphorical possibilities inherent in creatures that are, at the end of the day, essentially just reflections of ourselves. And then you have directors like Jean Rollin, who utilizes the zombie as a excuse to show naked girls swimming and thrashing around in the water to give viewers as many spread eagle shots as possible. Sorry to sound so crude, but it is what it is, folks! Zombie Lake frequently tops lists of "Worst Zombie Movie of All Time" and, while it truly is bad, it probably no longer deserves to be on such a list thanks to all of the no budget digital crap being made nowadays. At least this was shot on film in a nice-looking French village instead of being "filmed" with someone's iPhone in their backyard. Hey, I'm grasping at straws here!

 

The entire tone for Lake is set in the opening few minutes as a young lady strips to sunbathe nude as the camera slowly pans up the entire length of her body. Now the poor thing is all hot and sweaty. What's a girl to do? Well, if you're this girl, you're going to take a refreshing dip in the lake... and you're not going to let some stupid warning sign featuring the drawing of a swimmer next to a skull and crossbones deter you either! Needless to say, that turns out to be a mistake as she's attacked and pulled under by a green-faced, one-eyed zombie. Having not had his fill, the same ghoul decides to kill a woman doing her laundry, which proves that, yes, these zombies will also attack women wearing clothes. Townspeople find the second victim's body and leave it on the doorstep of the Mayor (Howard Vernon) as a none-too-subtle way to say "Uh, would you please do something about this?" He promises help is on its way.

Chatty reporter Katya Muse (Marcia Sharif) shows up in town to do some research in hopes of writing "an unusual little yarn about that weird lake of yours." Local Mr. Chanac (Youri Radionow) takes her to visit the Mayor, who relates a flashback that explains the local legend. During WWII, a blonde-haired German soldier (Pierre-Marie Escourrou) was injured saving a female villager (Nadine Pascal) from a bomb. Eager to reward him for saving her life, the girl took him to a barn for a literal roll in the hay. She became pregnant, gave birth to a girl she named Helena and then died shortly thereafter. The soldier was then killed himself after his platoon was ambushed by villagers. In lieu of proper burial, the bodies were just sunk in the lake and the lake has been haunted by them ever since.

A very confused girl's sporting team, who arrive in a van with "Basket" written on the side then hop out and start hitting a volleyball around, provide both a full course meal for the zombies and a veritable beaver buffet via pervy underwater camera shots when they go skinny dipping. One lucky blonde (Gilda Arancio) manages to escape and runs back into town topless. Due to all the recent murders, disappearances and zombie sightings, the Mayor finally calls for police reinforcement but is sent two rude dimwits; Inspectors Moran ("Burt Altman" / Bertrand Altmann) and Spitz (the director), who tell him "murder is our business, not fairy tales" before going to the tavern to disregard the locals as a "heap of hicks." By the time they actually start believing the townsfolk, they're already dead.

After taking care of the inspectors, the zombies emerge to paint the village red during a mini rampage that includes killing a woman and her boyfriend as they're getting ready to bonk in the barn, a topless girl bathing outside in a tub and a woman walking down the sidewalk who stops to adjust her stocking. Despite now being a zombie, the blonde Nazi seen in the flashback manages to hunt down his daughter Helena, who's now about 12, being raised by her granny (Yvonne Dany) and is played by producer Daniel Lesoeur's daughter, Anouchka. The zombie dad gives her a necklace that belonged to her late mother and has such a soft spot for his girl that he protects her from the other zombies. When the Mayor pressures her to help, Helena decides to exploit her father's emotional attachment to lure the zombies to their napalm / flamethrower demise.

We'd be here all day if I did a detailed break down of all the continuity errors, flubs, extras looking at the camera and glimpses of crew and equipment that made their way into the finished product that is Zombie Lake. It would likewise take an eternity to accurately describe the ever-changing and decidedly non-water resistant green finger paint makeup that changes from shot to shot. This is a film where virtually everything - the direction, acting, editing, writing, fx - is on the same plane of terrible so it's difficult to concentrate on just one area. And to make matters worse, its shortcomings are further exacerbated by a cringe-worthy English dub more interested in matching lips than making sense.

But the real question is: Is this a good bad movie? To that I can only say, I once found this utterly boring but its sheer awfulness has grown on me a bit over the years and every now and then I actually find myself in the mood to watch this horrid thing again. That's more than I can say for many of the same director's meandering "arty" vampire movies that have gained him a small cult following over the years. I suppose I should be embarrassed to admit that but, hey, I'm pretty much way past that point now.

Jesus Franco gets a co-writer credit and was supposed to direct it too but dropped out at the last minute. But don't feel cheated. He later got to direct his own awful zombie movie for Eurociné called Oasis of the Zombies. And despite not technically directing, a lot of other Franco world connections still remain. The war footage used in the flashbacks is pilfered from the Franco co-directed Convoy of Girls (1978), the Daniel White score has been swiped from Franco's Female Vampire (1973) and regular rotation Franco movie actors Vernon and "Robert Foster" / Antonio Mayans (playing a Nazi general and the zombie missing an eye; not the inspector as IMDb incorrectly states) both have prominent roles.

 

Throughout the video era, Zombie Lake was the easiest Rollin film to find here in America as it received a well-circulated 1985 VHS release from Wizard in one of their trademark eye-catching big boxes. Since then it's received a number of DVD releases (Image, Sinister and others) and, in 2013, made its Blu-ray debut on the Redemption label out of the UK. Alternate scenes of the female victims frolicking in their underwear instead of naked were used for release in more restrictive markets. Rollin himself hated the film and felt it an embarrassment.

