Dis­cov­er the schlock and gore of this sleazy ​’80s horror

Zom­bie movies have proven so attrac­tive over the decades that they have not only spawned a relent­less, over­whelm­ing, irre­sistible mass of films, but also mutat­ed into end­less sub­di­vi­sions, chang­ing with the times and evolv­ing for audi­ences that will nev­er have their hunger for the undead sat­ed. Zom­bie Lake belongs to the Nazi zom­bie sub­genre, first seen mid-war in 1943’s Revenge of the Zom­bies and sub­se­quent­ly revived in The Frozen Dead and Shock Waves.

Hav­ing already writ­ten and direct­ed Oasis of the Zom­bies – which also fea­tures Nazi undead – pro­lif­ic Euro schlock­meis­ter Jésus Fran­co was all set to helm Lake of the Zom­bies. But an argu­ment with dis­trib­u­tor Eurociné led to his last-minute replace­ment with direc­tor Jean Rollin, assist­ed by Julian de Laser­na (both were ulti­mate­ly merged in the cred­its under the sin­gle direc­to­r­i­al pseu­do­nym ​‘JA Lazer’).

Rollin also cameos as one of a pair of hap­less police detec­tives. It is a pecu­liar film, its lead­en pac­ing and zom­bie-like act­ing (even from those play­ing liv­ing char­ac­ters) off­set by occa­sion­al flash­es of sur­re­al poet­ry and haunt­ed by the trau­mat­ic spec­tre of war. Mean­while those tit­u­lar ​‘zom­bies’ are some­times referred to as ​‘ghosts’ in the script, and in their pen­chant for bit­ing necks and suck­ing blood they behave more like vam­pires. Their vic­tims do not in turn becomes zom­bies. For these Nazis are not out to expand their ranks, but to exact a col­lec­tive revenge.

In the open­ing sequence, Rollin brings an ogling Lucio Ful­ci-eye view to pro­ceed­ings, as a lake floor-dwelling zom­bie is drawn leer­ing­ly to the flesh of a naked female swim­mer above in a reprise of the famous shark ver­sus zom­bie scene in Fulci’s Zom­bie Flesh Eaters – or indeed of the open­ing of Jaws.

Lat­er we get an enhanced recap of this sequence, as an entire tour­ing women’s bas­ket­ball team that has made the mis­take of skin­ny dip­ping in this rur­al lake is preyed upon by the squadron of Nazi zom­bies. Indeed, there are few occa­sions when female vic­tims are not naked, or, once killed, have their legs and knick­ers exposed to the viewer’s gaze. When the corpse of the first local vic­tim – those oth­ers were out­siders – is brought into the town cen­tre for the May­or (Leslie Ver­non) to see, her skirt is care­ful­ly repo­si­tioned by a vil­lager to restore a sem­blance of dig­ni­ty to her.

All this female nudi­ty is of course typ­i­cal Euro-sleaze, but it is not entire­ly gra­tu­itous. For in sex­u­al­is­ing the Nazi zom­bies’ vic­tims, Rollin dis­in­ters one of the key anx­i­eties of France under wartime Occu­pa­tion: sleep­ing with the ene­my, whether through rape or by con­sent. A series of flash­backs, as the May­or reveals the secret his­to­ry of the lake to vis­it­ing jour­nal­ist Katia Moore (Mar­cia Sharif), unfolds a tale not just of War, Occu­pa­tion and Resis­tance, but also of for­bid­den love.

In these sequences, a Ger­man sol­dier (Pierre-Marie Escour­rou) risks his own life to save a local woman (Nadine Pas­cal) dur­ing a bom­bard­ment, and is reward­ed with a roll in the hay at the near­by mill. The woman sub­se­quent­ly gives birth to a young girl, and her­self dies on the same day that the sol­dier and six of his com­rades-in-arms are ambushed by the local Resis­tance and killed, their bod­ies uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly dumped in the near­by cursed Lake. Ten years lat­er, the Nazis have risen again to take revenge on the town – but the soldier’s young daugh­ter Hele­na (Anouch­ka), both a prod­uct and sym­bol of ami­ca­ble frater­ni­sa­tion, will play a piv­otal part in resolv­ing this hos­tile vendet­ta from beyond the grave.

“I fear there’s a lot more to this than meets the eye,” declares the May­or near the begin­ning of Zom­bie Lake. He’s not wrong. For buried beneath the sur­face of all the cheap thrills and schlocky pro­duc­tion there lies a dis­course on France’s attempts to con­front and come to terms with her resur­gent wartime sins. War, after all, is nev­er over, as is per­haps hint­ed by the town’s use, in the cli­mac­tic scenes, of napalm – first employed by the French, five years after World War Two end­ed, in the Indochi­na War. There will always be new ene­mies, new open wounds in need of heal­ing, new returns of the repressed.

There will also always be new Nazi zom­bies, giv­ing their mon­strous expres­sion to the very real fear of fascism’s brain­less tenac­i­ty. Indeed, in the new mil­len­ni­um, where the Third Reich has become a dis­tant, dis­turb­ing mem­o­ry, the goose-step­ping undead have reemerged with a vengeance in films like Blood Creek, War of the Dead and Out­post, as well as the more com­ic Dead Snow, Iron Sky and Frankenstein’s Army. If the tyran­ni­cal ide­olo­gies of the SS nev­er tru­ly die, but keep com­ing back in new, or alt-right forms, then the Nazi is – tru­ly – undead.

Zom­bie Lake is released by Black House Films on DVD, 20 March, 2017.