Tomb

Dead Snow (2009) is on DVD now, having completed its brief theatrical run at the Plaza. This is the Norwegian film with all the Nazi Zombies in it. It’s a fun movie, full of beautiful wintry scenery, nasty SS-uniformed zombies and creative methods of dispatching the creatures. Out of the four rather good zombie films I’ve seen this October, I’d call it my second favourite, behind Zombieland (2009) and ahead of Dead Walkers (2009) and The Beyond (1981).

It seems like the “Nazi Zombie” angle really grabs people’s attention, and I can understand why. It’s like combining the two most popular movie villains into one decaying chunk of pure evil. The good guys can slaughter them in the cruellest, most disgusting ways imaginable and we still won’t feel bad for them because they’re fucking Nazi zombies! Shoot ‘em in the head! Ha! Take that, you goose-stepping undead fucker!

What people seem to forget is that Dead Snow isn’t the first movie to feature Nazi zombies. There have been a few others. In fact, one of the VideoHound guides (famous for their amazing indexes of categories) had a list of zombie films, a shorter list of Nazi zombie films and an even shorter list of underwater Nazi zombie films. That’s a brilliantly specific category, topped only by VideoHound’s “Vincent Price pines away at his dead wife’s portrait” entry.

We’ll get to the underwater zoms in a minute, but first, here are the regular Nazi zombie movies:

• Devil Story (1986) — the eye-catching poster for this obscure French curio places a snarling Nazi-garbed zombie front and centre, clutching a shotgun. It’s kind of hard to tell if the monster in the actual film is a genuine Nazi zombie, but he wears an SS coat, survives multiple wounds and drools blood a lot, so hey, close enough. The budget is so low that the guy’s face resembles one of the cranky old men from the theatre box in The Muppet Show. He uses a knife and a shotgun to dispatch his victims and makes odd groaning sounds throughout the picture. Most of the running time is taken up with chase scenes or lingering close-ups of bleeding wounds. You’ll probably never see this rare movie, but if you do track it down, be prepared for a ridiculously inept, nigh-unwatchable experience.

• Oasis of the Zombies (a.k.a. Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies) (1983) — a notoriously cheap and awful production from director Jess Franco, who has made more than a few. This one’s famous for having one ghoul that’s nothing more than a skull on a stick! There’s a Spanish and a French version, filmed separately but using most of the same cast (a weird move, since the French version later got dubbed into English anyway). Rumour has it that another version of the film has all of the zombie footage edited out.

• Ginseng King (1989) — I know very little about this rare Thai film, other than the fact that a zombie yells “Heil Hitler!” at one point and that the title character is some kind of wooden demon who helps a child save his mother from a bite from a Nazi zombie. It sounds awesome.

• Shock Waves (1977) — enough dilly-dallying; let’s get to those underwater Nazi zombies. This one’s actually semi-mainstream, featuring two horror movie legends (John Carradine and Peter Cushing) and is widely available on DVD. Cushing plays an SS officer living on a secluded island, surrounded by the aquatic stormtrooper zombies he had a hand in creating. The zombies look quite menacing, with their bleached blond hair, pale complexions, dark goggles and Nazi uniforms. Not needing to breathe, they can march along the bottom of the sea, but seem to die if you yank their goggles off.

• Zombie Lake (1981) — Jean Rollin hid behind the pseudonym “J.A. Laser” to direct this famous stinker, frequently cited as one of the worst zombie movies of all time, or simply one of the worst films of all time, full stop. To be fair, Rollin was called in for the job the day before shooting began, after Jess Franco opted out. The Internet is filled with hilariously awful reviews of this turkey, in which the Nazi zombies have pale green greasepaint all over their faces, but the makeup ends visibly at the neckline, where normal skin colour takes over. The film begins with a beautiful woman stripping naked and sunbathing for several minutes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this movie all the way through; I just keep rewinding that first scene over and over again.