The Frozen Dead

The Frozen Dead is not the zombie movie you'd probably assume, in fact it's not even what it makes itself out to be based on the cover.

A British horror film it tells the story about a Nazi doctor hidden away in England who is working on re-animating cryogenically frozen soldiers. Alas his attempts thus far have failed, though he can bring the body back the mind appears to be broken. All he needs now is a live brain to experiment on!

Shot in colour but broadcast black and white in the cinema this is an incredibly underwhelming title.

The plot appears so neutered, even though the idea behind the concept is shocking the execution is lacking to the degree that almost all impact is lost.

Poorly paced, no likeable characters and just an all round borefest The Frozen Dead demonstrates why 1966 was a dreadful year for film.

The Good:

Some interesting ideas

The Bad:

Painfully slow

Really doesn't go anywhere

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

The creators did little to no research on cryogenics

20 years after WW2 has ended, a German scientist living in London, attempts to revive the frozen bodies of several Nazi leaders. Of course, there are some problems along the way (especially "woman problems")... The main problem however with this film is that it has absolutely nothing to say. Besides a ludicrous story, this film also contains some very "unintended-funny" scenes. Especially the dead girl's head is great! "It seems as though the head forced this glass of water out of my hand!" Needless to say that the dialogue, especially near the end of the film, is superb. This alone makes the film worthwhile. There are films that are far worse than this one (and with worse actors), but this comes pretty close too. Oh, and watch out for Edward Fox as one of the crazed Germans in the basement(!). 3/10

this movie was so bizarre. i can barely remember it, in only half-envisioned scenes that flit through my memory.... but i long for it, to possess it, to own it..... and where is it, in this day of videos and DVDs and TCM? i loved the frozen dead! i love it still! let me revisit this twisted, simple and torturous, evil story! who needs especially good special effects when one can be completely creeped out by a classic presentation like this??? come back to me, O scary movie seen once upon a time on television.....ah, the 70s.

might i add that other creepy favorites of mine which also i'd long sought are now available on DVD: most specifically "Asylum", that don amicus flick... delightful!

One of the triumvirate of iconic '60s disembodied head movies and thematic intermediate between the heady love story of "The Brain That Wouldn't Die" (1962) and the neo-Nazi delirium of "They Saved Hitler's Brain" (1968), "The Frozen Dead" finds former Third Reich scientist Doktor Norberg (Dana Andrews) attempting to revive frozen members of the master race two decades after the end of the war. Unfortunately, the thawed übermensch are mentally defective and without a living human brain to study, Norberg suspects that resuscitating the rest of the Nazicles is doomed. Hoping to head off failure, his whinging assistant Essen (Alan Tilvern) kills Norberg's visiting niece's friend (Kathleen Breck), whose head the pernicious but resourceful doktor manages to keep alive in a box in the lab (complete with an cranial observation dome). The niece gets suspicious, a romance blossoms, more Nazis show up, Norberg wires up the head to a wall of arms...it just gets better and better! The movie effectively evokes a sense of trapped helplessness - you can almost feel the disembodied head's powerless anguish or the panic of the poor henchman left to freeze to death amongst the icy Nazis. While not great art, "The Frozen Dead" is a well done, low-budget shocker that deserves an extra rating point for being surprisingly creepy despite the inherent silliness of the premise.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Screenplay, Directed and Produced by Herbert J. Leder, for Warner Brothers. Photography by Davis Boulton; Edited by Tom Simpson; Music by Don Banks. Starring: Dana Andrews, Anna Palk, Philip Gilbert, Karel Stepanek, Kathleen Breck, Alan Tilvers, Basil Henson and Oliver MacGreevy.

Not much thought went into this Herbert J. Leder special, but the underlying premises are quite interesting. 1500 leading Nazis were frozen in 1945 and German scientist Dana is experimenting on perfecting a way of successfully reanimating them. Unfortunately, rather than develop this plot, auteur Leder decides to pastiche a whole legion of science fiction and horror genres, featuring a mad scientist and his assistant in his lab, young thing and a buddy hunting for a missing friend, keeping a head alive action, face behind the mask business, clairvoyant discovery of facts via dreams, and zombie-like abortive guinea pig folks hanging around.

Logic is wholly absent as Leder refuses to make his story credible in a record-breaking bit of cinema cliche-mongering. Leder has well-endowed Anna Palk traipsing around in a white nightgown for three separate nights; on the fourth night she sleepwalks in a pink nightgown! We never return to the original teaser plotline, and the ending is even more foolish than expected.