Zombie Movie Review: Zombie Lake

Zombie Lake on IMDB

I watched this movie early this morning before I went to bed, just because it was a zombie movie. From this movie, I came up with my zombie movie rating system, so one good thing came from watching it. This movie came out in 1981 under its French name "Le lac des morts vivants", or "The Lake of the Living Dead". The international title is "Zombie Lake".

Story: 3
I decided to give the story a 3 rating because it is an interesting concept, though it could have been done much better. When a reporter comes by the village to investigate the murders for the newspaper she works for, it seems the flashbacks of what the mayor is telling her took up half the movie. The flashbacks were set in WWII when a group of Nazi soldiers had control over the village. One of the young soldiers had saved a teenage girl/young woman from a bomb and they fall in love and have a baby named Helen together. There were "tender" scenes between the zombie father and his eight year old girl later on in the movie. The mayor tells the reporter that it was his and the rest of the villages' hatred for the soldiers that created their zombified versions that lived in the lake. It is important to note that the people who were killed by the zombies stay dead. This isn't like your typical zombie movie where the dead come back to life. It would have probably helped immensely if there was conflict between the soldiers and the villagers. Instead, the beginning showed them all to be friends or something, so the resistance killing the officers made no sense to me.

Continuity: 2
Many reviewers complain that the movie was set in the 70's-80's when it was made (a common complaint is how is the zombie soldier's daughter born during WWII and isn't in her 40's, she's only 8?!). Rest assured, she is at the right age because the movie is set and based in 1957, though I can see how difficult it is for people to realize that. For starters, the wardrobe department should've done their homework by researching how people dressed in the 1950s. They got the older characters' dress right, however the teenagers? The girl's basketball team scene comes to mind. Let's just say that the duffel bags' colors in its pattern are the colors most often used back in the 70s, not the 50s. On top of that, many of their hairstyles were from the 70s as well, along with their gym wear. Another continuity error is the fact that when the French resistance killed the German soldiers, they took their boots off before throwing them into the lake. Yet when the zombies are walking around, they're wearing boots. What, did they leave the lake one day to go and find their boots or something?

Characterization: 1
I know it is mean of me, but I give this category a 1. Why? There wasn't strong characterization. It seemed as though someone just made up names for the script and came up with mediocre lines for them. The strongest characters in the movie were the zombie dad and his daughter, though I'm going overboard with the "strongest characters" part. Had they been fully developed with their own personalities, I think that the story would've had a chance to be a lot better. Stock characters, which are the stereotypes of personalities (naked teenage girl who trips over her feet after literally taking a couple of steps when she's attacked, the mayor with a secret about the town, the reporter who does anything for the next big story, all of these are in this movie), are what the crew had used for most of the characters. Can you say boring? If each of these stock characters had just one flaw, and one thing to motivate them, they would've been just a tad bit more interesting.

Acting: 1
It's like these people only took the script home and memorized the lines. The grandmother who screams and cries after seeing her daughter's dead boyfriend as a zombie is the best actress in the whole movie, at least she's somewhat believable! When the town is rallying for the zombies to be ambushed by them, they are shaking their fists and yelling, though in this case it is not very engaging. I mean, they're barely doing anything so it doesn't come off with a sense of urgency and anger like what they were aiming for. Did I mention the naked teen girl who tripped over her own feet after two steps when the zombie was coming for her. She had plenty of time to run, yet she just laid there with her arm blocking her face. I would block my face too after a performance like that! When the two inspectors were attacked, the had plenty of time to run away, though they chose to just stand there waiting on the zombies to get them like idiots. And no, they were not acting like they were frozen to the spot, they were just standing there. During the bar scene when one of the featured zombies went inside to tear apart the place, the men who were sitting in the spot ran away laughing. Seriously?

Don't even get me started on the zombies. There were a few instances where I though I was watching Frankenstein, what with them with their arms outstretched out in front of them! Then there are the wide-eyed stares from the two featured zombies, making them look ridiculous, not to mention they way they walk, if it isn't the classic Frankenstein walk, it is the drunken man walk. An interesting thing to note, was the "battle" between the two featured zombies as the zombie father was protecting his daughter. It would've helped to know why the other zombie was so "angry" at the other. I mean, if the soldier didn't like that the other one had fallen for the girl's mother, there should've been at least a discussion between the two while they were human, right? Then that scene would've made a little more sense. Another thing worth noting, the little girl who plays the zombie's daughter Helen, is the daughter of the producer, and those scenes with her and the zombie dad was added in just to have her in the film. There were a couple of times where I caught her looking at the camera.

Make-Up: 3
While it was a decent attempt at making the zombies scary, throwing green paint on their faces without painting their hands as well doesn't cut it. It didn't help that the paint rubbed off on the people they were attacking, either. One of the featured zombies had a nice attempt put on him where he was missing an eye, as if one of the lake fish had picked it off.

Violence: 1
Not much in the way of violence. Just people being knocked down or swung at. Flamethrowers are in the mix later on in the film as well as a guns being shot, though the targets seems to be missed a lot.

Gore: 1
Blood packets. Need I say more? No puncture wounds or anything of that sort to be found in this movie. Just fake blood smeared across the spot that the zombie is supposed to be eating.

Nudity and Sex: 6 Of course there's plenty of that in this movie. Teenage girls/young adult women are nude throughout the movie. There's the opening credits when the girl strips off and goes skinny dipping in the lake (everything is shown, and I do mean everything!), there is the so-called "love-making" scene, the older couple messing around, though they're not showing anything, the girl's basketball team stripping out of their work-out clothes and skinny dipping, the girl bathing in the bathtub out in her backyard. I think you get the picture. Lots of gratuitous nudity and it has nothing to do with the story, (my biggest pet peeve where movies are concerned). On some versions though, all the girls were re-shot to be seen wearing underwear during these scenes, which are included on the DVD of this movie.

Special Effects: 1
There are no special effects, unless you count the underwater scenes that you can tell they shot them in somebody's pool. I mean, you can see the pool walls, lights and the tile at the bottom! I don't think a lake has tiles at the bottom unless somebody had thrown them in at some point. Then while in the mayor's house, you can see the cameraman in one of the many mirrors throughout the room they are standing in. Oh, then there is the white foam that comes out of a zombie's mouth after it is shot. I guess you can add the flamethrowers and mannequins that was shown at the end of the movie.

My Rating: 1
Yes, I think this is a decent rating for this movie. If anybody else wants to take a look at "Zombie Lake", go ahead and try to come up with higher ratings. I doubt you'd be able to think of a reason while watching the movie for giving it a higher than what I've given it. If you're interested in watching a horrible Eurotrash B-Movie, go ahead and check it out.