SBIG

La nuit des étoiles filantes (1973)

... aka: Among the Living Dead
... aka: Christine, Princess de l'érotisme
... aka: Erotic Dreams of Christine, The
... aka: Exorcismo per una Vergine
... aka: Labyrinth, The
... aka: Vergine tra i Morti Viventi, Una
... aka: Vierge chez les Morts-Vivants, Una
... aka: Virgin Among the Living Dead, A
... aka: Zombie 4

Directed by:
Jesus Franco
Jean Rollin (zombie dream sequence)
Pierre Quérut (additional sequences)

Like numerous other Franco films, this took on many different shapes as it bounced around European theaters in the 70s and finally made its home video debut in the 80s. Filmed under the title Le nuit des étoiles filantes ("The Night of the Shooting Stars"), Franco originally intended this to be a pseudo-surreal film about death and the afterlife. The distributors, however, had other ideas in mind. The release date is usually listed as either 1973 (the production year), 1974 or 1975, and the film may have debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in its original form in the spring of 1974 (sources give conflicting information). French distributors got their hands on it first and had director Pierre Quérut add brand new soft-core footage starring Alice Arno (as "The Princess of Eroticism"), Nadine Pascal, Pierre Taylou and Wal Davis (aka Waldemar Wohlfaart) so that it could be sold as a sex film. When it came time for its video release, hack company Eurociné bought up the rights, removed the added sex scenes, hired Jean Rollin to shoot completely unrelated new zombie footage to splice in and then it was issued under the title A Virgin Among the Living Dead. This cut was the one distributed by Wizard Video in the U.S. and then re-issued under the title Zombie 4 as part of a bogus series that also included Franco's Revenge in the House of Usher (1982) and D'Amato's Monster Hunter (1981). For the Italian release (under the title Exorcismo per una Vergine / "Exorcism of the Virgin"), someone combined this film with scenes from one of Rollin's earlier vampire movies. The version I watched had the French title Una vierge chez les Morts-Vivants, runs 78 minutes and does not have the added sex scenes nor Rollin's zombie footage. I believe this is the closest version to what Franco originally intended.

Kind-hearted teenage orphan Christina Benton (Christina von Blanc) arrives in a small coastal town from a London boarding school. She's been summoned there by a letter asking her to come visit her estranged family and attend to the reading of her late father's will. Arriving at an inn late that night, Christina receives a warning from the innkeeper about her planned destination; Montserrat Mansion, that she chooses to ignore. The woman also insists that nobody lives there, something Christina will be hearing a lot of over the next few days. Basilio (director Franco, as "Jesus Manera"), the mumbling, incoherent family servant arrives there the following morning to pick her up. After a long car ride where Christina observes strange behavior in the birds and ever stranger odors emanating from the plants, she arrives at the mansion and finally meets her bizarre extended family. While her stepmother Hermine is upstairs dying, her Uncle Howard (Howard Vernon) plays upbeat piano music, her inhospitable Aunt Abigail (Rosa Paloma) behaves zombie-like and emotionless and her cousin Carmencé (Britt Nichols) chain smokes, constantly coughs and laughs at the most inappropriate moments. Christina gets to see Hermine only briefly and she too spits out a warning ("Run... run away...") in her last dying breath. Everyone seems strangely unphased by any of this. And the strange events only get more bizarre from there.

None of her relatives seem to ever eat and any outsider she meets keeps insisting no one lives in the manor. Basilio runs around at night with a chicken head spouting gibberish. A blind woman named Linda (Linda Hastreiter) shows up in Christina's bedroom hoping to "help" her and says she'll pray for her to keep evil away and Christina meets a crazed old man at a nearby chapel who tells her to immediately leave the area. So what is that, four warnings now? Well, make that five as the ghost of Christina's late father (Paul Muller), who hung himself, starts calling to her at night and provides yet more wise advice to get the hell out of there. Dead bats appear on her bedspread, her Uncle slaps her across the face for attempting to bring a local boy into the home and she catches sight of Carmencé cutting up Linda with scissors so she can feast on her blood. A lawyer shows up to finally settle the estate, leaving everything to the naive young woman, but she insists all of these weirdos still stick around. Oh yes, and there is also a woman dressed in black lurking around who's referred to as "The Guardian of the Night" (Anne Libert); a seductive Grim Reaper-type figure.

An entertaining, often dream-like film; Virgin presents a tug-of-war between (s)exploitation and art typical of much of the director's other work. One moment it's going for straight-up sleaze ("You shattered the big ebony phallus!"), the next providing tongue-in-cheek macabre humor (Nichols nonchalantly painting her toenails during a funeral) and a minute later feeling like a haunting otherworldly meditation on death. Composer Bruno Nicolai seems to understand just what's going on and contributes a wonderfully weird and schizophrenic score to proceedings. There are tons of zoom shots, as well as some very stylish and well-executed moments like the dead father - noose wrapped around his neck - floating backwards to lead his daughter down a path and descending into the dark in the arms of the Grim Reaper-like lady. And, of course, there are some seriously smokin' hot actresses in this film who are naked as often as not. All of the brainless behavior and strange events are adequately explained by the final plot revelation. I've seen some refer to it as being ambiguous but it seemed pretty cut and dry to me personally.

Virgin has always been one of Franco's easiest-to-find and, as a result, most viewed of all his 200+ films. Here in America, the Wizard VHS, with its eye-catching art and large-sized display box, was a fixture of most video stores' horror sections. Image Entertainment released a DVD in 2003 under their EuroShock line. The release contained both the original cut as well as the one with Rollin's inserts (which increases the running time by 13 minutes).

★★★